June 2011 - Congolese Women Speak Out:
The Democratic Republic of Congo is a Mess


Tortured History

For more than a century, Congolese people have witnessed unspeakable crimes and unimaginable atrocities. The DRC has had 32 years of bad governance, followed up with 16 years of constant armed conflicts.

In fact, the Congo crosses a period more humiliating and the most painful of its post-colonial history. Since 1996, more or less ten million people have died, millions of women violently raped and mutilated. More than 2 million people have been displaced, living in horrible conditions in refugee camps

Killings and brutal sexual violence against women, girls and also men have extremely increased. It is a process of depopulation and ethnic cleansing. There is still no end in sight to the atrocities. There is no great deal of commitment to the peace process in Congo's government.

Any state’s most basic responsibility is to provide security for its citizens. Congo’s weak government has never effectively represented or protected its people. As long as the Congolese government is unable to protect its borders, and as long as armed groups are able to prosper from illicit trade in natural resources and complex regional alliances, eastern Congo will remain a battlefield and innocent civilians will continue to pay a tragically high cost, especially women and children.
We live in a state of total impunity, where corruption is institutionalized and legitimised. There is no central government authority. No judicial system. These atrocities will continue as long as the perpetrators face no penalty.

The Head of State without a State

President Joseph Kabila is in the surreal position of being head of state without a state, President of the Democratic Vacuum of Congo. He has no levers of power to pull. He has no army worthy of the name, he has no police force, and he cannot guard the country’s borders. The collapse of state authority has left a security vacuum that the neighbouring countries along with their allies have been quick to fill. Anarchy is the normal way of life in the DR Congo. There is no national army, most of them are the rebels; militias from Rwanda and Uganda whom have integrated the so called Congolese army.

President Joseph Kabila " Head of State without a State".

Given the bonds that once existed, and to some extent, continue to exist between the governments of Rwanda and Congo, there is no hope of ending the conflict as long as kabila will remain president of the DRC. The coterie of warlords and human rights violators have been promoted by president Kabila and are now serving with flagrant impunity at the highest levels of Congo’s government and security institutions. Of course Kabila's circle is corrupt. To have power in this country you must be corrupt. It’s a corrupt system.

Corruption

Corruption has been one of the fundamental causes of Congo’s disastrous economic situation over recent decades. It is particularly prevalent in the formal and informal mining sectors where the financial stakes are so high. A Congolese Senate commission concluded in 2009 that the country had missed out on at least $361 million in revenues from the mining sector in 2008 due to mismanagement and fraud. In total only $92 million of mining revenues were received the same year. Although rich in minerals, the DRC is nonetheless mired in poverty and beset by poor government because the public revenues earned from selling these resources have been squandered through corruption and lack of government accountability. Congo’s natural resource sector has long been plagued by corruption and bad management.


The War Economy

The crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo has many layers, and many underlying forces that produce the war, rapes and the biblical suffering of the people of Congo. This is a country that has been pillaged by outsiders for more than a century, cursed by its extraordinary natural resource base to unparalleled levels of death and destruction. With a seemingly intractable war in the east, one of the worst corruption-fighting records in the world, and some of the highest rates of sexual violence ever recorded.

Congo's conflict is a business based on violent extortion. There are numerous armed groups and commercial actors, Congolese, Rwandan, and Ugandan, that have positioned themselves for the spoils of a deliberately lawless, accountability-free, unstable, highly profitable mafia-style economy. Millions of dollars are made monthly in illegal taxation of mining operations, smuggling of minerals, and extortion rackets run by mafia bosses based primarily in Kinshasa, Kigali, and Kampala. Armed groups use terrifying tactics such as mass rape and village burning to intimidate civilians into providing cheap labor for this elaborate extortion racket. It is clear that the revenue from these minerals does not benefit the local Congolese; they continue to work in miserable circumstances and under the constant threat of a hostile army.

For decades, this illegal economy has thrived in the shadows. It's all about controlling the minerals and gaining a handsome profit. And until this logic of unaccountable, violent, illegal mineral extraction changes, all the peacekeepers and peacemakers in the world will have very little impact on the levels of violence there.

Where Women Stand

Many Congolese communities depend for their survival on the productive and reproductive work of women. Congolese women have suffered economic hardship just as men. 53% of the DRC populations are women. Since its independence, the country is unilaterally run by men at all levels. Congolese women have faced cultural and social obstacles such as being politically underrepresented; many women are unemployed because they are undervalued.
Furthermore, Congolese women have been excessively affected by the conflict; they have paid a heavy price through their bodies where the current marathon to power has been run, they have been raped, mutilated, defiled and few have been pacified with humanitarian assistance instead of policies and actions to eradicate the evil.

We call on the UK as one of the principal supporters of the UNSC Resolution 1325, to support Congolese women in their struggle to enjoy equal participation in all decision-making processes and, to foster a new generation of women capable of contributing to the development of their nation. Let our pending generation know how brave and positive we are for their future.

The international community spends well in excess of $2 billion a year treating the symptoms of the Congolese crisis (with peacekeeping and emergency assistance), but they don’t address the core of the conflict, which is the struggle for control over Congo’s minerals.

While addressing the consequences, it is important to put in place appropriate mechanisms, to act on the deep causes and to propose appropriate steps for durable solutions. And, also putting in place a justice mechanism to address past and present crimes will be crucial to ending this cycle of impunity and violence. The UK and the IC should reconsider their policy towards the DRC, and also deal rigorously with the negative forces behind this conflict.

The UK should question the role of their companies trading in the region. More pressure needs to be placed on the multitude of multinational corporations, along with their allies, who have been at the root of the conflict. They must stop the grotesque crimes they are committing, fuelled by the looting of Congo’s riches.

Elections

As Congolese women, we are very sceptical about the elections in a country where there is no proper national army to protect the borders. The borders are open to all nine neighbouring countries. People are coming from abroad and taking over the land. Within the current environment, it is very difficult to tell who is who in the DRC. The last census was held in early 80s. There has not been an identity card since the Mobutu regime. In 2006, an electoral card was issued; this cannot be a permanent replacement for an identity card.

Monusco

The UN mission in the DRC is the largest but yet it has failed to provide the proper security needed to protect civilians. MONUSCO’s budget is too high for a mission that has done little to restore long-term stability and security in the region. But even if MONUC were not wasteful and unsuccessful, a U.N. peacekeeping mission is not a good long-term replacement for a competent and professional national army.

Un Mapping Report

The UN has accused Rwanda and other neighbouring countries of wholesale war crimes, including possibly genocide in the DRC. The report catalogues years of murder, rape and looting in a conflict where millions were slaughtered.
We cannot overstate the fact that president Kabila was with Rwanda, when they first invaded the DRC. A former warlord, Kabila once served in the Rwandan army and commanded Rwanda-backed rebel units in some of the areas cited in the UN mapping report.

The UK has the opportunity to show, once again, that it is a leader in protecting the rights of the most vulnerable in the world by mobilizing the world opinion on making the UN Mapping Report a priority, address its recommendations, and support the Congolese request for the creation of an international tribunal, where all governments named in the report should be challenged for the massive sexual atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide. War criminals should be prosecuted without prejudice.

If followed by strong regional and international action, this report could make a major contribution to ending the impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Foreign Aid

In the light of aid, most African governments have failed to put in place policies and structures that would make our countries benefit from natural resources. They have taken the aid option and revenues from crude natural resources; hence, they have systematically denied us our share of the resources, by transferring all the money into their bank accounts abroad.

The UK has become one of Congo’s largest donors, and it has an increasing level of influence but to date has shown little sign of exercising any real clout. We Congolese women deplore the fact that, the UK is supporting a government associated with corruption, killing of human rights activists and brutal oppression of opposition, a government which actually promotes insecurity to allow its top officials to enrich themselves, a government which covers and protects officially wanted war criminals.

The argument is that the money will make such government behave properly. However, after a decade of aid, we still see the same government drifting towards a totalitarian regime, where all kind of abuses and atrocities carried out in total impunity. There’s no way you can make someone stop behaving badly by giving them free money.

Our country needs a well-trained, unified army and police to ensure security. Unfortunately, the current government has always opposed to such initiative, and the provided financial support allows them to spend more on their private security and militia, in order for them to stay in power forever and oppress dissidents. Until a responsible government, a professional army, a national police and law enforcement structures, are in place, we will not know peace, and, never be able to hold the long-awaited free and transparent elections. Such failure will continue to keep the Great Lakes region in chaos, with dire consequences for millions of innocent civilians, especially women.

There is desperate need, an urgent need to work first of all towards the re-establishment of the Congolese state and to rebuild strong institutions to defend people’s interests. Any efforts to re-organize and legislate either the Congolese mining industry or governance without taking this fundamental step into account risk failure.

Foreign Aid contributes to Congo’s Tragedy

Despite the invasion of the DR Congo since 1996 and the ensuing deaths, economic collapse, and cost of UN peacekeeping, Western Governments continue to provide significant military and development aid to Rwanda and Uganda. Since aid accounts for the majority of these countries’ official budgets, donors could have had considerable leverage: the threat of aid withdrawal may have provided Rwanda and Uganda with the incentive to cease military operations in the DRC.

Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda need Congo economically, given that their plans for future economic development rely on mineral profits from the Congo. They’re determined to control a share of the minerals supply chain. Since the 1990s, Rwanda has played a dangerous game in Congo, backing brutal warlords and helping raise ragtag armies, siphoning off natural resources, even trying to rearrange borders to seize Congolese farmland.

Given the number of reports by the UN, international NGOs, and the press, it is impossible that donor countries were not aware of the activities being conducted by the neighbouring countries in the DRC. They fuel the conflict even while they sign peace agreements. They use U.S. and UK military assistance and economic aid to support warlords within Congolese borders. We would like to see Washington and London press Kagame to limit his meddling in eastern Congo.

Kabila regime enjoys unprecedented support from Western donors as well. However, after a decade of aid, the results of Kabila’s governance are very negative, and a complete failure, a disaster.

The DRC needs far more than humanitarian aid. Ironically, the international community spends well in excess of $2 billion a year treating the symptoms of the Congolese crisis (with peacekeeping and emergency assistance), but roughly one-tenth of 1 percent of what they spend on aid and peacekeepers is spent on addressing the main fuel for its continuation. They never address the lack of leadership and bad governance of the country as a whole.

The U.S. and British governments are the largest bilateral aid donors to Congo and key diplomatic players. Their failure to hold their companies to account is undermining their own efforts and allowing one of the main drivers of the conflict to continue unchecked. The U.S. should pay more attention to the role of minerals in fuelling the conflict and hold their companies to account for involvement in the illicit mineral trade from DRC, including reporting them to the UN Security Council’s sanctions committee.

Congo's vital strategic importance as a regional, political, and economic actor has been well documented, what happens in Congo ripples through all of Central Africa. With nearly 10 million dead, 1.9 million in displacement camps, nearly 1 million survivors of rape, elections fast-approaching, and armed groups committing mass atrocities every day, such as rape, slavery, child soldiers, and conflict mining, the International Community should display the same drive and determination, including exerting pressure on those financing and enabling the conflict, as it did to accomplish Charles Taylor's extradition to Sierra Leone.

However, the major obstacle we’ve had so far is the lack of involvement of Congolese people in seeking solutions to problems that we face in our own country. Unless Congolese people are brought back into the discussions, all these efforts would remain vain, and the initiators would only create a DR Congo after their own image. The International Community has made a serious error of judgment by not including us, Congolese people in crucial debate on our own issues.

Proposing grandiose solutions without first diagnosing the causes of what ails the DR Congo and its people has never stopped the International Community from prescribing the wrong medicine for the country.

Increasingly, Congolese people are trying to break free from the strangled hold of governments who are alien to us. Governments that are imposed and supported by some ex-colonial masters to protect their interest in Africa regardless of the interest of the masses, this is the root cause of the many problems Congolese people face to date. We’d like to be free from the negative impact of our painful history. Congolese people are yet to be recognized as equal members of the human race, a people entitled to administer their natural resources and to govern themselves according to democratic principles, so as to benefit from the progress that the rest of the world has made and continues to make.


We look forward to hearing from you

With all our Best Wishes

Victoria Dove Dimandja
Liberation Congolese Women Group