{"id":33178,"date":"2013-08-26T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=33178"},"modified":"2015-05-06T08:59:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T07:59:09","slug":"new-fires-relight-in-eastern-congo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/08\/new-fires-relight-in-eastern-congo\/","title":{"rendered":"New Fires Relight in Eastern Congo"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a 24 August 2013 message addressed to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Association of World Citizens highlighted that the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s eastern capital of North Kivu Provence, Goma, had been shelled for the past three days, including Saturday the 24th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

The shelling seems to be a continuation of the struggle for power and wealth between heavily-armed rebels, called the March 23rd<\/sup> Movement (M23) and the Congolese central government\u2019s army \u2014 Democratic Republic of Congo Armed Forces (FARDC).<\/p>\n

This struggle with ever-changing groups began in 1996, two years after the genocide in Rwanda which led to a refugee influx into eastern Congo.\u00a0 From 1998 to 2003, the area was the scene of fighting between forces of at least six countries \u2014 Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.<\/p>\n

Since the end of the international fighting, the area has been divided into what can be called \u201cmafia clans\u201d running protection rackets and trying to make a profit from minerals, timber, food supplies for the United Nations forces and humanitarian NGOs present. A deep and deadly struggle for influence is being played out in the shadows with an ever-changing cast of characters.<\/p>\n

The United Nations has, for the UN, a large and expensive peacekeeping group in the area, the MONUC, but with uneven results.\u00a0 UN forces are seen by the local population as favourable to the far-away incompetent central government.\u00a0 The M23 is widely considered to be favoured by the government of Rwanda.<\/p>\n

UN peacekeeping troops are generally effective when there is peace to keep. However what is required today in eastern Congo is not so much more soldiers under UN command as reconciliation bridge-builders, persons who are able to restore relations among the ethnic groups of the area.\u00a0 The UN, national governments, and non-governmental organizations need to develop bridge-building teams who can help to strengthen local efforts at conflict resolution and re-establishing community relations.<\/p>\n

World Citizens were among those in the early 1950s who stressed the need to create UN peacekeeping forces with soldiers especially trained for such a task.\u00a0 Today a new type of world civil servant is needed \u2014 those who in areas of tension and conflict can undertake the slow but important task of restoring confidence among peoples in conflict, establishing contacts and looking for ways to build upon common interests.<\/p>\n

As the militias and \u201cmafia clans\u201d have proliferated, rivalries, particularly over land tenure and use have become a key source of conflict.\u00a0 With the breakdown of society, there was a parallel breakdown of local, traditional conflict reduction mechanisms.\u00a0 The pre-colonial tribal society had been too weakened during the colonial period to return to pre-colonial forms of governance.\u00a0 Post-colonial administration had never been put into place, and so the result was a void of social rules and mechanisms for dispute settlement.<\/p>\n

In particular, disputes over land became critical.\u00a0 Land tenure issues have always been complex.\u00a0 Land is often thought of as belonging to the ethnic community and is given to clans or to individuals for their use, sometimes for a given period, sometimes for several lifetimes if the land is continually cultivated.\u00a0 The rules of land tenure often differ from one ethnic group to another, even a small distance apart. Traditionally, clan chiefs would be called upon to settle land disputes, often by compromises, so win-win solutions were often found. With the large displacement of people, land disputes have become frequent, and clan chiefs have often disappeared or lost their function as judges.<\/p>\n

Many people have left villages near main roads to live in relative safety far from roads. They have had to move several times and to re-clear land for planting.\u00a0 Local markets have been destroyed.\u00a0 Social organizations such as churches have been disbanded, and family links, which provide the African \u201csafety net\u201d have been destroyed by death and displacement.\u00a0 What trust existed between groups has been largely replaced by fear.\u00a0 A few people are making money from the disorder by plundering natural resources, but economic injustice and deprivation remain the order of the day.<\/p>\n

There is a short-term need to bring the current fighting to a negotiated end, but future security is closely linked to the ways in which land tenure and land use issues are settled.<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Wadlow, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and of its Task Force on the Middle East, is president and U.N. representative (Geneva) of the Association of\u00a0World\u00a0Citizens. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a 24 August 2013 message addressed to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Association of World Citizens highlighted that the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s eastern capital of North Kivu Provence, Goma, had been shelled for the past three days, including Saturday the 24th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}