GOMA,  – Some 220,000 people have been freshly displaced in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since a group of former rebels integrated into the national army (FARDC) mutinied and began capturing towns and territory in North Kivu Province, often in the face of minimal resistance.

With the total number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in eastern DRC topping two million for the first time since 2009 and amid fears that the rebels are closing in on the regional capital, Goma, humanitarian needs are growing dramatically, especially for shelter, water and sanitation, health, food and non-food items. 

There are significant regional dimensions: around 20,000 people, including 600 FARDC soldiers, have sought refuge in Rwanda and Uganda – where officials said they were overwhelmed by the influx – while Kigali stands accused of backing the mutineers, a charge it vehemently denies.

What’s behind the current fighting?

For many decades, the interwoven issues of citizenship (who is a real Congolese?) land rights and ethnicity, coupled with the absence of effective state authority and the presence of rich mineral deposits, have driven instability and armed conflict in the eastern DRC, whose Tutsi inhabitants have been particularly caught up in the tension between “indigenous” and “settler” populations. Much of the fighting during the 1996-1997 and 1998-2003 Congo wars took place in the east.

After Tutsi rebels (RPF) overthrew the Hutu government in Rwanda during the 1994 state-sponsored genocide, hundreds of thousands of Hutus, including many who carried out the killings in Rwanda, crossed the border into eastern DRC. Some of these militia formed the core of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a group which exists to this day, and which twice led Kigali to send troops into DRC to back Congolese Tutsi armed groups.

The roots of the Tutsi-led M23, the name used by today’s mutineers, are intertwined with this back story. Its leader, Bosco Ntaganda, fought with the RPF during the 1994 fall of Kigali, and served as deputy leader, then leader of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), a group established in 2006 with the professed intent of protecting North Kivu’s Tutsis from the FDLR. (Like the CNDP boss he ousted, Laurent Nkunda, Ntaganda is wanted by the International Criminal Court, ICC, on war crimes charges. Kinshasa has declined to act on the ICC’s arrest warrant, saying Ntaganda was key to restoring stability in North Kivu)

In April 2012, Ntaganda and some of his followers defected from the ranks of the FARDC, accusing the government of failing to live up to the terms of a deal that led to the CNDP’s transformation into a political party and the integration of its forces into the army and police. This deal was struck on 23 March 2009, hence the name M23. The group cited administrative reforms and the return of Tutsi refugees from Rwanda as the unfulfilled terms of the 2009 accord.

What progress has M23 made since April?
 
In May, the defectors announced that they were operating under the new leadership of Col Sultani Makenga. M23 took advantage of a ceasefire by the FARDC to move from the former CNDP stronghold of Masisi District east to Runyoni, a strategic peak in the Virunga national park, where the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and DRC meet. The rebels made initial gains in May before being pushed back by FARDC, but as allegations emerged that Rwanda may be supporting the rebels in June, they displayed a new show of strength.

On 6 July, M23 took control of Bunagana, the strategic mining town in Rutshuru District on the Ugandan border. They then advanced to take four more towns in the district, according to rebel leader Col Makenga. “We will withdraw and leave them to MONUSCO [UN Stabilization Mission in DRC] and national police,” he told AFP. Notably, the rebels said they would not hand the towns back to FARDC. “We are not there to take the towns but to get our voices heard,” he added.

Photo: Nigel Sanders/WFP

Aid workers fill bags of fortified cereal for new arrivals to the Mugunga camp in eastern DRC

How has overall security in North Kivu been affected?
 
As FARDC committed resources to fighting M23, the security situation in other parts of the Kivu provinces degenerated rapidly. Elements of the various militia collectively known as Mai Mai increased their military activities, including, in North Kivu’s Masisi Territory, Mai Mai Kifuafua, which has formed an alliance with Raia Mutomboki, another Mai Mai group. Police blamed this coalition for the massacre of more than 200 people in a dozen attacks over a few days in mid-May. Witnesses said the attackers announced they wanted to kill anyone who spoke Kinyarwanda, the language spoken in Rwanda.

To the north, the head of another Mai Mai group with alleged ties to M23, Gen Kakule Sikula Lafontaine, led an assault on an army base in North Kivu’s Lubero Territory in early June. 

In Walikale territory to the west, as FARDC soldiers were redeployed elsewhere, FDLR moved in. Some towns have seen peaceful transfers of power from FARDC to other armed groups. In Pinga, for example, FARDC was replaced by the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS), a Mai Mai group based in Masisi that purports to protect the Hunde ethnic group against the threat purportedly posed by Kinyarwanda speakers. FARDC’s eventual return to such settlements is likely to provoke further conflict.

What is Rwanda’s role in M23?

None at all, according to the government in Kigali. However, at the beginning of June, Human Rights Watch released a report alleging that Rwanda had recruited, trained and armed members of M23. Later that month, an addendum to a report by the UN Group of Experts on the DRC went further, saying Rwanda had assisted directly in the creation of the movement by transporting soldiers and equipment through Rwanda. It also stated that the Rwandan national army made incursions into DRC to reinforce M23, and violated arms embargos and travel restrictions by supporting UN-sanctioned individuals, including Ntaganda. The addendum said M23 fighters included demobilized and repatriated FDLR members as well as Congolese refugees living in Rwanda.

The document named Rwandan Defence Minister James Kaberebe as having been “in constant contact with M23”. It levelled similar charges against Chief of Defence Staff Lt Charles Kayonga, and Kagame’s military adviser, Gen Jacques Nziza.

The document also presented evidence of Rwanda’s alleged support of at least six other groups in the region. It said Rwanda had widened its activities in eastern DRC from supporting armed groups in a bid to assassinate FDLR leaders, to backing various army mutinies, in South as well as North Kivu, in the wake of elections held in 2011.

Rwandan President Kagame called the allegations “fictitious”, while Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said in a statement that Rwanda intends to provide evidence that the Group of Experts’ claims are false, and that DRC should take responsibility for failing to contain the mutiny. “It is demonstrably against Rwanda’s interests to do anything that would risk destabilizing the region. We have worked vigorously with our Congolese counterparts to try and head off the rebellion,” she said.

What is the humanitarian impact of the rebellion?
 
DRC offers a good example of “conflict fatigue”. Humanitarian agencies, most based in Goma, are being stretched to their limits. The UN estimates that 220,000 people have been displaced in eastern DRC since December because of clashes and massacres of civilians. The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) is currently supporting 90,000 IDPs in 31 camps. In early July, UN peacekeepers abandoned their position at Bunagana, on the Ugandan border, following a new wave of fighting, which saw one Indian peacekeeper killed as the rebels took control of the town. 

Civilian protection and humanitarian access are problematic because of conflict in both North and South Kivu, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Aid agencies lack the capacity to meet the basic needs of IDPs. 

Photo: Siegfried Modola

The fighting is pitting the M23 mutineers against the Congolese army

On the frontlines in the fighting between M23 and FARDC, civilians are stranded; others are perpetually on the move. The government is reluctant to endorse new IDP camps, the number of which has reduced by over a third since 2009. Many of the displaced are living in poor conditions in makeshift camps using existing public infrastructure. In Masisi Territory Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported a sharp rise in trauma wounds caused by machetes, spears and bullets, and said such cases accounted for 25 percent of all surgical admissions in Masisi hospital in the month of May, up from just 2 percent in April.

Meanwhile, across the country a cholera outbreak has so far affected eight of the DRC’s 11 provinces. Rwanguba general hospital near Rutshuru in North Kivu, has admitted more than 530 cases since the end of May.
 
What now?
 
Already, key members of the international community, including the USA have begun to formally express their concerns in writing to Kigali.

Despite claims that M23 is advancing on the North Kivu provincial capital Goma, the rebel army is still said to be 40km north of the city and recent statements suggest that having demonstrated their strength, they want to negotiate with the government rather than proceed with the military campaign. Witnesses say the news of rebel gains has panicked residents and thrown the city into turmoil. Congolese motorbike taxi drivers, described as “anti-Tutsi mobs” according to sources based in Goma, took to the streets alongside groups of youth on 9 July to protest against the insecurity. 

Rwandan students have reportedly evacuated Goma, fearing reprisals for their national links to the rebel army.

In a statement, MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, expressed concern about the rebel advances, and also reported unconfirmed allegations of human rights violations in M23-controlled areas, and an attack on the prison at Rutshuru, which led to the release of detainees.

MONUSCO is also deploying attack helicopters. “In close coordination with the FARDC, [MONUSCO's] armed helicopters have been used for civilian protection purposes, with the aim of impeding the M23 advance. In addition, the Mission is redeploying its assets to ensure it is present in key forward bases in the area,” said a UN press release.

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source www.irinnews.org

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Photo: Guy Oliver/IRIN

There are an estimated 875 million small arms in circulation

JOHANNESBURG,  – For a couple of hundred dollars or less an arms dealer can illegally source a blank end user certificate with the required signatures and stamps - needed to transfer weapons across international borders – and “if no one checks its authenticity (often the case) he can ship his wares to the world’s hotspots with minimal risk, for maximum profit,” a report by the Small Arms Survey (SAS) said in 2008.

Since then “not much has changed” Glenn McDonald, based in Geneva and author of a chapter in the SAS 2008 yearbook entitled Who’s Buying? End-user Certification, told IRIN. Arms spending has not broken step following global slowdowns and economic recession: In 2011 US$1.7 trillion was spent on the world’s military, says the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

There is no internationally binding agreement on the trade in conventional weapons, which according to civil society organizations results in fewer bureaucratic burdens on legal conventional weapons’ exports and imports than on such commodities as bananas, bottled water and MP3 players.

The four-week meeting at the UN in New York attended by all member states kicked off on 2 July – after a decade of campaigns by civil society organizations. It aims to rectify the paucity of controls on international weapons transfers and usher in an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) for conventional weapons.

“From [the Democratic Republic of] Congo to Libya, from Syria to Mali, all have suffered from the unregulated trade in weapons and ammunition allowing those conflicts to cause immeasurable suffering and go on far too long. In the next few weeks, diplomats will either change the world – or fail the world,” Anna Macdonald, head of Oxfam’s arms control campaign, said in a statement.

The meeting will tackle three overriding issues in formulating a conventional arms treaty: Scope – to determine which categories of weapons will be included; criteria – establishing a minimum threshold for the transfer of weapons and taking into account UN arms embargos, as well as the potential for an arms shipment to be denied if weapons could be used in violation of international human rights law; and implementation – covering the establishment by each potential signatory of transparent and competent regulating authorities.

Arms re-exports

Nearly 75 percent of arms exports originate from six countries, the USA, Russia, Germany, UK, China and France. Five of these are permanent members of the UN Security Council. SAS’s McDonald said southern hemisphere countries were also major exporters through the practice of re-export. (South Africa is the only significant manufacturer in Africa though Algeria and Egypt produce large amounts of ammunition).

Re-export is a problem generally. It can occur decades after the original deliveries

“Re-export is a problem generally. It can occur decades after the original deliveries. Angola is on the radar at the moment, as it has significant surplus stocks [of weapons],” he said.

The proposed treaty will first have to define which conventional weapons should be included and which should not. The starting point for four preliminary meetings ahead of the ATT meeting in New York were the 1991 voluntary reporting mechanisms UN Register of Conventional Arms (UNRCA), and its seven conventional weapons categories: tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large calibre artillery pieces, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships and missile and missile systems.

Analysts say this list is outdated as it excludes tank transporters, light armoured vehicles, reconnaissance helicopters capable of being armed, anti-aircraft weapons with a calibre less than 75mm and ammunition and short range missiles which, along with other military equipment, have evolved over the past two decades.

Small arms and light weapons (SALW) were added to UNRCA’s voluntary reporting mechanism in 2003 and since then about 80 UN member states have declared SALW imports and exports. The SAS says “there are an estimated 875 million small arms in circulation worldwide, produced by more than 1,000 companies from nearly 100 countries.”

Small arms are classified as revolvers, automatic pistols, rifles, sub machine guns and light machine guns, while light weapons include heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, portable anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns, mortars with a calibre of less than 100mm, and portable anti-aircraft missile systems.

The inclusion of ammunition, SALW, technology used to manufacture or maintain weapons, and exports of weapons in component form, have also been put on the negotiating table at the ATT talks.

ISS report

A report submitted at the ATT talks on 5 July by the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies (ISS) entitled Negotiating an Arms Trade Treaty, A Toolkit for African States posits a 7+1+1 formula (the seven UNRCA conventional weapons categories plus SALW and ammunition).

The report said 136 states, including 50 in Africa, had “expressed strong support for the inclusion SALW” and 120 states also wanted ammunition to fall within ATT.

“African states have been recipients of most categories of arms that appear in the UNRCA. In addition, the voluntary reports on SALW by some states reveal that SALW is a substantial component of global arms transfers to African states. Added to this, much of the trade in SALW is unreported,” the ISS report said.

But since 2001, voluntary reporting to the UNRCA by African states has “declined from 17 states reporting in 2002 to four in 2010. Most reports by African states in fact indicate `nil’ conventional arms transfers,” the report said.

Ben Coetzee, a co-author of the report and a senior ISS researcher, told IRIN African states had concerns about national security issues relating to the proposed treaty, because if military inventories were open and transparent for all to view “it would not take a brain surgeon to figure out what your defensive capabilities are.”

The ISS report said SALW and ammunition in many “African countries were among the main instruments of violence… SALW and ammunition [with maybe the exception of South Africa] would have originally been transferred from foreign territories to these African states either legally or illegally. It is worth noting that almost all of the states that have expressed an objection to the inclusion of SALW and ammunition in the ATT do not appear on the list of the top 58 countries experiencing lethal violence.”

Ammunition controls are seen as a particularly pertinent issue, as although small arms have a shelf life of many years, ammunition is a disposable item needing constant replenishment, but “politically” SAS’s McDonald said “it may be a bridge to far” and has its detractors, including the USA, Iran, Egypt, Algeria and Venezuela.

He said West Africa’s conflicts have “moved around from one state to another and then back again. There are weapons in huge numbers [in the region]; border controls are difficult and there is really not much that you can do…But if you can prevent ammunition [supplies] and if ammunition runs out it will change the nature of the conflicts.”

“Expensive doorstops”

An Oxfam briefing paper, published in May 2012 entitled Stop a Bullet, Stop a War. Why ammunition must be included in the Arms Trade Treaty, said a 2003 attack on the Liberian capital Monrovia by anti-government forces was interrupted after ammunition stocks ran low and forced a withdrawal, only for the assault to resume once illegal ammunition supplies had been sourced from neighbouring Guinea. Likewise in 2007 “a lack of ammunition forced warring pastoralists in [what is now] South Sudan to resolve their disputes peacefully.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in a submission to the ATT meeting noted that there were “already massive numbers of weapons in circulation, but their impact depends on a constant supply of ammunition”.

Coetzee said without ammunition guns become “expensive doorstops”, but while the USA probably had the administrative capability to monitor ammunition exports, other countries did not, and he did not expect at this stage that the monitoring of ammunition would be included in the treaty.

He said drawing up the treaty was a delicate balancing act, as “you don’t want to settle for an agreement of the lowest common denominator,” but if you included ammunition the issue of compliance could undermine ATT. “There is a risk of non-compliance [related to ammunition controls] and if you don’t have compliance, it [the proposed ATT] is not worth the paper it is printed on.”

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source www.irinnews.org

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KAMPALA,  – Uganda is “overwhelmed” by the current influx of Congolese refugees fleeing renewed fighting in North Kivu Province in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is calling for an emergency meeting of countries in the Great Lakes Region to work out a road map for lasting peace, say officials.

“We have a problem of feeding these big numbers. The influx has come at the time when our donors are experiencing financial shocks, which has a direct impact to government and UNHCR [UN Refugee Agency] to look [after] and cater for the refugees,” Musa Ecweru, Uganda’s state minister for relief, disaster preparedness and refugees, told IRIN. 

“We also have a burden of treatment. Some of the refugees and Congolese army troops who defected to us have bullet wounds inflicted on them as a result of the fighting. Our hospitals in Kisoro District are overwhelmed and overstretched. They are struggling,” he said. 

Uganda has called for an emergency crisis meeting of the 11-member International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) scheduled for 11 July in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. “As the current chair of ICGLR, we are duty-bound to call for this emergency meeting in a bid to diffuse the situation in DRC,” Henry Okello Oryem, Uganda’s acting foreign affairs minister, told IRIN.

Mohammed Adar, a UNHCR representative in Uganda, told IRIN that Nyakabande transit camp in Kisoro District, which was meant to host fewer than 3,000 refugees, is currently hosting over 16,000.

“It’s indeed a big challenge. There is a strain on social services. The more people we have to accommodate for long, the more problems we have, especially hygiene and sanitation issues,” Adar told IRIN.

“The transit centre was not meant for a long stay. It was supposed to be for three to four days. However, many of the Congolese refugees don’t want to be transferred to the settlement camps for better services. They prefer to stay at the transit camp to monitor the situation back home,” he said.

Photo: Samuel Okiror/IRIN

Renewed fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has forced thousands to flee into Uganda

Catherine Ntabadde, assistant director of communications with the Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS), told IRIN there was a need for food and water at the border. Hygiene and sanitation were critical in Nyakabande and Bunagana (in eastern DRC). 

According to URCS and UNHCR, at least 16,270 refugees, mainly from the Bunagana area, have been registered at Nyakabande since last week, when M23 rebels led by International Criminal Court indictee Bosco Ntaganda overran a government battalion at Jambo and Bunagana in DRC’s Rutshuru Province.

Fleeing soldiers disarmed

Over 600 Congolese soldiers have fled to Kisoro District. On 7 July the Ugandan army disarmed them and moved them to the western district of Kasese where there are better medical services, food and shelter. “We are expecting our government and that of DRC to finish with arrangements and these soldiers will be repatriated back,” Capt Peter Mugisha, army spokesperson for western Uganda, told IRIN.

Meanwhile, the Ugandan authorities are concerned about reports of cholera in DRC. “With the big number crossing, we are worried they might cross with the disease,” Adar, told IRIN.

“The current needs are food and water at the border; improved hygiene and sanitation at Nyakabande and Bunagana; shelter; reproductive health care; first aid and psychosocial support,” URCS said in a 9 July statement.

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source www.irinnews.org

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