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Abstract
The Global Accord (2002) ended the Congo War, contributed to the creation of the Third Republic and influenced subsequent peace agreements. This article analyses how justice for human rights violations was included in the Global Accord and later peace deals. It assesses how the power-sharing aspects of these agreements affected the pursuit of accountability, and finds they undermined transitional justice efforts and contributed to continued abuse. It concludes that free-wheeling power-sharing within the security institutions is the biggest challenge to both accountability and peace: post-conflict security arrangements are therefore the crucial nexus between peacebuilding and accountability for human rights violations.
Notes
Dennis M. Tull and Andreas Mehler, ‘The Hidden Costs of Power-Sharing: Reproducing Insurgent Violence in Africa’, African Affairs 104, no. 416 (2005): 376. Tull and Mehler refer to ‘the West's preferred instrument of peace-making’ but ‘the West’ is inaccurate in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where the agreements were mediated and witnessed by African actors (South Africa, the African Union) and senior Africans appointed by the United Nations (Kemile Masire, Moustapha Niasse).
Stef Vandeginste and Chandra Lekha Sriram, ‘Power-Sharing and Transitional Justice: a Clash of Paradigms?’, Global Governance 17, no. 4 (2011), 489–505; Ibid., 11.
Anna K. Jarstad, ‘Power Sharing: Former Enemies in Joint Government’, in From War to Democracy: Dilemmas of Peacebuilding, ed. Anna K. Jarstad and Timothy D. Sisk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 105–33.
Christine Bell, ‘Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the “Field” or “Non-Field”’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 3, no. 1 (2009): 5–27; Thomas Carothers, ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’, Journal of Democracy 13, no. 1 (2002): 5–21.
Carothers, ‘The End of the Transition Paradigm’; Ruti Teitel, ‘Transitional Justice Genealogy’, Harvard Human Rights Journal 16 (2003): 69–94; Christine Bell, Colm Campbell and Fionnuala Ni Aoláin, ‘Justice Discourses in Transition’, Social and Legal Studies 13, no. 3 (2004): 325–8; Christine Bell, Colm Campbell and Fionnuala Ni Aoláin, ‘Transitional Justice: (Re)conceptualising the Field’, International Journal of Law in Context 3, no. 2 (2007): 81–8; Paige Arthur, ‘How Transitions Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice’, Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2009): 321–67.
Roland Paris, At War's End (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Chandra Lekha Sriram, ‘Justice as Peace? Liberal Peacebuilding and Strategies of Transitional Justice’, Global Society 21, no. 4 (2007): 579–91.
Gérard Prunier, From Genocide to Continental War: The ‘Congolese’ Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa (London: Hurst, 2009); John F. Clark, ed., The African Stakes of the Congo War (London: Palgrave, 2002).
Jean-Claude Willame, ‘Le Processus de Paix en RDC après Lusaka’, in L'Afrique des Grands Lacs: Annuaire 2002–2003, ed. Stefaan Marysse and Filip Reyntjens (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003), 157–69.
Jason K. Stearns, ‘Laurent Nkunda and the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP)’, in L'Afrique des Grands Lacs. Annuaire 2007–2008, ed. Stefaan Marysse, Filip Reyntjens and Stef Vandeginste (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2008), 251; Stephanie Wolters, ‘Continuing Instability in the Kivus: Testing the DRC Transition to the Limit’ (Occasional Paper No. 94, Institute for Strategic Studies, Pretoria, 2004).
Copies on file with the author.
Global and All-Inclusive Accord on the Transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pretoria, 17 December 2002, Articles II, 1–5.
The Lusaka Agreement of 1999 between Angola, DRC, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe agreed to a ceasefire, the withdrawal of foreign troops, and to the UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC); DRC and Rwanda agreed a separate deal in Pretoria in July 2002; Uganda and DRC came to an agreement in September 2002.
Prunier, From Genocide to Continental War, 269–70.
René Lemarchand, ‘Consociationalism and Power Sharing in Africa: Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, African Affairs 106, no. 422 (2006): 1–20.
François Grignon, ‘Economic Agendas in the Congolese Peace Process’, in The Democratic Republic of Congo: Economic Dimensions of War and Peace, ed. Michael Nest, François Grignon and Emizet F. Kisangani (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2006), 63–98.
Arend Lijphart's theory of ‘consociational democracy’ was intended to avoid domination of ethically divided societies by large minorities, and included: a grand coalition, autonomy over issues of concern to each ethnic group, group veto, proportional representation in state institutions and access to public resources. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977).
Lemarchand, ‘Consociationalism and Power Sharing in Africa’, 12.
Ibid., 14.
Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Benjamin Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies: Electoral Engineering for Conflict Management (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Timothy D. Sisk, Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conflict (Washington, DC: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1996).
Caroline Hartzell and Matthew Hoddie, Crafting Peace: Power-Sharing Institutions and the Negotiated Settlement of Civil Wars (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007).
Grignon, ‘Economic Agendas in the Congolese Peace Process’, 91. Grignon points out that the US, UK and France were also happy to keep economic issues off the agenda.
Global Accord, 2002, Chapter V.
Constitution of the Transition in the Democratic Republic of Congo (2003), Chapter II: The Institutions to Support Democracy, Article 157.
Global Accord, 2002, Chapter VI.
Interview, British official, Kinshasa, June 2008.
Interview, Belgian official, Brussels May 2008.
Interviews, US, UK officials, Kinshasa, Goma, June 2008.
Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern, ‘Making Sense of Violence: Voices of Soldiers in the Congo (DRC)’, Journal of Modern African Studies 46, no. 1 (2008): 57–86.
Global Accord, 2002, Annex V 2a.
‘La police congolaise dans son état actuel ne peut en aucun cas prétendre assurer ce rôle de pilier d'un Etat de droit.’ République Démocratique du Congo, Ministère de l'Intérieur, décentralisation et sécurité, ‘Travaux de réflexion sur la réforme de la police nationale congolaise’, 23 February 2007, p. 7. Copy on file with the author. Translated by the author.
See for example: UN Mission in Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC), Special Inquiry into the Bas Congo Events of February and March 2008, May 2008, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/publisher,MONUC,,,48624eae2,0.html (accessed 10 October 2012).
MONUC, Special Inquiry (2008).
Interview, British official, Kinshasa, June 2008.
Stephen D. Krasner, ‘Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States’, International Security 29, no. 2 (2004): 85–120.
Prunier, From Genocide to Continental War, 277.
Maria Eriksson Baaz, The Price for Peace? Military Integration and Continued Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (Stockholm: Swedish National Defence College, 2011).
Peace Accord between the Government and the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) Goma, 23 March 2009 [Ihusi Accord] Article 3.1.
Interviews, civil society representatives, Kinshasa, Goma May/June 2008; North and South Kivu, April/May 2011.
Interviews, representatives of women's associations and other civil society actors in North and South Kivu, April/May 2011.
At Goma the national facilitators were male, as were the main international facilitators representing the African Union, European Union, United Nations and the United States.
Interviews with delegates to the Goma conference, representatives of women's associations in North and South Kivu, April/May 2011.
Interviews with delegates to the Goma conference, representatives of women's associations, UN officials in North and South Kivu, April/May 2011.
Christine Bell and Catherine O'Rourke, ‘Peace Agreements or Pieces of Paper? The Impact of UNSC Resolution 1325 on Peace Processes and their Agreements’, International and Comparative Law Quarterly 59, no. 4 (2010): 941–80.
Interviews with women's associations, civil society representatives, UN officials, Kinshasa, Goma, May/June 2008; North and South Kivu, April/May 2011.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin and Eilish Rooney, ‘Underenforcement and Intersectionality: Gendered Aspects of Transition for Women’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 1, no. 3 (2007): 351.
Ibid., 338–54.
Maria Eriksson Baaz and Maria Stern, The Complexity of Violence: A Critical Analysis of Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (Stockholm: SIDA, 2010).
Sahla Aroussi, ‘Women, Peace and Security: Addressing Accountability for Wartime Sexual Violence’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 13: no. 4 (2011): 590.
Interviews with representatives of women's associations and other civil society actors in North and South Kivu, April/May 2011.
An earlier version of this analysis up to and including the Goma Agreements of 2008 was published in Laura Davis and Priscilla B. Hayner, Difficult Peace, Limited Justice: Difficult Peace, Limited Justice: Ten Years of Peacemaking in the DRC (New York: International Center for Transitional Justice, 2009).
Resolution No. DIC/CPR/05.
Phil Clark, ‘Law, Politics and Pragmatism: The ICC and Case Selection in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo’, in Courting Conflict: Justice, Peace and the ICC in Africa, ed. Nicholas Waddell and Phil Clark (London: Royal African Society, 2008), 40.
UN Secretary General, ‘Report on Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict States’, 23 August 2004, p. 5, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/395/29/PDF/N0439529.pdf?OpenElement (accessed 10 October 2012).
Global Accord, 2002, Section III(8).
Official Journal of the DRC, Law No. 05/023, 19 December 2005, Section 3.
Copies of these agreements are on file with the author.
Actes d'Engagement des Groupes armés du Nord-Kivus et du Sud-Kivu 2008 [Goma Agreement] Article IV.1. Translated by the author.
Interviews, EU officials, Goma, May 2008, Kinshasa, June 2008.
Interviews, EU, EU member state and US officials, Goma, May 2008; Kinshasa, June 2008.
Letter dated 9 February 2009 cited in AfriMap and Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, The Democratic Republic of Congo: Military Justice and Human Rights – An Urgent Need to Complete Reforms (Rosebank: Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa, 2010), 8.
‘Le CNDP ayant exprimé des préoccupations quant à certaines dispositions du projet de loi tel que déjà adopté par l'Assemblé Nationale, dont la qualification à son avis restrictive des faits amnistiés’, Ihusi Accord 2009, Article 3.3.
Constitution of the Transition (2003), Article 154.
Official Journal of the DRC, Law No. 04/018 of July 30 2004, articles 4, 8.
Constitution of the Transition (2003), Article 157.
République Démocratique du Congo Conférence sur la paix, la sécurité et le développement dans les provinces du Nord-Kivu et de Sud-Kivu, Rapport de l'atelier du Sud-Kivu [South Kivu Working Group Report], recommendation (e) 2.
République Démocratique du Congo Conférence sur la paix, la sécurité et le développement dans les provinces du Nord-Kivu et de Sud-Kivu, Rapport de l'atelier Nord-Kivu sur la paix, la sécurité et le développement dans les provinces du Nord-Kivu [North Kivu Working Group Report], Section 3, Conflict Management and Resolution, recommendation 1.5.7.
‘The Truth and Reconciliation Commission that you requested will complement the work that has already been initiated.’ Discours de son excellence monsieur le Président de la République à l'occasion de la clôture de la conférence sur la paix, la sécurité et le développement dans les provinces du Nord Kivu et Sud Kivu. Goma, 22 janvier 2008. Copy on file with the author. Translated by the author.
South Kivu Working Group Report, recommendations I(e) 5, 6.
Ibid., recommendation I(a) 16.
République Démocratique du Congo Conférence sur la paix, la sécurité et le développement dans les provinces du Nord-Kivu et de Sud-Kivu, Recommandation n° 005 du 24 janvier 2008 relative à la nécessité de la réforme des forces armées de la république démocratique du Congo et des services de sécurité, Goma, 28 January 2008.
South Kivu Working Group Report, recommendations III(c) 3; North Kivu Working Group Report, recommendations III 3. A. 1.
Interviews, EU officials, Goma, May 2008, Kinshasa, June 2008.
Timothy Raeymaekers, ‘Sharing the Spoils: The Reinvigoration of Congo's Political System’, Politorbis 42 no. 1 (2007): 23.
Lemarchand, ‘Consociationalism and Power Sharing in Africa’, 20.
Benjamin Reilly writes of the importance not only of institutions but also ‘engineering political rules so as to improve the operation of political processes and institutions’ to further democracy. Reilly, Democracy in Divided Societies, 6. Emphasis in the original.
Krasner, ‘Sharing Sovereignty’.