D.R. Congo > Country Background and Current Challenges
The first civil and regional war in D.R. Congo began in 1996, followed by a second internal and regional conflict that started in August 1998. A peace agreement was signed in South Africa in April 2003, and a transitional government was put in place in June of that year, lasting until the presidential elections in 2006. However, progress remains slow for the majority of the population.
The situation in the east, where the population has been traumatised by tribal clashes, will take many years to normalise. An estimated 30,000 boy soldiers have been involved in the fighting, and women have been raped on a wide scale. The number of female victims of rape in eastern DRC is so significant that Jan Egeland, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, called it “a cancer in Congolese society that seems to be out of control.”
In October 2009, Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said, "Once again we're condemning violations of human rights by the warring parties in Congo. It seems that this rape madness is continuing."
A recent mortality survey carried out by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) claims that war, disease, and malnutrition area are killing 45,000 Congolese every month in this conflict-driven humanitarian crisis, which has claimed 5.4 million victims in nearly a decade. Most of these deaths are due to easily treatable and preventable diseases through the collapse of health systems.3
In 2008, it became clear that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) were present in northeastern D.R. Congo in the Province Oriental. Thus, MONUC (United Nations Organisation Mission in D.R. Congo) and the armies of D.R. Congo and Uganda began an offensive against the LRA.
The subsequent LRA response appears to have been designed to maximise civilian casualties as a warning against military intervention. This response culminated in a series of devastating attacks over Christmas 2008 in Faradje.
While there have been a number of high-level arrests and defections from disaffected LRA soldiers, it remains unclear whether the LRA are losing the struggle to survive, or whether, potentially with outside support, they are being controlled and manipulated in regional power games. Their leader Joseph Kony remains at large, possibly in the Central African Republic.
This northeastern area was relatively untouched during the Congolese war, but its remoteness has been a constant hindrance to development. With these LRA actions, the likely duration and ultimate impact of the present crisis remains uncertain. However, it is clear that IDPs in this area will still need access to free health care of improved quality throughout 2010 at least.
It is still too early to say how quickly the country will be well-established in a stable and peaceful phase, and how long it will take for the local population to have real economic capacity to improve their situation. The local communities in the east of the county will need international assistance for a number of years. In brief, it is still a very vulnerable situation that could worsen again in any place, and the general population faces a high level of need.
1 Amnesty International
www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AFR62/017/2006/en/dom-AFR620172006en.html
2 Jan Egeland , UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx
3 www.theirc.org/resources/2007/2006-7_congomortalitysurvey.pdf