Africa Up Close

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) October 2020 session will debate the future of its peace mission (MONUSCO) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to UNSC Resolution (UNSCR) 2502 adopted last December, MONUSCO’s mandate will end on December 20, 2020. This completion date conflicts with the recommendation made last year by an independent assessment of MONUSCO ordered by the UNSC. The report advised a period of three years for the Mission’s drawdown and exit, to be completed at the end of 2022.

The May 7, 2020 United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is alarming: “An estimated 12.8 people are in need of humanitarian assistance (…) This figure represents 10 percent of the total worldwide humanitarian caseload. Those affected by this complex and widespread crisis remain exposed to (…) chronic malnutrition and epidemics, notably cholera, measles, and the Ebola virus.” The majority of people affected are in the eastern DRC’s volatile Kivu region. This situation in Kivu, according to the UN OCHA, is the consequence of a long period of insecurity and the result of continuing fighting between the Congolese Army and non-state armed groups. The region’s long-standing fragility and instability are now facilitating the spread of yet another humanitarian emergency in the DRC: the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In short, one health emergency (COVID-19) is exacerbating another (Ebola, cholera, and measles).

Voters outside of polling stations during the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s 2018 general elections. Photo courtesy of MONUSCO via Flickr Commons.

The “Sun City Inter-Congolese Dialogue”—the peace process that, in 2003, ended five years of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—identified the legitimacy crisis of the country’s leaders as a key driver of the conflict.[i] Governance legitimacy, which is critical for peace and stability in the fragile DRC, is again in question following the election of December 30, 2018 that many observers saw as deeply flawed and troubling.

A UN soldier during a MONUSCO-FARDC operation against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in Beni, a city in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Photo courtesy of Sylvain Liechti for MONUSCO via Flickr Commons. 

The Beni people are demanding the departure of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO). Since October 2014 to this day, close to 6 years, the civilian population of Beni in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have been the victim of repeated atrocious massacres that the Congolese army and the United Nations troops are struggling to stop. This situation has caused revolts among the people who accuse the Congolese army and United Nations troops of complicity in the massacres.

Tomato farmers from USAID’s Tanzania Agriculture Productivity Program in Tanzania. Credit: Fintrac Inc. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/usaid_images/8678341994/. License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/.

There are some 40 countries that can easily enter in the category of fragile states today, and a good number of them are found in Sub-Saharan Africa. These are countries with weak governance or institutional incapacity. They fail to carry out some critical governance functions such as ensuring the security of their populations and territory, maintaining the rule of law, and delivering key public services. Life in fragile or weak states is marked by endemic corruption, bad governance, political instability, insecurity, rampant poverty, hunger, high (child) mortality rates, social and political unrest, etc. As time goes by in such an environment, populations and communities tend to have their resilience eroded. They become particularly vulnerable to a range of shocks without the ability to face them adequately. Violence, conflicts, and sometimes the breakdown of institutions start to factor in.

A farmer harvesting goods in a farm in Bouar, a town in the Central African Republic. Photo courtesy of the United Nations via Flickr Commons.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 released on July 15^th is quite alarming. The joint annual report finds that the number of people suffering from hunger or undernourishment continues to increase. This increase has occurred for the past three consecutive years, putting an end to a decade of progress in the global battle against hunger.

Participants from the G5 Sahel Investment Conference in September 2018, a joint conference by the International Republican Institute, the G5 Sahel Permanent Secretariat, and regional youth leaders which aimed to publicize economic investment opportunities for young people in the Sahel. Photo courtesy of the International Republican Institute. 

In December 2018, leaders of the G5 Sahel Joint Force Member States—Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Niger—and international donors gathered for a coordination conference in Nouakchott, Mauritania to orchestrate funding for the Joint Force’s Priority Investment Program (PIP) aimed at addressing the Sahel region’s chronic violence and fragility. The G5’s PIP reflects the strategic intention to operationalize the Joint Force as an instrument both of security and development—a strategy that would adequately address the complex socio-economic, political, and climate change challenges driving instability across the region.

High school students in Mankon, Bamenda, Cameroon, an Anglophone speaking region that has protested against the Francophone majority. Photo courtesy of Alberto Vaccaro via Flickr Commons. 

The immediate future of Cameroon is fraught with uncertainties. On October 1, 2017, during rallies marked by calls for a secession from French-speaking Cameroon, dozens of people were killed by security forces in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest Cameroon. Besides Boko Haram in the North, the resurgence of the Anglophone Problem in the Western regions is the single biggest threat to the unity and stability of Cameroon today. This is especially concerning as the country braces for a challenging electoral year in 2018 amidst calls for President Paul Biya to step down after 35 years in power. The ongoing resurgence of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon requires immediate international attention. The stability of Cameroon is of crucial importance not only for the sub-region of Central Africa, but also for the fight against terrorism in the entire region. The ruling regime’s poor management (repressive approach) of the ongoing crisis is largely responsible for the escalations in recent months. The way forward to a sustainable solution lies in an inclusive, mediated dialogue geared toward institutional reforms and the promotion of local governance, not only in Anglophone regions but also in the whole country.

In the aftermath of September 11,  Scott Appleby, Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame,  while underscoring the potential of religious traditions for peacebuilding, observed, “While religious extremists are often integrated into a well-organized movement, armed to the teeth, expertly trained, lavishly financed, ideologically disciplined, and involved in a kind of ‘ecumenical’ collaboration with other violence-prone organizations, the non-violent religious actor is relatively isolated, underfinanced, and unskilled in the techniques of conflict transformation.” In recent years a lot has been said and written on the necessity and strategies of tapping the resources of religious traditions to promote peace in the world, especially in countries plagued by interreligious conflicts.

In the past two months, thousands of Muslims have fled or been displaced from the southern region of the Central African Republic, fearing for their lives in what some voices have warned might turned into a genocide.  One of the episodes of this dramatic and unfortunate situation took place on April 27, 2014, as The Guardian reports, “Heavily armed African and French peacekeepers escorted some of the last remaining Muslims out of Central African Republic‘s volatile capital…bringing out more than 1,300 people who for months had been trapped in their neighbourhood by violent Christian militants.”  The ongoing violence between Seleka[1] and the Anti-Balaka[2] factions in Central African Republic has been extensively and persistently described as interreligious. The first has been associated with Islam and the second with Christianity, leading to the portrayal of the conflict as opposing Muslims to Christians. This sweeping characterization has to be taken with some caution.  Indeed, Furseth and Repstad posit, “In debates over the role of religion in religious conflicts, there is often a tendency to either underestimate religion and reduce all religious conflicts to societal conflicts or overestimate religion and treat it as the dominant cause of the conflict.”  For the case of Central African Republic, I argue that the role of religion should not be overestimated in a conflict that is essentially political.