Challenges to peace: conflict resolution in the great lakes region of Africa

Abstract

Efforts to bring peace and reconstruction to the Central African region have been fashioned by contemporary conflict resolution models that have a standard formula of peace negotiations, with a trajectory of ceasefire agreements, transitional governments, demilitarization, constitutional reform and ending with democratic elections. Local dynamics and the historical and multifaceted nature of the conflicts are rarely addressed. Furthermore, participants in the peace process are restricted to representatives of political parties, the state and rebel movements, to the exclusion of civil society. Using as examples the conflicts and peace processes in three Great Lakes countries—Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo—the paper contends that contemporary global frameworks for peacemaking and peace building that rest on the acceptance of neoliberal political and economic models cannot lay the foundations for the conditions necessary for sustainable peace. This necessitates the utilisation of a more inclusive concept of peace, the starting point of which has to be the emancipation of African humanity.

Notes

1 See for example, O Nnoli (ed), Ethnic Conflicts in Africa, Dakar: codesria, 1998.

2 J Galtung, ‘Violence, peace and peace research’, Journal of Peace Research, 6 (3), 1969, pp 167–191.

3 See http://www.un.org/Depts/dpa/prev_dip/fr_peacemaking.htm.

4 M Mamdani, When Victims become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda, Oxford: James Currey, 2001; G Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, London: Hurst, 1995; R Lemarchand, Burundi: Ethnocide as Discourse and Practice, Cambridge: Woodrow Wilson Press/Cambridge University Press, 1994; G Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, London: Zed Press, 2002; H Campbell & M Mealy, ‘From the economics of war and planning for exploitation to people and reconstruction in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, forthcoming; and LR Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide, London: Zed Books, 2000.

5 Mamdani, When Victims become Killers.

6 The Burundi government has allowed the activities of Tutsi militia groups, Sans Echec (the infallible), Sans Defaite (the undefeated) and Sojedem (Solidarité Jeunesse pour la Defénse des Droits des Minorités) which during the 1990s closed down urban areas in their ville morte (dead city) campaign, and created Hutu self-defence groups abajeunes or Guardiéns de la Paix. The latter were composed of children who were often placed in the firing line. Human Rights Watch, Burundi: To Protect the People: The Government Sponsored ‘Self-defense’ Program in Burundi, 13 (7A), New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001.

7 D Smith, The State of the World Atlas: A Unique Survey of Current Events and Global Trends, London: Earthscan, 2003; International Institute of Strategic Studies, The Military Balance: Sub-Saharan Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; and Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Burden Comparison: Countries with the Highest and Lowest Military Burden in 2002 as a Percentage Share of Gross Domestic Product, 2000–2002, 2004 at http://web.sipri.org/contents/milap/mex_burden.html.

8 A Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998.

9 D Moore, ‘Neoliberal globalisation and the triple crises of “modernisation” in Africa: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa’, Third World Quarterly, 22 (6), 2001, pp 909–929.

10 United Nations Security Council, Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DRC, S/2001/357, 2001; and United Nations Security Council, Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DR Congo, S2003/102, 2003.

11 Interahamwe (‘those who work together’): a militia comprised of young, unemployed men who carried out the genocide.

12 United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts; and United Nations, Final Report of the Panel of Experts.

13 Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost.

14 D Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

15 United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts; United Nations, Final Report of the Panel of Experts; and Pole Institute and International Alert, Natural Resource Exploitation and Human Security in the Democratic Republic of Congo, London: Pole Institute and Goma: International Alert, DRC, 2004.

16 African Union, Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, adopted in Durban, South Africa, July 2002, Article 4 (J).

17 L De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, trans A Wright & R Fenby, London: Verso, 2001.

18 Interview with members of the peace negotiating team, Dar es Salaam, 2001.

19 United Nations Security Council, Resolution 868, 29 September 1993.

20 Over 162 Congolese refugees were killed in a camp at Gatumba in Burundi and renewed fighting broke out in Ituri in July 2004, despite the presence of munoc peacekeepers.

21 Jonathan Clayton & James Bone, ‘Sex scandal in Congo threatens to engulf UN's peacekeepers’, The Times, 23 December, 2004.

22 BD Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001.

23 The energy multinational Bechtel Corporation has drawn up its own reconstruction package for the Congo. See Bechtel Corporation, An Approach to National Development in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 1997. See also J Haughton, Reconstruction of a War-torn Economy: The Next Steps in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Consulting Assistance for Economic Reform II, Discussion Paper No 24, usaid, 1998.

24 See The Lusaka Accord, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ceasefire Agreement; and Annex A: Modalities for the Implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lusaka, Zambia, 1999; The Arusha Peace Accord, Peace Agreement between the Government of Rwanda and the Rwandese Patriotic Front, Arusha, Tanzania, 3 August, 1993; and The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, Arusha, 28 August 2000.

25 Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis; and C Clapham, ‘Rwanda: the perils of peacemaking’, Journal of Peace Research, 35(2), 1998, pp 193–210.

26 Clapham, ‘Rwanda’.

27 Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda.

28 A Ould-Abdallah, Burundi on the Brink 1993–1995: A UN Special Envoy reflects on Preventative Diplomacy, Washington, DC: U S Institute for Peace Press, 2000, p 131.

29 Clapham, ‘Rwanda’.

30 Interview with members of the negotiating team, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2001.

31 Agathon Rawsa's branch of Parti Pour la Libération Du Peuple Hutu/Forces National de Libération (Palipehutu/fnl).

32 H Campbell, The Lusaka Peace Agreement: The Responsibility of African Academics and Civil Society, Nairobi: Nairobi Peace Initiative, 2002; United Nations, Report of the Panel of Experts; and United Nations, Final Report of the Panel of Experts. See also Global Witness, Under-Mining Peace: Tin—The Explosive Trade in Cassiterite in Eastern DRC, London: Global Witness.

33 Campbell, the Lusaka Peace Agreement.

34 Ould-Abdallah, Burundi on the Brink, p 33.

35 The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, p 164.

36 H Campbell & M Mealy, ‘From the economics of war and planning’.

37 P Rutake & J Gahama, ‘Ethnic conflict in Burundi’, in Nnoli, Ethnic Conflicts in Africa; and Ould–Abdallah, Burundi on the Brink.

38 Clapham, ‘Rwanda’.

39 Local ubashingantahe (Burundi) and Gaccaca (Rwanda) courts have been reinstituted as a means of settling difference and promoting reconciliation.

40 N Puechguirbal, ‘Women and war in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28 (4), 2003, pp 1271–1281.

41 UN Security Council, Res. 1325, UN.SCOR, 4213th Sess, at 3, UN Doc.S/RES/w325, 2000; and United Nations Development Fund for Women, Engendering Peace: Reflections on the Burundi Peace Process, Nairobi: unifem, 2001; and Puechguirbal, ‘Women and war in the Democratic Republic of Congo’.

42 C Chinkin, ‘Gender, human rights, and peace agreement’, Ohio State Journal on Dispute Resolution, 18 (3), 2003, p 869.

43 The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi, Report of Committee IV, Reconstruction and Development, para 2.5.6.1, p 125.

44 Chapter 5, Annex ‘A’ to the Cease-fire Agreement: Modalities for the Implementation of the Cease-fire Agreement in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

45 Campbell, The Lusaka Peace Agreement.

46 A Mafege, ‘Demographic and ethnic variations: sources of instability in modern African states’, paper presented at the Conference on ‘Academic Freedom and Conflict Resolution in the Countries of the Great Lakes’, Arusha, Tanzania, 4–7 September 1995.

47 P Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda, West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998.

48 Human Rights Watch, Everyday Victims: Civilians in the Burundian War, New York: Human Rights Watch, 2003.

49 A Jones (ed), Genocide, War Crimes and The West: History and Complicity, London: Zed Books, 2004; and Melvern, A People Betrayed.

50 The Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement for Burundi.