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Local Violence, National Peace? Postwar "Settlement" in the Eastern D.R. Congo (2003-2006)
Abstract
This article develops a conceptual analysis of the dynamics of violence during the transition from war to peace and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2003 and 2006. I locate the sources, at the local, national, and regional levels, of continued local violence during this transition.FOOTNOTEThrough an analysis of the situation in the Kivus, I illustrate how local dynamics interacted with the national and regional dimensions of the conflict. I demonstrate that, after a national and regional settlement was reached, some local conflicts over land and political power increasingly became self-sustaining and autonomous from the national and regional tracks.
Dans cet article, je propose une analyse conceptuelle des mécanismes de la violence durant les trois années officiellement consacrées à la transition de la guerre à la paix et à la démocratie en République Démocratique du Congo (de 2003 à 2006) . J'identifie, au niveau local, national et régional, les raisons pour lesquelles la violence a perduré localement au cours de cette période. J'analyse la situation dans les Kivus pour illustrer l'interaction entre les mécanismes de la violence situés à ces différents niveaux. Je démontre que, après la signature d'accords de paix nationaux et régionaux, certains conflits locaux portant sur les terres et le pouvoir politique se sont progressivement dissociés des processus nationaux et régionaux et sont devenus autonomes.
... The empirical focus of each of the three papers in this dissertation is the web of ongoing conflicts in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC or DRCongo). 3 Congo is one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa and thus in the world. In 2018, the World Bank estimated that 73% of the Congolese population -roughly 60 million peoplelive below the international poverty rate of less than $1.90 a day [180]. ...
... I plot monthly fatality in DRC since 1997 in Figure 1.2. Although the violence reached its peak during the First and Second (1998Second ( -2003 Congo wars, these plots show that political violence continues in the Kivu provinces in particular [3]. 4 One of the world's most acute and longest running humanitarian crises, more than half the population in eastern DRCongo has never experienced life without some degree of violent conflict [168]. ...
... To do so, armed groups rely on civilian labor pools. 3 Reliance on civilian labor provides communities around the point of extraction leverage over armed groups operating in their area. While armed groups can use coercion and force labor, an overly coercive approach risks the labor pool fleeing, working more slowly, or otherwise undermining the productivity of the area [144]. ...
This dissertation is a collection of three manuscripts that sequentially unpack the complicated, often contradictory relationship between local political order and security in ongoing conflicts. I unpack these relationships in papers that explain the perspective of armed groups, civilians, and international interveners, respectively. In the first paper, I examine the consequences of variation in armed group relations for spatial patterns in violence by re-examining the relationship between mines and violence. A large body of research shows that natural resources increase the likelihood of violent competition in resource-rich regions, but at the local level, mines and violence are not correlated. I explain this puzzle by providing a theory of spatial discontinuities in revenue generation in resource-rich conflict zones. Protection rackets and incentives for cooperation limit violence at points of extraction but access to informal taxation opportunities on the transportation network incentivize conflict. Only price shocks upend the armed groups' incentives to cooperate at the mines. My findings explain why natural resources incentivize cooperation locally while still destabilizing the region. In the second paper, I ask whether protection rackets improve civilian perceptions of their security? I argue that informal, exploitative security arrangements improve civilian perceptions of their security when the community in which they live have recent experience with banditry, which increases local demand for protection, and when the armed actors institute routinized tribute schemes, which while extortive and costly to civilians, provides highly valuable predictability to both the armed actors and civilians in contrast to roving banditry. I empirically evaluate my theory using responses to an original survey in eastern DRCongo, where state absence created privatized local protection rackets, which I pair with fine-grained data on violence and the location and operators of roadblocks. These results demonstrate how local security vacuums can produce exploitative informal institutions that undermine macro state-building projects while paradoxically providing crucial protection to vulnerable civilians. In the third paper, co-authors and I present and empirically evaluate a theory of civilian perceptions of international peacekeeping missions. We argue that civilians exposed to the mission are more likely to perceive the mission as successful. We find support for our theory leveraging over 16,000 responses to surveys across two waves and two sampling strategies in three provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where one of the world's largest and longest standing peacekeeping missions, MONUSCO, operates. We show that exposure to MONUSCO is associated with improved perceptions of the mission, and that this relationship is not driven by selection effects. We additionally show that base closures, which abruptly decreased civilian exposure to Blue Helmets locally, are associated with decreased perceptions of the mission. Our findings suggest that missions can improve their relationships by increasing their visibility among host communities. Combined, the articles in this dissertation represent a research agenda focused on understanding how security provision is provided and manipulated at the local level. It does so by analyzing dynamics from the bottom up and discusses the implications for human security, patterns of violence, and international policy.
... In the research presented here, as in the framework of Paffenholz and Spurk (2010), this outcome is identified as peacebuilding. While the role of churches in local service provision in Eastern DRC has received systematic scrutiny (Barrios, 2010;Leinweber, 2013;Mushi, 2012;Seay, 2009Seay, , 2013, analyses of religious peacebuilding efforts have tended to focus on national and transnational relations (Jordhus-Lier & Braathen, 2013;van Leeuwen, 2008;Whetho & Uzodike, 2009) or, in the case of Autesserre's (2006Autesserre's ( , 2010 seminal work on peacebuilding and local conflicts, minimized the role of religious civil society (a point also noted by Seay, 2011). Paffenholz and Spurk (2010) define peacebuilding in a wide sense, and identify seven basic civil society functions relating to peacebuilding, of which three will constitute the main concerns of this article: (i) Advocacy and public communication, which includes the articulation of interests of marginalized groups in the public agenda; (ii) socialization, and in particular development of democratic attitudes and conflict resolution mechanisms among people; and, finally, (iii) intermediation and facilitation between citizens, and between citizens and the state. ...
... The need to address local conflict dynamics as a prerequisite for peace has been identified by Autesserre (2006Autesserre ( , 2010, who argues that the international community has adopted a one-dimensional strategy towards democratization, equating democracy with elections, which has been prioritized before security reform and local conflict resolution. Local conflicts in South Kivu are shaped by, but not identical to, the wider regional conflict. ...
In South Kivu in the Eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), various church actors have chosen to involve in advocacy and mobilization through a formalized civil society structure known as La Société Civile (LSC). In this article, we explore the relationship between the churches and civil society in Eastern DRC, paying particular attention to why this cooperation has taken such a formalized expression, the motivations of church actors to become involved in LSC and, finally, how this relationship between different civil society actors has underpinned various peacebuilding efforts at the local, provincial, and national scale.
... For instance, the said debates mainly focus their attention on prospective acts of contestation and place predominant weight on the individual agency (cf. Autesserre, 2006;Fujii, 2008;Johansson & Vinthagen, 2016;Kalyvas, 2003;Scott, 1985). However, the prospective events or acts of resistance challenging the formal institutions form a small part of the daily lived realities of the individuals under militarised authoritarian regimes like Kashmir. ...
The article focuses its gaze on the Indian-controlled valley of Kashmir to highlight how the militarily strong state resonates with weak statehood in Kashmir. Being faced with popular contentious politics, the state in Kashmir is argued to survive through militarised authoritarian control leading to the pervading social condition of fear and insecurity. Thus, rather than a provider of security, the situation in Kashmir is marked by the least expectations of security from the state. The article highlights rasookh as a means of self-governance popularly employed in Kashmir to socially navigate the prevalent precarious circumstances, especially drawing security by virtue of informal connections. The article becomes significant to firstly, highlight how the prevalent political structures condition and inform individual behaviour, and secondly, to examine the way different individuals develop institutionalised responses as an experience of those structures. The article through the case of Kashmir portrays how weak statehood in Kashmir predominantly informs the pervading social condition of fear and insecurity and how self-governance under rasookh becomes a means of compensating for the prevalent precarity. The article draws from the neo-institutionalist literature understanding the state as an ensemble of formal and informal institutions, mainly understanding institutions from the Lauthian perspective as ordered patterns of behaviour. From that perspective, rasookh is made sense of as an informal institution—an “uncodified but socially accepted pattern of behaviour”. The article provides original contributions by highlighting the under-researched societal aspect of analysing self-governance through rasookh (an informal institution) and highlighting everyday, societal dynamics that underpin it.
... In the DRC, armed groups frequently fuel competing claims over artisanal mines among residents to an extent that violence breaks out. Subsequently, they draw on their superior violent potential to disarm the rivaling fronts and to confiscate their exploitation rights (Autesserre 2006). ...
... To be clear, country experts confirm the importance of violent economies beyond conflict minerals for understanding the dynamics of conflict in the eastern DRC (Laudati 2013, Verweijen 2013. They also, however, highlight the need for understanding and addressing dynamics of ethnic identity, the predatory and exclusionary nature of state institutions, as well as competing land claims among different communities in a conflict that is bound up with a wider, regional complex of conflicts (Vlassenroot 2002, Van Acker 2005, Autesserre 2006, Prunier 2008. Country experts thus point out that the key problem of economic pacification policies in the DRC is their underlying reductionist assumptions about the relationship between illicit economies and armed conflict, as well as the thin empirical evidence that is used to substantiate these claims ). ...
Smuggling economies make for ideal sources of revenue for rebel movements. Their clandestine and peripatetic nature and borderland geographies are often compatible with the requirements of guerrilla war. To weaken armed resistance and pacify conflict, state actors seek to undercut lucrative smuggling operations by restricting illicit trade flows, or reduce their profit margins by liberalising trade regimes. This chapter explores both such strategies through the lens of two empirical cases: US sanctions on so-called ‘conflict minerals’ in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo; and the liberalisation of border trade in Myanmar, by which the country’s generals sought to dry up smuggling revenues of rebel groups. Its findings suggest that, counterintuitively, attempts at economic pacification can increase rather than decrease violence, conflict and insecurity. This is not only because economic interventions in contexts of conflict can shift the incentives of warring factions in unforeseen ways, but also – and more fundamentally – economistic approaches to conflict operate on limited assumptions about the nature of political violence. They consequently fail at addressing the underlying political drivers of conflict.
... Much of this research focuses on environment, poverty, oil politics, and resource conflict. Disputes over ownership and usage of land have often been animated by resource competition and are some of the most prominent sources of intrastate conflicts in sub-Saharan African countries (Arowosegbe, 2016;Autesserre, 2006). In Nigeria, the struggles for the control and ownership of land have often taken the forms of controversial administrative procedures and legal manipulations of land laws by the State, which has significantly accentuated interethnic polarization, social inequalities and the number of landless people, particularly among poor rural communities (Arowosegbe, 2016). ...
The systematic institutional ambiguities in the Land Use Act has produced diminished opportunities for the Niger Delta people and impeded their socioeconomic advancement. These ambiguities of the Land Use Act created by judicial interpretation, administrative implementation, and constitutional incompatibility are revealed when their interpretations manifest in authoritatively coordinated ways that hinder human security and development. The ambiguities of the Land Use Act exacerbate antagonism and have become a vital cause of intractable conflict, human security, and underdevelopment in the region because of how they divest individuals, communities, and families of their wealth and rights in lands. Over time, antagonism foments a collective traumatic memory that represents the experiences and recollections of groups, communities, and families, who subsequently reinterpret these experiences in ways that fundamentally drive their identities and interests. These experiences are fundamentally about whether the state can exploit resources without taking into considerations the effects that these exploitation activities have on human security, as well as the kinds of development benefits, extended that may serve the interest of local communities. Also important is the adequacy of compensation awarded to individuals, families, and communities whose land is expropriated by the State for overriding public interests. Collective memory attributed to these experiences leads to the rise of cultural trauma in the Niger Delta. Cultural trauma is transformed over time, leading to the hardening of identities and the formation of the collective identity of being a Deltan. This emerging collective identity transcends some of the primary identity markers commonly assumed in Nigeria, such as ethnic, religious, and geographic.
... 'Local violence, national peace? Postwar "settlement" in the eastern DR Congo (2003-2006 ...
Over the past two decades, urban violence in the eastern Congo has reached alarming levels. However, it has rarely made it to the forefront of international policy and media attention. Violent cities, Violent Societies analyzes urban violence through the lens of the acceptability of using violence and the accessibility of violence, or the ease with which violence can be mobilized. The report argues that similar to rural zones, much violence in urban areas is driven by personalized conflict and revenue generation linked to aspirations for social mobility and status. The report also shows the analytical inadequacy of deeply ingrained distinctions between political, criminal and personal violence, which importantly shape international interventions in the domains of stabilization, peacebuilding and peacekeeping.
... The underlying conflicts and features of fragility All three settings have experienced intermittent conflict, which is either on-going or in a fragile lull period. In the East of the DRC, South Kivu, with a population of around 5 million [14], has been heavily involved in the First (1996)(1997) and Second (1998Second ( -2003 Congo Wars, and subsequently experienced protracted conflicts and persisting violence, with a number of rebel forces competing for political power and the control of natural resources, including minerals and land [15]. Identity narratives, territorial claims and the influence of neighbouring countries help perpetuate the conflict [16]. ...
Background
Performance based financing (PBF) has been increasingly implemented across low and middle-income countries, including in fragile and humanitarian settings, which present specific features likely to require adaptation and to influence implementation of any health financing programme. However, the literature has been surprisingly thin in the discussion of how PBF has been adapted to different contexts, and in turn how different contexts may influence PBF. With case studies from three humanitarian settings (northern Nigeria, Central African Republic and South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo), we examine why and how PBF has emerged and has been adapted to those unsettled and dynamic contexts, what the opportunities and challenges have been, and what lessons can be drawn.
Methods
Our comparative case study is based on data collected from a document review, 35 key informant interviews and 16 focus group discussions with stakeholders at national and subnational level in the three settings. Data were analysed in order to describe and compare each setting in terms of underlying fragility features and their implications for the health system, and to look at how PBF has been adopted, implemented and iteratively adapted to respond to acute crisis, deal with other humanitarian actors and involve local communities.
Results
Our analysis reveals that the challenging environments required a high degree of PBF adaptation and innovation, at times contravening the so-called ‘PBF principles’ that have become codified. We develop an analytical framework to highlight the key nodes where adaptations happen, the contextual drivers of adaptation, and the organisational elements that facilitate adaptation and may sustain PBF programmes.
Conclusions
Our study points to the importance of pragmatic adaptation in PBF design and implementation to reflect the contextual specificities, and identifies elements (such as, organisational flexibility, local staff and knowledge, and embedded long-term partners) that could facilitate adaptations and innovations. These findings and framework are useful to spark a reflection among PBF donors and implementers on the relevance of incorporating, reinforcing and building on those elements when designing and implementing PBF programmes.
Electronic supplementary material
The online version of this article (10.1186/s13031-018-0166-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
... 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes since 1998 (IRC, 2008), representing about 10% of the country's population, and two million people have been displaced (UNHCR, 2009). The involvement of combatants from neighbouring countries, particularly Rwanda makes the DRC conflict highly complex and intractable (Afoaku, 2002;Autesserre, 2006;Crises Group, 2009;Feeley & Thomas-Jensen, 2008;Nest, Francois, & Kisangani, 2006;Prunier, 2009;Swarbrick, 2004;Thakur, 2007;Turner, 2007). ...
This paper examines the nature and impacts of two information intervention radio programmes broadcast on Radio Okapi—the radio service of the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A matched randomization technique was used to assign Rwandan Hutus and Congolese autochthons in South Kivu to listen to either of the two programmes within their naturalistic contexts for 13 months. At the end of the treatment, participants’ perceptions of barriers to peace; descriptive and prescriptive interventions; victimhood and villainity; opportunities for personal development and civic engagement; and knowledge of repatriation processes were assessed in 16 focus groups across four contexts. The study concludes that international media intervention programmes that provide robust information and a platform for objective analyses within a multiple narrative and participatory framework can enhance greater engagement with nascent democratic reforms, positive perception of long term opportunities for personal development and empathy with the ethnic Other.
... Historically, East Africa and the Great Lakes region have seen series of events whereby the postcolonial states that emerged after independence have uprooted entire section of their populations through mass expulsion of non-nationals or nonnatives e.g., Asians in Uganda, Banyarwanda in Uganda (Van Hear 1993) and in Eastern Congo (DRC) (Mandani 2001;Autesserre 2006), Kacha in Sudan (see De Mabior 1992), Lunda, Luba-Katanga, Luba-Kasai in the Democratic Republic of Congo (see Mamdani 2011b). The legal distinction between citizens and non-citizens is not clearly addressed with the legal regime of citizenship laws in South Sudan or the EAC Treaty. ...
This article analyses South Sudan's political and economic challenges as it seeks to become a member of the East African Community (EAC). The first section presents a brief profile of South Sudan, its development challenges, the land tenure system and legal framework governing access to and disposal of land. The second section presents an exposition on the challenges facing the EAC as it seeks to build a monetary union and a political federation. The article critically examines the EAC protocol regarding the monetary union, political federation, the land tenure system in East Africa and its plan for a common citizenship. It reviews and analyses EAC policies such as the elimination of trade barriers such as tariff, non-tariff and other technical barriers, harmonisation of labour policies, programmes, legislation, and social services throughout members’ states. The article concludes that the biggest challenge facing the EAC is how
... More recent studies have also reaffirmed the importance of ethnic difference – particularly the exclusion of large ethnic minorities from power, an issue that the greed literature had largely dismissed (Buhaug et al. 2014; Cederman et al. 2013). The greed versus grievance literature has also been criticized for failing to consider what actually happens during civil wars (Sislin and Pearson 2006), with the macro comparative approach underlying these studies failing to consider the intensely local nature of many civil conflicts, particularly the dynamics between national level cleavages and local conflict, and the " messiness " of civil wars at the local level (Autesserre 2006; Kalyvas 2006). Increasingly, the analysis of civil war causes and processes links the availability of resources that define the opportunity structure for financing insurgencies with political grievances, rather than emphasizing one alone. ...
Despite a considerable body of knowledge that examines the negative effects of aid and related social services during civil wars, the role these same services can contribute to conflict management and transformation is less well understood. This article describes findings from a research study undertaken by the author to examine this question through a comparison of experiences with respect to social service provision in three very different conflicts – Northern Ireland, Tajikistan and Sudan. It discusses the ways that aid and social service provision can change structural conditions, making mediation efforts more likely. It also considers the limitations of aid's effectiveness in this regard.
... Vlassenroot (2004) explained that a political legacy of patronage from the Mobutu era, issues of land control and ownership and the question of citizenship are the three main sources of local conflict in the Kivus. Autesserre (2006) used the case of Eastern DR Congo to argue that the UN system often tends to overlook the need for local conflict resolution in peace-building efforts. These local conflicts in turn weave into regional conflict patterns, evidenced by the fact that the status of Banyarwanda in the Kivus went unresolved throughout the twentieth century. ...
By using church networks as a platform, different actors have tried to involve in peace-building processes in Northern Uganda and Eastern DR Congo. This church-led peace-building approach is legitimised in part with reference to the unique position the church holds locally in these societies, and in part because their leaders are held in high esteem nationally and transnationally. In this article, we examine and compare church-led peace involvement in these two regions of the Great Lakes region from the local to the transnational, by asking how these two cases differ and what they have in common.
... As Autesserre (2006) notes, local violence was motivated not only by regional or national causes but also by bottom-up agendas instigated by villagers, traditional chiefs, community chiefs or ethnic leaders. Civil society, including armed groups, humanitarian NGOs, and church groups, were as engaged as local and regional engineers of violence (Lemarchand 2009, Reyntjens 2009. ...
This paper expands current understandings on resource wars by arguing for a comprehensive ‘economies of violence’ that considers the wider range of activities that rebel groups are engaged in beyond minerals. Using evidence from fieldwork in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo together with recent scholarship, this paper draws on six secondary economies to construct a broader political economy of Congo's divergent natural-resource wealth. It then considers how the engagement of armed groups in these activities creates opportunities, alternative livelihoods and governance structures, as well as new forms of conflict, and what these processes may hold for the future of the region.
[Au-delà des minéraux : l'extension des ‘économies de violence’ dans l'est de la République Démocratique du Congo]. Cette étude développe les recherches actuelles sur les guerres des ressources en argumentant en faveur d'une prise en compte des 'économies de violence' qui comprennent la plus large gamme d'activités dans lesquelles les groupes de rebelles se sont engagés, au-delà de l'extraction des minéraux. En utilisant les résultats des recherches sur le terrain dans l'est de la RDC et les recherches récentes, cette étude décrit six économies secondaires pour représenter une économie politique plus large de la richesse divergente des ressources minérales du Congo. Cette étude examine ensuite comment l'engagement des groupes armés dans ces activités crée des opportunités, des modes de subsistance alternatifs et des structures de gouvernance, ainsi que de nouvelles formes de conflits et ce que ces processus peuvent impliquer pour l'avenir de la région.
Mots-clés : guerres des ressources ; République Démocratique du Congo ; économies parallèles ; économies de violence ; malédiction des ressources naturelles
This study presents a new economic perspective on state-building based on a case study in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's hinterland. We explore the implications for the state of considering rebels as stationary bandits. When the state, through a military operation, made it impossible for rebels to levy taxes, it inadvertently encouraged them to plunder the assets of the very citizens they previously preferred to tax. When it negotiated with rebels instead, this effect was absent, but negotiating compromised the state's legitimacy and prompted the emergence of new rebels. The findings suggest that attempting to increase taxation by a weak state in the hinterland could come at the expense of safety in the medium term and of the integrity of the state in the long term.
The threat of continued violence is a primary concern in post-conflict societies. This article contributes to the literature on post-conflict violence by analyzing a specific phenomenon that has characterized Colombia since the signing of the 2016 peace agreement: the assassination of social leaders. Building on explanations that emphasize state weakness, illicit economies, and the role of illegal armed actors, we argue that the assassination of social leaders also responds to efforts by local elites to sustain local competitive authoritarian orders in the face of bottom-up threats to their power by sociopolitical actors mobilized around the local implementation of the peace agreement. Using a cross-sectional dataset of Colombian municipalities, we find that assassinations of social leaders are more likely and more frequent in municipalities with intermediate levels of party fragmentation and low levels of voter turnout—that is, in municipalities with restricted electoral competition. Furthermore, a higher share of votes for leftist parties, which signals the presence of challengers to local elites, correlates with a higher probability and a higher number of assassinations. Overall, this article suggests that the nature of local political orders constitutes a key dimension shaping the micro-dynamics of violence and repression in post-conflict contexts.
La amenaza de la continuación de la violencia es una de las principales preocupaciones en las sociedades en posconflicto. Este artículo contribuye a la literatura sobre la violencia en el posconflicto analizando un fenómeno específico que ha caracterizado a Colombia desde la firma del acuerdo de paz de 2016: el asesinato de líderes sociales. Partiendo de las explicaciones que enfatizan la debilidad del Estado, las economías ilícitas y el papel de los actores armados ilegales, argumentamos que el asesinato de líderes sociales también responde a los esfuerzos de las élites locales para sostener los órdenes autoritarios competitivos locales frente a las amenazas a su poder por parte de los actores sociopolíticos movilizados en torno a la implementación local del acuerdo de paz. Utilizando un conjunto de datos de municipios colombianos, observamos que los asesinatos de líderes sociales son más probables y más frecuentes en municipios con niveles intermedios de fragmentación partidista y bajos niveles de participación electoral, es decir, en municipios con competencia electoral restringida. Además, se correlaciona una mayor proporción de votos a los partidos de izquierda, un indicador de la presencia de contendientes a las élites locales, con una mayor probabilidad de que ocurran asesinatos, así como un mayor número de casos. Como conclusión, este artículo sugiere que la naturaleza de los órdenes políticos locales constituye una dimensión clave que determina las microdinámicas de la violencia y la represión en contextos de posconflicto.
Le risque de la poursuite des violences est une préoccupation majeure dans les sociétés post-conflit. Cet article contribue à la littérature sur la violence post-conflit en analysant un phénoméne spécifique qui caractérise la Colombie depuis la signature de l'accord de paix de 2016 : l'assassinat de leaders sociaux. En s'appuyant sur des explications qui mettent l'accent sur la faiblesse de l'État, les économies illicites et le rôle des acteurs armés illégaux, nous soutenons que l'assassinat des leaders sociaux répond également aux efforts des élites locales pour maintenir des ordres autoritaires compétitifs locaux face aux menaces à leur pouvoir de la part des acteurs sociopolitiques mobilisés autour de la mise en œuvre locale de l'accord de paix. En utilisant des données provenant de municipalités colombiennes, nous constatons que les assassinats de leaders sociaux sont plus probables et plus fréquents dans les municipalités où la concurrence électorale est limitée. En outre, une part plus importante de votes pour les partis de gauche, un indicateur de la présence de concurrents (challengers) aux élites locales, est corrélée à une plus grande probabilité d'assassinats, ainsi qu'à un nombre plus élevé de cas. En conclusion, cet article suggére que la nature des ordres politiques locaux constitue une dimension clé déterminant la micro-dynamique de la violence et de la répression dans les contextes post-conflit.
The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling offers a comprehensive survey of interdisciplinary research related to smuggling, reflecting on key themes, and charting current and future trends. Divided into six parts and spanning over 30 chapters, the volume covers themes such as mobility, borders, violent conflict, and state politics, as well as looks at the smuggling of specific goods – from rice and gasoline to wildlife, weapons, and cocaine. Chapters engage with some of the most contentious academic and policy debates of the twenty-first century, including the historical creation of borders, re-bordering, the criminalisation of migration, and the politics of selective toleration of smuggling. As it maps a field that contains unique methodological, ethical, and risk-related challenges, the book takes stock not only of the state of our shared knowledge, but also reflects on how this has been produced, pointing to blind spots and providing an informed vision of the future of the field. Bringing together established and emerging scholars from around the world, The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of conflict studies, borderland studies, criminology, political science, global development, anthropology, sociology, and geography.
This chapter examines in more detail the aspects of victims’ participation at the International Criminal Court. It starts with the drafting history of the Rome Statute and the negotiations during the international conference in Rome on the participation of victims. It presents the cases that have already taken place before the International Criminal Court and the victims who have participated or been involved in international criminal justice. This chapter then provides an overview of the practical aspects of victims’ participation, starting with the application and identification processes. It compares the specifics of the Rome Statute with the existing international practice and draws on the various rights of victims during different stages of the procedure. It differentiates between different types of victims in accordance with the crime, i.e. victims of genocide, of crimes against humanity, and of war crimes. This chapter also contains the perspectives of various interest groups within the International Criminal Court on the participation of victims, such as the defence counsel, the Office of the Prosecutor, Chambers, Registry etc.
In its fundamental essence, bilateral relations outline a mechanism through which two countries seek to actualize their individual national interests through collaboration on select issues. Such conceptualizations often obscure the relevance of issues and narratives at local levels, which constitute the sites of its practicalization. The predominance of national interest-focused approaches in negotiating bilateral relations, particularly in the sphere of conflict management, often casts aside local narratives underlying the issues and conflicts it seeks to address. The resultant gap between the advocated and actual necessities of resolution at the ground may lead to the persistence and emergence of local tensions subsequent to its ‘settlement’ at the national and bilateral levels.
The bilateral resolution of the India–Bangladesh enclave issue presents an interesting case to engage with the conceptual and practical facets of this mechanism of state action and its impacts at the local level. Based on an ethnographic survey of local perceptions of residents of three enclaves in Cooch Behar district, West Bengal, this article will examine the impacts of national interest-based mediation in localized conflicts, to engage the problematic of the ‘local’s absence from bilateralism’s conceptualization in international relations.
At the beginning of November 2007, a group of scholars studying the Middle East and Africa announced the creation of a new scholarly organization, the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA). ASMEA is the starkest example, but its creation signaled a larger shift, or split, in the study of Africa in the United States after the attacks of September 11, 2001. Although existing scholarly organizations continued to study the same topics and employ the same methodologies as they had before 9/11, increased US government funding for African studies and the creation of new organizations have pushed the field toward a focus on security and military issues, much to the deficit of the issues that the leading figures in African studies had deemed worthwhile in the preceding years.
Plus de deux décennies depuis le début des conflits répétitifs en République Démocratique du Congo, le système éducatif reste chargé d'obstacles majeurs, analysés dans cet article, qui limitent sa capacité à contribuer à la construction de la paix durable. Son curriculum d'enseignement manifeste moins d'optimisme quant à la façon de faire face au passé violent. Les intentions d'enseignement d'attitudes et pratiques de paix formulées pour le cours d' éducation civique et morale finissent par présenter un caractère obsolète et moins fonctionnel à cause de l'insuffisance de la plage horaire destinée à cet enseignement, à l'absence des considérations pour cet enseignement et au manque des compétences suffisantes des enseignants. Quant aux pratiques pédagogiques, elles sont en elles-mêmes des obstacles à la création d'un environnement paisible d'autant plus qu'elles sont magistrales, moins démocratiques et faisant la part belle aux punitions corporelles. Enfin, le système scolaire secondaire reste un bastion des revendications sociales frisant des tensions à la fois manifestes et latentes entre diverses parties prenantes.
Chérie Rivers Ndaliko. Necessary Noise: Music, Film, and Charitable Imperialism in the East of Congo. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. xiv + 285 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $30.95. Paper. ISBN: 9780190499587. - Volume 62 Issue 2 - Ch. Didier Gondola
Under what conditions are Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programs successfully implemented following intrastate conflict? Previous research is dominated by under-theorized case studies that lack the ability to detect the precise factors and mechanisms that lead to successful DDR. In this article, we draw on game theory and ask how the number of veto players, their policy distance, and their internal cohesion impact DDR implementation. Using empirical evidence from Nepal and the Democratic Republic of Congo, we show that the number of veto players, rather than their distance and cohesion, explains the (lack of) implementation of DDR.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, donors promoted rapid liberalisation and presidential elections in the aftermath of the war, and after two terms, President Kabila has not left office. This article engages with the question of how liberalisation and elections are connected, and how they are related to the extension of presidential power. It finds that the international market for minerals has shaped the domestic political economy but its nature has effectively been ignored in the formulation of donor policy; efforts at regulating trade have been concentrated on due diligence of origin in Congo but have not addressed the secrecy of international trade. Liberalisation has removed control of economic resources from Congo, provided returns for elite politicians and funded violence to control the disenfranchised population. The offshore companies are the elephant in the room; without acknowledging them, analysis of the liberalisation and its interaction with presidential tenure lacks assessment of the opportunities, interests and power that shaped the processes.
Aims and Scope One of the key mission objectives of the UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) was to disarm and repatriate foreign combatants in the eastern region of the country. To achieve this, MONUC adopted a “push and pull” strategy. This involved applying military pressure while at the same time offering opportunities for voluntary disarmament and repatriation for armed combatants of the elusive but deadly Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)-a predominantly Rwandan Hutu armed group in eastern DRC. As part of its “pull” strategy, MONUC embarked on one of the most sophisticated Information Operations (IO) campaigns in UN history with the core objective of convincing thousands of individual combatants and commanders of the FDLR to voluntarily disarm and join the UN’s Demobilization, Disarmament, Repatriation, Resettlement and Reintegration programme (DDRRR). This book is derived from studies of the narratives, coordination and effectiveness of the UN’s IO in support of DDRRR and how the UN has integrated IO as part of its Mission peace support operations. This book advances contemporary understanding of the relative importance of communication models and their interactions within conflict settings. It provides instruments with which conflict and communication analysts can compare predictions and rationalize Information impacts for future conflicts.
Why have peace-building and reconstruction efforts so frequently failed to create durable institutions that can deter or withstand resurgent violence in volatile sites of cyclical conflict? Extant theory predicts that new institutions can help overcome violence and mitigate commitment problems in postconflict contexts by reducing uncertainty in inherently uncertain environments. By contrast, this article argues that postconflict institutions often prove limited in their abilities to contribute to durable peace because they offer wartime elites new venues in which to pursue conflict-era agendas. Through a micro-analysis of efforts to build the rule of law in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, I demonstrate that wartime elites capture and instrumentalize new legal institutions to maximize their intra- and inter-organizational survival; to pursue economic, military, and political agendas behind the scenes; and, in some cases, to prepare for an imminent return to war.
Wer sich politikwissenschaftlich mit Konfliktursachen und Konfliktdynamiken auseinandersetzen will, sieht sich mit einer Reihe von Herausforderungen konfrontiert. Als Erstes stellt sich die Frage, was Konflikte eigentlich sind und welche Konflikte überhaupt als untersuchungsrelevant eingestuft werden.
Disagreements between indigenous communities and the Nigerian state on natural resource management constitute a major source of conflicts in the oil-rich Niger Delta. Though armed militancy targeting oil infrastructure constituted a major form of the conflicts, there existed other types, levels, and dimensions of conflicts within the region. However, the Nigerian state response has focused mainly on addressing the armed militant conflict that targets oil industry infrastructure, leaving other—though connected—conflicts in the Niger Delta unattended. The neglect of other forms of conflicts, it is argued, impacts the ability of state-led peacebuilding programs to stabilize the Niger Delta region.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has experienced patterns of mass victimization since the country’s inception. As a private domain of King Leopold ii of Belgium, a Belgian colony or an independent state; the country has undergone numerous episodes of violence affecting not only individuals but also entire communities. Socio-political and economic crises have been accompanied by inter-ethnic violence, mostly in eastern provinces. Over the last decade, various mechanisms have been explored in attempts to address past atrocities. In addition to ongoing prosecutions before the International Criminal Court, a number of domestic initiatives have been or are still being explored. The present article examines the suitability of these mechanisms against the backdrop of the politically and ethnically fragmented landscape in the country. The inquiry examines whether domestic or international peace-building processes address not only individual forms of victimization but also subjective experiences and perceptions of collective victimhood.
This article considers the experience of civil war in Tajikistan (1992–1997). This civil war represents the most significant violent episode in post-Soviet Central Asia; over a five-year period at least 50,000 people were killed and approximately one tenth of the population were displaced. This article will examine the role of local and international actors during this civil war, with a particular focus on the role that international aid and aid agencies played in governance of vulnerable populations and the impact these interventions had on conflict dynamics and the ability of insurgents to govern in areas under their control.
Conflict economies cannot be approached in isolation but must instead be contextualised socially and historically. These economies did not emerge in vacuum, but are part and parcel of the history of people and place. This book explores the informal and illicit extraction and trade of minerals and other types of natural resources that takes place in the 'borderlands' during periods of conflict. This type of extraction and marketing, often referred to as 'conflict trade' depends on a weak state, and works alongside the structures of the state and its officials. The book emphasises that conflicts do not start as competition over natural resources and in turn suggests that the integration of the extraction and marketing of natural resources only starts once fighting is well under way. Boas argues that although economic agendas are an integral part of African conflicts, the desire to accumulate is not the only motivation. Thus, in order to present a more comprehensive analysis of conflict we need to take into account political, cultural, and historical factors, in addition to the economic dimensions of conflict. This book will be of very strong interest to students and scholars of political economy, conflict studies, international relations and development.
Working Paper Series of the German Foundation for Peace Research
With the recent developments in Syria the United Nations is once again making headlines. The failure to reach an agreement on a Security Council resolution demonstrates the continued problems in forging a coherent international response to crisis situations. This lack of coherence continues despite recognition of the need for more cooperation to solve the growing list of global problems. With the relative success of global governance initiatives in relation to the environment, health issues, and economic problems, the focus has increasingly shifted to the problems of international security. This timely and important book represents a response to that shift and the implications this has for the wider international system. Using a number of relevant case studies (including the UN interventions in Bosnia, Somalia, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and East Timor) it examines the securitisation of global governance through the prism of United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and demonstrates that the development of both global governance and global security governance have transformed the environment in which international organisations, such as the United Nations, are operating. Moreover this book brings together a number of the key academic debates surrounding both global security governance and peacekeeping. It combines an examination of the power relations of global security governance, with the changing nature of peacekeeping operations. By bringing the two areas together the book for the first time bridges existing literatures and debates, from theoretical discussions of global governance, to practical examinations of peacekeeping operations. UN-Tied Nations provides a concise and analytical introduction to the ongoing debates around the development of global governance, global security governance, and the continuous impact these are having on the ability of the United Nations to act as an international peacekeeper.
The Great Lakes region of Central Africa has been beset by conflict for close to two decades now. Aside from the unprecedented humanitarian consequences, the most striking feature of the violence has been its profoundly regional character. This paper seeks to explore how one might better understand the spread and cross-border nature of conflict in this region. It argues that the dominant contemporary model for explanation of regional conflict, with its overwhelmingly state-centric orientation, is inadequate in providing a comprehensive understanding of the structure of this type of violence. Rather, the so-called peripheries of states – borderlands – need to be taken as not only the starting point, but also the actual central referent point when it comes to regional conflict analysis. This paper demonstrates how the regional conflict involving the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda is constituted in part through phenomena located in the borderlands. These are unique cross-border dynamics that emanate from the presence of the borders themselves, and the borderlands' positions of being on the margins of states; they operate in the form of destabilizing socio-political and military–economic networks. Ultimately, the extreme regionalization of conflict in areas such as that of the Great Lakes of Central Africa cannot be properly understood without consideration of the role played by such borderland dynamics.
Since the signing of the Sun City peace agreement in 2002, the Democratic Republic of Congo has strived to democratise with limited success. This paper explores some of the challenges of the process of democratisation in the Congo. It does so not by looking at democratisation policies and practices, but by focusing on identity construction and how these identities manifest themselves in Congolese engagements with the process of democratisation as a process that is pursued in partnership with Western donors. The paper traces the construction of an understanding of democracy as a means to make an end to perpetual victimisation of Congolese people due to foreign interference in the Congo. The paper argues that the concept of democracy has acquired over time a meaning that creates a highly ambivalent engagement with the current democratisation process, and in particular with Western donors of this process, which are simultaneously perceived as the main obstacles to its successful realisation.
This paper examines the nature and impacts of two intervention radio programmes broadcast on Radio Okapi - the radio service of the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) managed by the Swiss-based Hirondelle Foundation. A matched randomized rechnique was used to assign Rwandan Hutus and Congolese autochthons in South Kivu province to listen to one of the two programmes within their naturalistic contexts for thirteen months. Autochthon control groups listened to Gutahuka, while Hutu control groups listened to Dialogue Entre Congolais. At the end of the treatment, participants' perceptions of barriers to peace, descriptive and prescriptive interventions; victimhood and villainy; opportunities for personal development and civic engagement were assessed in sixteen focus groups across four towns. Two critical findings have emerged from the study: first, hate contents are not only ones that are overtly hateful - messages targeted at specific groups for the purpose of achieving behavioural change can lead to alienation and hostility towards the target group by non-target groups exposed to the messages; second, contextually associated individuals or social groups do not always have homogenous interpretation of media messages. At the core of audience engagement and interpretation is the idealogical orientation of messages that audiences are exposed to and how such messages interact with local epistemes including historical and subjective realities. The paper concludes that media intervention contents that purvey a narrative without first understanding how it interacts with other epistemic narratives and metaphors on ground, run the risk of deepening rifts between groups and escalating the conflict. © 2014 School of Humanities & Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales
Across African states, militias have become one of the main agents of political violence, accounting for a third of all recent conflict. Militia violence is attributed to cultural reactions to disorder, failing and predatory states, and local cleavages which emerge during civil wars. However, activity largely occurs in democratizing states without civil wars. This article presents a typology of militias based on their local roles and actions and an explanation for the prevalence of “competition militias.” Changes in macro politics ushered in a new era of conflict and fragmentation among political elites; militias operate as private armies for these elites. The goal of this violence is to alter the political landscape, increase power for patrons, protect supportive communities, and hinder opponents. Incentives within African democratic institutions reward the use of force by elites. As a result, African democracies, and states transitioning into democracy, are not likely to be internally peaceful. Futhermore, the dominant type of conflict across African states shifts to accommodate the goals of violent agents within modern political contexts.
Anthropology has often renewed itself by studying collective self-organization beyond the reach of the state. The idea that power usually flows top-down from a state monopoly is increasingly questioned in an era of networks fuelled by interactive decision-making processes that include non-state actors. Power theoretically understood as potentia - the elementary power through which human beings deploy their productive capacities and creative possibilities - is ontologically prior to power expressed as an obsession with order that is often repressive (potestas). Granting precedence to potentia over potestas inevitably leads us to question the conceptual centrality of the state. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has long stood - and stands today - as a symbol of the antithesis of social order, offers much material for reflection on this issue. While this paper considers how people negotiate the boundaries between state and non-state power in the contemporary DRC, its lasting contribution is to revive in a distinctly new way a tradition of anthropology to use the study of stateless societies to pose big critical questions about the institutions on which modern societies rest.
Local ownership has become a frequently used term, but it is neither clearly defined nor thoroughly implemented. Two main ambiguities remain. The first relates to the counterparts chosen by the international community when promoting ownership and the second to whether ownership should be fostered over the design and/or the implementation of peacebuilding programs. The article depicts the practical consequences of these ambiguities at the example of the Democratic Republic of the Congo: a peacebuilding strategy overlooking local perceptions on the central state and sources of authority as well as a lack of attention given to local conflict causes and resolution mechanisms. In conclusion, it argues for a more nuanced relationship between international actors and their local counterparts that is constantly reassessed in order to include marginalized voices as well as an iterative approach to the promotion of local ownership.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in 2002 to combat impunity for the most serious crimes of international concern. It seeks to do so in two ways: through a series of high-profile cases in The Hague, intended to deter future war criminals; and through its complementarity mechanism, which equips national legal systems to prosecute ICC crimes domestically. Through a case study of the prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this article examines efforts by various stakeholders to realize the legal complementarity principle embedded in the Rome Statute. The article argues that the domestic prosecution of ICC crimes requires developments in four distinct areas: legislative reform, institutional reform, education and training, and the building of public trust and participation. The research also reveals that where developments in these areas have occurred, they have been propelled by a variety of domestic and international stakeholders. However, the ICC itself has failed to contribute significantly to the realization of complementarity that is central to achieving its mandate.
More than a decade after the Pretoria Accord officially ended the Congo Wars, sporadic fighting continues in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), defying conventional conceptions of postconflict transition. This paper highlights the limits of applying macro-level analysis to the Congolese situation and asserts that political, economic, and social cleavages at the local level continue to fuel national instability. The study draws on African experiences of transitional justice in Sierra Leone and Rwanda to offer specific lessons on how institutions at multiple levels of analysis can work together to foster peace and accountability. By analyzing implementation levels and the legitimacy of institutions, the paper demonstrates that a more contextualized approach, one that incorporates local actors who are often marginalized from the peacebuilding process, better illuminates the challenges and prospects for transitional justice, especially since finding legitimacy in the eyes of local citizens is paramount for establishing a sustainable peace.
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Over the past 50 years of independence in Africa, no event has captured the minds and imaginations of activists, scholars and policy makers and has challenged the conscience of the global community like political violence. South Sudan has just completed a referendum on self-determination. The Republic of South Sudan was inaugurated on 9 July 2011. The challenge that lies ahead for the new republic is that faced by all African states: it must reform the colonial state inherited at independence, build a more inclusive political community that effectively manages diversity, upholds the rule of law and practises democracy in governance. This article contributes to the development of the New Sudan Framework, an alternative solution to the intractable conflict in Sudan and a model for solving the problems of political violence in Africa. In the first section the author argues that the current rise in ethnic violence across South Sudan and the border regions is due to the failure to reform the colonial state inherited from Great Britain in the late 20th century. Violence in the disputed regions is analysed to illustrate the dilemma that faces both North and South Sudan in a post-referendum era. Lastly, the author argues that the way out of the current predicament in the disputed regions and the way to build a more inclusive political community in the North and South that respects unity in diversity is contained in the conceptual framework known as the New Sudan, which was articulated by the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
Scholarship on the management of spoilers in a hybrid type of conflict is almost non-existent. Through an examination of the recent Congolese wars and peace efforts (1996–2010), we develop an understanding of how spoilers are managed in a conflict characterised by both interstate and intrastate dynamics. Certainly, more strategies of dealing with spoiler behaviours in this type of conflict are likely to emerge as similar cases are investigated, but our discussion recommends these non-related, but strongly interacting principles: the practice of inclusivity, usually preferred in the management of spoilers, is more complex, and in fact ineffective, particularly when concerned groups' internal politics and supportive alliances are unconventional. Because holding elections is often deemed indispensable in peacemaking efforts, it is vital that total spoilers be prevented from winning or disrupting them. The toughest challenge is the protection of civilians, especially when the state lacks a monopoly on the use of violence and governance remains partitioned across the country.
My aim in this article is to address the question of the relationship between the ethnogenesis of the Banyamulenge in South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and their status as nationals and citizens of that country. I do not intend to present a history of the Banyamulenge, aspects of which have been thoroughly researched by several noted scholars. Nor do I undertake an account of developments following the first Congo war of 1996/7 to the present day. Rather, I will focus on three principal questions that have impacted on the formative relationship between the ‘Banyamulenge’ of South Kivu province and the broader Congolese society; namely, the diverse historical forms and stages of regional migration of Kinyarwanda speakers into pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Congo-Zaire; the nature of the post-independence Zairian state and its role in the manipulation and instrumentalisation of group identifications in the Kivu provinces; and the import of the discourses of nationalism and ‘nation-statism’ in the postcolony.
By analytically decoupling war and violence, this book explores the causes and dynamics of violence in civil war. Against the prevailing view that such violence is an instance of impenetrable madness, the book demonstrates that there is logic to it and that it has much less to do with collective emotions, ideologies, and cultures than currently believed. Kalyvas specifies a novel theory of selective violence: it is jointly produced by political actors seeking information and individual civilians trying to avoid the worst but also grabbing what opportunities their predicament affords them. Violence, he finds, is never a simple reflection of the optimal strategy of its users; its profoundly interactive character defeats simple maximization logics while producing surprising outcomes, such as relative nonviolence in the 'frontlines' of civil war.
I discuss several conceptual problems raised by current understandings of political violence, especially as they pertain to actions, motivations, and identities in civil wars. Actions often turn out to be related to local and private conflicts rather than the war's driving (or ) cleavage. The disjunction between dynamics at the top and at the bottom undermines prevailing assumptions about civil wars, which are informed by two competing interpretive frames, most recently described as Rather than posit a dichotomy between greed and grievance, I point to the interaction between political and private identities and actions. Civil wars are not binary conflicts, but complex and ambiguous processes that foster the action of local and supralocal actors, civilians, and armies, whose alliance results in violence that aggregates yet still reflects their diverse goals. It is the convergence of local motives and supralocal imperatives that endows civil wars with their particular and often puzzling character, straddling the divide between the political and the private, the collective and the individual.
Document collected by the University of Texas Libraries from the web-site of the Reseau Documentaire International Sur La Region Des Grands Lacs Africains (International Documentation Network on the Great African Lakes Region). The Reseau distributes "gray literature", non-published or limited distribution government or NGO documents regarding the Great Lakes area of central Africa including Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. UT Libraries
Mémoire Sur Les Entraves Au Rappatriement Des Groupes Armés Hutu Étrangers Dans Le Kivu
- Synergie
Synergie Vie. 2004. Mémoire Sur Les Entraves Au Rappatriement Des Groupes Armés Hutu Étrangers Dans Le Kivu. Bukavu (D.R. Congo): Synergie Vie
Youth and Conflict in Kivu: ‘Komona Clair
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Van Acker, Frank, and Koen Vlassenroot. 2000. “Youth and Conflict in Kivu: ‘Komona Clair.’” Journal of Humanitarian Assistance. www.jha.ac
War Crimes in Bukavu
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Human Rights Watch. 2004. D.R. Congo: War Crimes in Bukavu. Washington, D.C.: Human Rights Watch
Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council on the Arm Embargo in the Democratic Republic of Congo
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U.N. Security Council (2004). Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council on the Arm Embargo in the Democratic Republic of Congo. New York: United Nations