nless
the prevailing insecurity is halted, there can be no sustainable
development in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Anne
Edgerton, advocate at Refugees International (RI) said on Monday
April 1, in a testimony to the United States Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on African Affairs.
Access to war-affected civilians is limited by two great factors: the enormous territory of the DRC, which lacked a functioning transport network, and rampant insecurity.
In her testimony on the current humanitarian crisis unfolding in the DRC, and comment on the kind of assistance the US could provide to contribute to a peaceful, stable DRC, Edgerton stressed that security was the single most important area for the international community to address. She said nowhere in the world was the gap between humanitarian needs and the response of the international community greater than in the DRC. "The efforts of the international community appear feeble and ineffective, dwarfed by the scale of the suffering they are intended to mitigate. Only if peace is achieved and humanitarian assistance substantially increased can this gap be bridged," she said.
After many interviews over the past three years, RI had found that Congolese civilians in eastern parts of the country were increasingly at the mercy of armed groups, including rebel forces backed by regional powers, the Mayi-Mayi, and the Interahamwe, who murdered civilians, raped women, captured children, and stole crops with impunity. She said much of the violence still occurring in the east today was totally devoid of a political or strategic rationale; it was banditry to allow unpaid soldiers to survive. "This makes the violence endemic and resistant to amelioration through political action," she said.
Edgerton said insecurity and lack of a functioning government had opened eastern DRC to foreign interests involved in exploitation and smuggling of primary products such as coltan, diamonds and timber. The insecurity severely and directly hampered the delivery of emergency assistance. Access to war-affected civilians was limited by two great factors: the enormous territory of the DRC, which lacked a functioning transport network, and rampant insecurity, which further complicated delivery in the east of the country and often prevented access to vulnerable populations for months at a time.
Child soldiers were prevalent in the Congo, she said. All parties to the conflict employed them. In the context of the Lusaka Peace Accords signed in 1999, the international community had had some success in stigmatizing the recruitment of child soldiers, but the commitment of the parties to demobilizing them had thus far been largely a public relations exercise. "It is a collective responsibility of the international community to make sure that the acceptance of children in the ranks of soldiers de-legitimizes a government or rebel force," Edgerton stressed.
She said the US remained one of the DRC's largest donors, having donated almost US $100 million for the 2001 fiscal year. In the same year, donor response came to only 60 percent of the funds requested by the United Nations Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal. This fiscal year did not look more promising, she said. "As such, the UN humanitarian operation is made more difficult due to severe under-funding." The organization recommended, among other things, that the US as a member of the international community should ensure that the United Nations Mission in the DRC (known by its French acronym, MONUC) fulfilled its current mandate and supported the expansion of its troop presence in the DRC.
It recommended that the US increase investment in the UN Consolidated Inter-Agency Appeal, with particular focus on infrastructure improvements throughout the country, and support for humanitarian assistance in the east. It also recommended that the US reassess the modes of delivery of development assistance to ensure that community-based organizations were the driving force in the design and implementation of development projects; and that the US appoint a senior UN humanitarian coordinator for eastern DRC - a high-profile official who would work under the direction of Kinshasa, but would have the necessary weight and authority to advocate for a greater humanitarian response in the east, and for greater access from the belligerents.
(From IRIN)