/ 22 December 2007

UN has firm demands for factions in volatile DRC

The Security Council voted unanimously on Friday to extend the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for a year and demanded that all militias and armed groups in the volatile east lay down their weapons and start disarming.

The council asked the UN force ”to attach the highest priority to addressing the crisis” in North and South Kivu, the eastern DRC provinces that have seen the heaviest fighting recently, emphasising the need to protect civilians.

It urged the Congolese government to address the crisis ”in a comprehensive way”, including convening a meeting on peace, security and development in the Kivus.

Fighting in the eastern DRC has escalated dramatically since August, displacing more than 200 000 people. The region has been wracked by violence for years, despite the end of a 1998-2002 war that involved armies of more than half-a-dozen African nations and historic elections held last year, the first free vote in more than 40 years.

The Security Council demanded that all militias and armed groups in the east ”lay down their arms and engage voluntarily and without any further delay or preconditions in their demobilisation, repatriation, resettlement and reintegration”.

The council singled out insurgents loyal to Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda; the Interahamwe, an extremist Hutu militia; and fighters from the so-called Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan militia group whose commanders helped organise and participated in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

The DRC’s government has struggled with little success to establish authority over the lawless eastern regions of the country, thousands of kilometres from the capital, Kinshasa.

Though violence has persisted in the eastern DRC, the 18 000-strong UN force — the largest UN peacekeeping mission in the world — has helped maintain security in the vast, mineral-rich country since the end of the 1998-2002 war.

The resolution adopted by the council extends the mandate of the force until December 31 2008.

The council said the UN force must give priority to its mandate of protecting civilians, but it also encouraged the force ”within the limits of its capacity and in the areas where its units are deployed” to support the Congolese army in disarming ”the recalcitrant foreign and Congolese armed groups”.

In its previous resolution in May, the council called on UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to set out benchmarks and a timetable to withdraw the UN force gradually.

In his report to the council last month, Ban set out a series of preconditions for the force’s withdrawal, including the disarming of Congolese and foreign armed groups, extending government authority throughout the country, reforming the security sector and ensuring human rights and the rule of law.

The council encouraged the UN force in Friday’s resolution to focus its activities on helping the Congolese authorities to achieve the benchmarks.

It asked the UN force to review efforts to respond to sexual violence, ”in view of the scale and severity of sexual violence committed especially by armed elements”. It also urged Congolese authorities ”to put an end to impunity” and ”to intensify as a matter of urgency their efforts to reform the security sector, including the army, the police and the justice sector”. — Sapa-AP