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DR Congo
Overview
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been on the Museum's Warning list since 2003. The Museum's concern about DRC stems from the:
• Relationship of the crisis to the 1994 Rwandan genocide
• Scale and effects of violence against civilians
• Mass sexual violence against women
• Continued fighting in the East
• Role of ethnicity in the perpetration of violence
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (known as Zaire until 1997) has suffered two wars since 1996. The first war (1996), began as a direct result of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The second began in 1998 and involved the armed forces of at least seven countries and multiple militias. According to the International Rescue Committee, since 1998, an estimated 5.4 million people have died, most from preventable diseases as a result of the collapse of infrastructure, lack of food security, displacement, and destroyed health-care systems.
In 2006, DRC held the first multi-party elections in over 40 years, and over 25 million citizens participated. The elections signified the end of a three-year transition period during which time the country moved from intense war to a system of power sharing between the former government, former armed forces, opposition parties, and civil society. However, national and provincial structures remain incapable of ensuring basic security for communities, providing transparent management of resources and wealth, and addressing entrenched problems of corruption, poverty, lack of development and heightened ethnic and regional tensions.
In the East, the war never conclusively ended. A range of armed forces continue to perpetrate violence against the civilian population, including forced displacement, abductions, looting, forceful recruitment and use of child soldiers, and massive sexual violence. According to the United Nations, 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu Province alone, a figure that represents only those assaults that were officially reported. Ethnic hostility, fed by inter-group violence in Congo over the past ten years in addition to the impact of genocide and violence in Rwanda and Burundi, has produced an environment where groups fear their entire existence is under threat and engage in pre-emptive attacks. Multiple armed forces, including the national armed forces and various militias engage in armed conflict and prey on the civilian population. Among the most brutal of the armed forces are the FDLR, a group whose leadership is associated with the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Current Situation
Museum Joins with Ben Affleck on the Congo
In an event last night by the Museum, Ben Affleck and Senator John Kerry came together with a panel of experts to speak about policy options for resolving the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Founder of the Eastern Congo Initiative, a U.S. based advocacy and grant-making group, Ben Affleck spoke about the need to unite peacemaking efforts in eastern Congo and to do so now, before Congolese elections in 2011 raise additional new challenges.
“Every voice that sends a message of concern helps to awaken those who need to take action,” said Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, echoing Affleck’s call. Describing the DRC as a nation that defies easy solutions, Carson noted that the fact that Congo is even holding elections in 2011 – previously in doubt — should be welcomed as sign of progress. In response, independent analyst Anthony Gambino expressed concern that the international community is nowhere near where it should be in preparing to support the elections and that the previous poll, in 2006, only took place because of massive international support. Gambino emphasized that for elections in 2011 to be considered minimally successful, they must be at least as free, fair, and peaceful as those in 2006.
Joining the Ambassador on the panel, Mvemba Dizolele, an expert policy analyst, reflected on the danger of focusing exclusively on the DRC’s eastern region. “When we miss the story that is happening in 80% of the country, then we miss the picture,” Dizolele said. “Because what’s happening in the east is happening exactly because of what is not happening in the rest of the country.” Widening the lens of analysis, Dizolele described the failures of the Congolese government in Kinshasa to meet the needs of its entire population, which suffers from insecurity and poverty, regardless of region.
Throughout the discussion, attention was repeatedly drawn to the lawless and predatory behavior of the Congolese military, the FARDC, which has incorporated rebel commanders and soldiers into its ranks in an effort to satisfy peace deals. Ostensibly tasked with safeguarding the Congolese people, the FARDC has been accused of committing widespread atrocities and establishing criminal networks in eastern Congo. Noting the tragic contradiction, a newly published UN report by the Group of Experts on the DRC states, “President Joseph Kabila has publicly recognized that the involvement of criminal networks within the Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo (FARDC) in the illegal exploitation of natural resources has created a conflict of interest with the army’s constitutional security mandate.”
Although pressing, security reform is only one of the many challenges facing the Congolese. Recent high-profile attempts by the international community and the FARDC to combat eastern Congo’s dominate rebel force, the FDLR, have fallen short of expectations and, in some cases, resulted in reprisal attacks on civilians. The UN report explains:
The arrests in Europe of senior political leaders of the Forces démocratiques de liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) has signaled stronger international resolve to bring to justice those who command and represent the group from afar. Yet the Group [of Experts] has found that impact of those arrests on the morale of combatants and their military leaders has been more limited than expected. FDLR increasingly works with other armed groups, including former enemies, to attack and loot both civilian and military targets.
Despite the scale and complexity of the issues in DRC, neither the UN report nor the panelists suggested the situation was hopeless, a point emphasized in the opening remarks by Museum director Sara Bloomfield, “This is not a crisis already resigned to history, but an ongoing and perilous reality. For some there is the perception that this complicated issue is unsolvable, but with so many civilians still so painfully vulnerable, we must continue to raise awareness of the crisis and encourage those who seek ways to resolve it.”
Museum Reacts to New UN Report on Congo
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum today reacted to the new United Nations report on human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the report outlines the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the DRC between 1993 and 2003 and offers a range of transitional justice options to deal with the legacy of the crimes.
“The scale, scope and detail of the crimes are too serious to be ignored,” said Michael Abramowitz, Director of the Committee on Conscience, the Museum’s genocide prevention program. “This report offers a shocking picture of violence directed against civilians in the Congo by multiple perpetrators over more than a decade. The allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law should be treated with utmost gravity in the interests of truth-telling, combating impunity, and achieving justice for victims.”
The report published today analyses four major periods of violence in the DRC: the waning years of the Mobutu Sese Seko regime (1993 - 1996), the war to overthrow Mobutu (1996-1998), the second war (1998 - 2001), and the period of transition (2001 - 2003). It also documents violence against women and children and the impact of resource exploitation on the conflict.
The report charges that attacks carried out in 1996 and 1997 by the Rwandan army and their rebel allies against Hutu civilians in the DRC may constitute genocide, ultimately deferring judgment on this question to a competent legal tribunal. It also documents crimes allegedly committed by the later-deposed Zairean government of Mobutu Sese Seko, other national militaries and militias, including Ugandan, Burundian, and Congolese rebels. The report provides guidance for the Congolese and international authorities on how to prosecute perpetrators and address victims’ rights.
“Nothing in this report or these charges diminishes the facts of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where at least 500,000 Rwandan Tutsi were murdered by a Hutu-extremist government in only three months,” said Abramowitz. “If anything, the report underscores the long-lasting, regional consequences of genocide and the importance of prevention efforts.”
Read the full press release, learn more about the report, and listen to UN expert Jason Stearns discuss a draft of the report, which was leaked in September.
Expert Insight into the Leaked UN Report
In a podcast interview on Voices of Genocide Prevention, Jason Stearns discusses the draft UN report on atrocities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leaked to the press in August, the report raises the possibility that Rwandan troops and their rebel allies killed tens of thousands of Hutu civilians in the Congo in 1996 and 1997 in what could amount to genocide.
Here, in an extended transcript of the interview, Jason talks about the report’s methodology, the controversy over using the word ‘genocide’, and the history of violence in the region. Listen or read the original interview here. Jason Stearns is the former Chief UN Investigator on the Congo. Learn more about the full UN report here.
UN Report on Congo Raises the Possibility of Genocide
Leaked to the press on August 26, a draft report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights — which assesses human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — has drawn international attention for asserting that invading Rwandan troops (APR) and their rebel allies, the AFDL, killed tens of thousands of Hutu, including many civilians, across eastern Zaire (former DRC) in 1996 and 1997. The violence, the report concludes, could be classified as genocide.
Containing descriptions of over 600 violent incidents, the draft report is the result of a UN exercise to map “the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003.”
“In some cases,” the report states, “violations that initially appeared to be isolated crimes turned out to be an integral part of waves of violence occurring in a given geographical location or within a given timeframe.”
Over five hundred pages long, the draft report is a comprehensive overview of the violence that plagued the DRC from the final days of the Mobutu era through two successive international wars to the residual clashes and rampages of the region’s dispersive rebel groups. But it is the accusation of genocide that has attracted international notice and severe outrage from Rwanda, which has threatened to withdraw its peacekeepers from UN operations. “The UN can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a force serving as peacekeepers and it is the same force you are accusing of genocide,” Rwandan foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo said. Rwanda has over 3,000 troops deployed with the joint UN-AU peacekeeping mission in Darfur, Sudan.
Ultimately deferring to the judgment of a competent court, the draft report states, “… it seems possible to infer a specific intention on the part of certain AFDL/APR commanders to partially destroy the Hutus in the DRC, and therefore to commit a crime of genocide, based on their conduct, words and the damning circumstances of the acts of violence committed by the men under their command.”
Another purpose of the mapping exercise was to review the DRC’s judicial capacities and formulate suggestions that would help the Congolese government deal with the legal, emotional, and economic legacies of the violence. The draft report proposes a mixed international/national judicial court that would apply international law, a new truth-seeking mechanism, and a comprehensive and creative approach to the issues of reparations.
The UN has delayed the publication of the final report until October 1st, in order to give countries more time to comment on it.
Who are the FDLR?
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered two wars since 1996. At its height, the second war involved the armies from seven African nations and multiple rebel groups. According to the International Rescue Committee, an estimated 5.4 million people died between 1998 and 2008, most from preventable diseases as a result of the collapse of infrastructure, lack of food security, displacement, and destroyed health-care systems. The formal conclusion of the war in 2003 did not bring an end to conflict in the region.
The dense jungles of eastern Congo remain home to numerous rebel organizations, which have complex histories and agendas. Responsible for perpetrating mass atrocities against civilians, including massacres, rapes, and abductions, three rebel groups stand out as having caused the greatest destruction and suffering in recent years. These are the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. At times, each organization has received government support from different countries in the region, and many of the rebels have profited generously from the continued exploitation of the DRC’s abundant natural resources. All prey on the civilian population.
Spread thinly across northeastern Congo, the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world (MONUC) is largely unable to halt attacks. The Congolese Armed Forces, themselves responsible for committing widespread atrocities in 2009, is increasingly an impediment to achieving peace and security in the region.
What follows are background summaries for the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. We hope they will help extend an understanding of what can appear to be, at first glance, a hopelessly complicated situation. Please follow the links to learn more.
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Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR): Comprised of approximately 7,000 combatants, the FDLR is a rebel group that operates out of North and South Kivu Provinces of eastern Congo, where it has committed widespread atrocities against civilians, including massacres and extreme sexual violence, and conducted extensive illegal exploitation of natural resources. The International Crisis Group (ICG) identified the FDLR as being one of two rebel groups — among the dozens based in eastern Congo in early 2009 — that possesses the highest military capabilities and causes the most civilian suffering in the region. (The ICG identified the other as the CNDP, which has largely since disintegrated.) Although members of the FDLR are often identified as perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the majority of FDLR rebels are post-genocide recruits drawn from refugee camps in eastern Congo. The FDLR is commanded in part by ex-officers and civilians who took leadership roles in the Rwandan genocide and is supported by a network of expatriates who share the group’s ideology.
Although the FDLR did not emerge until 2000, its history begins six years earlier in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide when one million mostly Hutu refugees fled across the Congolese border and settled into refugee camps. Using these camps to regroup, perpetrators of the genocide terrorized local populations and launched incursions into Rwanda. From this group emerged a succession of Rwandan Hutu organizations that — under different names — kept pursuing the goal of sparking an insurgency inside of Rwanda. In the early 2000s, the FDLR conducted cross-border raids into northwestern and southern Rwanda. Even after the second Congo War officially ended in 2003, the Rwandan government consistently threatened to send its army into the Congo to forcibly disarm the FDLR.
As with most developments in eastern Congo, the FDLR’s behavior related intimately to the region’s wider political and economic dynamics. The Congolese government supported FDLR activities as a means to limit Rwandan influence in the east. Rwanda authorities, meanwhile, aided the FLDR’s primary rebel enemy, the CNDP. As Congo and Rwanda manipulated the rebel groups in pursuit of their competing interests, the Congolese civilian population suffered greatly.
After aborted peace agreements and fresh clashes in 2007 and 2008, increased international pressure finally compelled the DRC and Rwanda to address the deteriorating situation together. On January 20, 2009, the Rwandan army entered eastern Congo as part of a UN-backed Rwandan-Congolese joint operation against the FDLR. Undoubtedly signifying an improvement in the political relationship between the two nations, the operation itself was a humanitarian disaster. It provoked revenge killings and rapes and drove more than 900,000 people from their homes. Just one month after the campaign ended, the FDLR was back to its former capacity.
Who are the CNDP?
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered two wars since 1996. At its height, the second war involved the armies from seven African nations and multiple rebel groups. According to the International Rescue Committee, an estimated 5.4 million people died between 1998 and 2008, most from preventable diseases as a result of the collapse of infrastructure, lack of food security, displacement, and destroyed health-care systems. The formal conclusion of the war in 2003 did not bring an end to conflict in the region.
The dense jungles of eastern Congo remain home to numerous rebel organizations, which have complex histories and agendas. Responsible for perpetrating mass atrocities against civilians, including massacres, rapes, and abductions, three rebel groups stand out as having caused the greatest destruction and suffering in recent years. These are the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. At times, each organization has received government support from different countries in the region, and many of the rebels have profited generously from the continued exploitation of the DRC’s abundant natural resources. All prey on the civilian population.
Spread thinly across northeastern Congo, the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world (MONUC) is largely unable to halt attacks. The Congolese Armed Forces, themselves responsible for committing widespread atrocities in 2009, is increasingly an impediment to achieving peace and security in the region.
What follows are background summaries for the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. We hope they will help extend an understanding of what can appear to be, at first glance, a hopelessly complicated situation. Please follow the links to learn more.
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National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP): A rebel group in the Kivu Provinces of eastern Congo, the CNDP was formally established by Laurent Nkunda in December 2006. A familiar figure in the region, Nkunda has been leading various rebel factions as early as December 2003.
Ostensibly dedicated to defending the rights of Tutsi civilians in North Kivu and Congolese Tutsi refugees in Rwanda, militias associated with Nkunda clashed with the Congolese army early after the DRC’s first multi-party elections in 2006. In a peace process facilitated by Rwanda, Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Nkunda negotiated the integration of Nkunda’s men into five brigades within the national army through a process known locally as mixage. The agreement ultimately collapsed in May 2007 under opposition from both CNDP and Congolese government hardliners. This led to a new escalation in violence as rebel loyalists in the new brigades helped strengthen Nkunda’s control over the region.
As the Congolese army struggled to defeat the CNDP and recapture authority over the mixed brigades, the CNDP dedicated itself to the eradication of the FDLR. The CNDP considered the FDLR – a powerful rebel group in eastern Congo that at times operated in collaboration with the Congolese army — to be preparing another genocide against Tutsi. Stoking the situation, Rwandan President Kagame credited Nkunda with legitimate grievances. Although Kagame denied involvement with Nkunda, the UN Security Council released a report in December 2008 that found evidence that Rwandan authorities were complicit in the recruitment of CNDP soldiers, including children; facilitated the supply of military equipment; and sent officers and units from the Rwandan armed forces to the Congo in support of the CNDP.
The atrocities perpetrated by men under Nkunda’s command over the past decade are also well documented: the massacre of several hundred deserters in Kisangani in 2002; days of pillage in Bukavu after it was seized by the CNDP in 2004; and, in November 2008, the massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians in Kiwanja, a tiny village northeast of Goma, during fighting to seize control of North Kivu.
After aborted peace agreements and fresh clashes in 2007 and 2008, increased international pressure finally compelled the DRC and Rwanda to address the deteriorating situation together. Rwanda agreed to withdraw its support from the CNDP, while the DRC agreed to a joint military operation with the Rwandan army against the FDLR. On January 23, 2009, Rwandan forces arrested Nkunda as he was fleeing into Rwanda from an attack on his base in Bunagana. Furthering the disintegration of the CNDP, Bosco Ntaganda, Nkunda’s chief of staff, announced he had taken control of nearly half of the CNDP forces. Agreeing to integrate his faction into the Congolese army, Ntaganda was given a position as deputy commander of the joint military offensive, despite being indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes. On March 23, the remaining CNDP faction signed a peace treaty with the government, agreeing to become a political party in exchange for amnesty.
Undoubtedly signifying an improvement in the political relationship between the two nations, the operation itself was a humanitarian disaster. It provoked revenge killings and rapes from FDLR rebels and drove more than 900,000 people from their homes. The Congolese government struggled to incorporate at least 12,000 former CNDP rebels into the Congolese military. With its ranks swollen by the rapid integration of former rebels, the Congolese army came under heavy criticism for attacking, burning, and looting villages, and killing and raping civilians.
Although the CNDP is no longer a cohesive organization, former rebels take advantage of extensive illicit networks anchored in neighboring countries and the chaos of continued violence in eastern Congo to exploit natural resources. A UN report in November 2009 described how former CNDP officers, now integrated into the Congolese army, continue to profit from their deployment in areas in the east.
Who are the LRA?
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered two wars since 1996. At its height, the second war involved the armies from seven African nations and multiple rebel groups. According to the International Rescue Committee, an estimated 5.4 million people died between 1998 and 2008, most from preventable diseases as a result of the collapse of infrastructure, lack of food security, displacement, and destroyed health-care systems. The formal conclusion of the war in 2003 did not bring an end to conflict in the region.
The dense jungles of eastern Congo remain home to numerous rebel organizations, which have complex histories and agendas. Responsible for perpetrating mass atrocities against civilians, including massacres, rapes, and abductions, three rebel groups stand out as having caused the greatest destruction and suffering in recent years. These are the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. At times, each organization has received government support from different countries in the region, and many of the rebels have profited generously from the continued exploitation of the DRC’s abundant natural resources. All prey on the civilian population.
Spread thinly across northeastern Congo, the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world (MONUC) is largely unable to halt attacks. The Congolese Armed Forces, themselves responsible for committing widespread atrocities in 2009, is increasingly an impediment to achieving peace and security in the region.
What follows are background summaries for the FDLR, CNDP, and LRA. We hope they will help extend an understanding of what can appear to be, at first glance, a hopelessly complicated situation. Please follow the links to learn more.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA): The LRA is a rebel group of less than 1,500 that operates out of southern Sudan, eastern Congo, and northern Uganda to wage guerrilla warfare against the government in Uganda, where it has murdered over twenty thousand people and abducted tens of thousands of children in the last twenty years. The LRA’s self-appointed messianic leader, Joseph Kony, replenishes the group’s ranks with forcibly conscripted children. Boys are forced to fight and girls to become sex slaves. In the past and possibly still today, the Sudan government in Khartoum provided military support for the LRA, reportedly in retaliation for Ugandan support for the Southern People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in Sudan.
Since the rebel group’s formation in 1986, the Ugandan government has repeatedly targeted the LRA in intense military campaigns without success. In an effort to safeguard civilian populations and restrict the LRA’s access to resources, the Ugandan army has displaced whole communities into “protection camps” and then failed to protect them. In a devastating pattern documented by Human Rights Watch, the LRA conducts reprisal attacks on civilian populations in response to these government offensives.
In July 2004, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for five LRA leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity: Joseph Kony, his deputy Vincent Otti, and three other commanders. Within a year of arrest warrants, LRA forces relocated into the Congo, hiding out in Garamba National Park, an immense area of forests and grasslands. In 2006, peace negotiations between the LRA and the Ugandan government stalled in part because LRA leaders sought to evade ICC prosecution. After lengthy discussions, the parties agreed in June 2007 to establish domestic trials of the ICC cases in Uganda instead of The Hague in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to persuade Kony to surrender.
While Kony manipulated the peace process, the LRA prepared for further war. Rebels crossed into southern Sudan and the Central African Republic to raid villages and abduct young civilians. In September 2008, the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) joined the Congolese army in an operation designed to isolate the LRA inside the park area and encourage defectors. Threatened by the prospect of a weakened force, the LRA began attacking Congolese communities for the first time.
In mid-December 2008, the Ugandan army launched a US-backed attack against the LRA in an attempt to eliminate the entire senior leadership. The operation was a spectacular failure and resulted in the dispersal of the LRA across northeastern Congo. On the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, the LRA conducted simultaneous raids on villages across the Doruma region in northeastern Congo, targeting Christmas celebrations. At least 850 people died in these “Christmas massacres.” (View photos from the region taken in the aftermath of the attacks and read stories from survivors.)
In mid-October 2009, the LRA rebels attacked a camp for Darfuri displaced persons in southern Sudan, abducting dozens of the camp’s inhabitants, killing several people, and stealing supplies. Undeterred by the attention of the Ugandan army, the Congolese army, MONUC, and the SPLA, the Lord’s Resistance Army continues to terrorize, kidnap, rape, and murder civilians across the region.
“Messy and Ragged”: UN’s Gloomy Report on the Congo
A new confidential report, issued by a UN-mandated group of Congo experts, adds even more troubling layers to an already dismal picture of eastern Congo. The report’s bleak accounting of the situation describes cases of charitable groups funneling money to rebels; soldiers attacking and raping civilians; local army commanders making $250,000 a month from taxing the movement of exploited resources; and support for the rebels from senior leadership in the Congolese army and neighboring nations. Operations against the FDLR have failed to dislodge the rebel group’s powerful political, military, and economic hold on the region. In great detail, the report describes extensive networks — operated by the FDLR and former CNDP rebels — that illegally mine, tax, and export natural resources, including gold, cassiterite, coltan, and timber. The resources slip out of the country with the help of traders and officials in Tanzania, Burundi, and Uganda. The report further describes how former CNDP officers, now integrated into the Congolese army, continue to profit from their deployment to areas in eastern Congo.
Implicit in the report is a criticism of the UN’s approach to the Congo, where, until recently, the UN aided Congolese army operations. The UN Security Council is expected to discuss the report this week. According to The New York Times, one United Nations official described the conflict as “messy and ragged” and admitted that “there is a lot in [the report] that makes [the UN] look complicit.”
Congolese Army Uses Vaccination Sites as Bait
After coming under intense criticism for backing a disastrous Congolese military operation against rebel groups in eastern Congo, the United Nations decided in early November to suspend all logistical and operational support to the FARDC (Congolese Armed Forces). Responsible for committing widespread atrocities in the months following the military operation, the Congolese army has “clearly targeted” civilians, according to UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy. A reckless and dangerous armed force, the FARDC has become an impediment to achieving peace and security in the region.
The UN’s decision to withdraw its support only now from the FARDC is especially striking given newly released information about the Congolese army’s recent behavior. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, vaccination sites — where thousands of civilians including many children had gathered — were used as bait during attacks three weeks ago by the FARDC on the rebels. MSF described:
All parties to the conflict had given security guarantees to MSF to vaccinate at these [seven] locations at those times. However, the Congolese national army launched attacks on each of the vaccination sites. All the people who had come to get their children vaccinated were forced to flee the heavy fighting… The attack was an unacceptable abuse of humanitarian action to fulfill military objectives.
MSF explained that it had decided to pull its staff from the area before publicizing the incident and expressed concern over increasing attacks against humanitarian organizations by the various armed groups in the region.
A Humanitarian Disaster Backed by the UN
The UN-backed Rwanda-Congolese operation launched last January against rebel groups in eastern Congo has been criticized as a “humanitarian disaster” by rights groups. The FDLR, a Rwandan Hutu militia group, and FARDC, the Congolese Armed Forces, have both engaged in widespread atrocities. Since January, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed, 7,000 women and girls have been subjected to rape and extreme sexual violence, and nearly 900,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.
Satellite imagery collected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science shows extensive destruction of homes and villages occurring as recently as September. Since the launch of the offensive, over 6,000 homes have been burned down in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu. The Congo Advocacy Coalition calculates that for every rebel combatant disarmed, one civilian has been killed, seven women and girls have been raped, six houses burned and destroyed, and 900 people have been force to flee their homes. According to UN statistics, only 1,071 FDLR rebels — out of a force as large as 6,000 to 7,000 combatants — have surrendered since January. Many reports indicate that the FDLR has recruited continuously to maintain its numbers.
The Great Lakes Contact Group meets this week in Washington, DC to discuss the situation in eastern Congo and the wider region. Rights groups are calling on diplomats and UN officials attending the meeting to increase protection for civilians and prosecute those responsible for serious human rights abuses, in addition to disarming the FDLR.
