Background Briefing

<  |  index  |  next>>

Response of the International Community

 

The international community seeks to keep the transition on course and to keep the authorities heading towards elections, its’ top priority at this time in the Congo. Donors have provided more $400 million with the largest contribution coming from the European Union (E.U.). In fact, donors seem to want the elections to succeed more than many Congolese political leaders. One Kinshasa based diplomat observed, “We are pushing and shoving to get elections done, but we are behind on everything. Most members of this government are just not interested in elections.” 55

 

Influential members of the donor community recognized that army integration was of great importance in ensuring orderly elections, but their initial support to reforming the armed forces was often uncoordinated and slow in arriving. Realizing that corruption in the army and the failure to pay soldiers regularly was hindering army reform, European donors, with the support of South Africa, persuaded the transitional government to agree to a census of the armed forces and to establishing a mechanism to track salary payments to the lowest level. The army census should be completed in December and the tracking of payments was due to start soon after.

 

Led by the British government, donor governments hoped to tackle the corruption that could skew the electoral process, but President Kabila firmly opposed a proposed joint committee including international donors meant to improve management of public finances. After he claimed the committee would infringe on national sovereignty, the idea was scrapped except for appearing as an agenda item on meetings between the transitional government and ambassadors of the International Committee Accompanying the Transition (Comité international d’accompagnement de la transition, CIAT). One Kinshasa-based diplomat remarked to a Human Rights Watch researcher, “The idea of the commission of good governance has become a joke.”56

 

Although unable to move the ministry of justice to a more thorough reform before the elections, the E.U. is building on the modest success of a project it funded to revive the judicial system in Bunia in 2004 and will soon launch similar projects in the eastern towns of Goma and Bukavu.

 

Reacting to increasing limits on freedom of expression, the E.U. issued a statement on October 17 expressing concerns about such limits, about persecution of journalists and about the need for authorities to prevent language inciting ethnic tensions as elections approached.57

 

On November 26 CIAT published a statement pressing the government to pass the electoral law, to respect the electoral schedule, and not to tolerate corrupt practices.58 Important political leaders reacted angrily to the statement, accusing CIAT members of harboring neocolonialist attitudes.59

 

Such efforts by the international community are laudable but not enough to guarantee real progress on crucial issues of army reform, justice, and corruption. Nor is international support sufficient to allow MONUC to meet the many demands made upon it with the approaching elections. Although the peacekeeping force is now the largest in the world with seventeen thousand troops, its’ responsibilities cover a multitude of tasks including support for the transition, elections, security sector reform, and protecting civilians. The U.N. Secretary General has repeatedly requested additional troops for MONUC, most recently in September 2005. European governments have generally supported such requests but the United States is unwilling to provide the needed funding. In September, the U.N. Security Council authorized 841 additional police officers and in October it provided a further three hundred peacekeepers for Katanga, but these numbers are far short of the forces requested. One senior MONUC official told a Human Rights Watch researcher, “We have been given ‘mission impossible’. We have more and more responsibilities, but too few troops and resources to do them.”60

 

Elections will not by themselves bring about democracy. These elections are not the final chapter in Congo’s painful transition but only the beginning of a longer process. In the press to get the Congolese to the polls, donor nations and others in the international community must not neglect continuing efforts to establish the rule of law, freedom of expression, security, and good governance. Failure to progress in these areas may endanger the elections, risking the loss of everything thus far invested in restoring order in the Congo.

 



[55] Human Rights Watch interview, diplomat, Kinshasa, September 29, 2005.

[56] Human Rights Watch interview, diplomat, Kinshasa, September 29, 2005.

[57] Council of the European Union, “Statement by the Presidency on behalf of the European Union on freedom of expression in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),” October 17, 2005 [online] http://ue.eu.int/ueDocs/cms_Data/docs/pressData/en/cfsp/86622.pdf (retrieved December 8, 2005).

[58] “Communauté Internationale exhorte au respect de la date du Referendum - CIAT communiqué,” Misna news service, November 26, 2005.

[59] Tom Tshibangu, “MONUC Press Review”, December 5, 2005 [online] http://www.monuc.org/News.aspx?newsID=9263 (retrieved December 13, 2005).

[60] Human Rights Watch interview, senior MONUC official, Kinshasa, September 30, 2005.


<  |  index  |  next>>December 2005