Congo - A forgotten country

By Irwin Cotler

First published in Global Currents, Winter 2009. Download a .pdf version of the newsletter here.

It may surprise - and should shock even the most complacent among us - to learn that the Democratic Republic of Congo has been enduring the most deadly war ever documented in Africa, and suffered the highest death toll documented anywhere in the world since World War II. Six million people have died in the Congo since 1996 - half of them children five years or younger - in this most ignored of tragedies.

Indeed, until recently there has been little media attention paid to this devastated country. Moreover, the United Nations largest mission in the world - with 17,000 peacekeepers - has been unable to protect the vulnerable of the Congo, recalling the chilling tragedy of the Rwandan genocide.

The United Nations itself has acknowledged that ‘war crimes' had been committed in the Eastern Congo - where renewed fighting has displaced more than 250,000 people - adding to the roughly 1.2 million already driven from their homes by previous violence. IDP's (Internally Displaced People) remain inaccessible to aid and numerous operations have been suspended due to the fragile security situation.

Simply put, the people of this country have endured years of killing fields, war, poverty, disease and displacement - as I documented in my report on the Congo six years ago - even before the most recent escalation began. Now, the vulnerable in the Congo are not only suffering, yet again, mass displacement, widespread starvation and murder, but also what one Africa correspondent has called ‘without doubt the most horrific and persistent abuse of women in the world': an ‘epidemic of rape' that includes sexual enslavement, public gang rape and brutalized assault.

As Stephen Lewis - now engaged in the evidence gathering of rape as a war crime - has put it, this ‘hallucinatory' use of rape is being used not only to assault and mutilate individuals, but to ‘murderously spread the deadly HIV virus and tear apart the society as a whole.' Rape is currently being used not only as a consequential act of war but as the very instrument for the waging of war itself, and where up to 70% of women in targeted villages have been the victims of indiscriminate sexual violence.

If Canada's leadership in the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, affirmed by the UN Security Council, is to find expression it is imperative that Canada address and act upon the worst ongoing humanitarian catastrophe of our time.

Regrettably, Canada, together with the international community, continues to ignore the compelling lessons of history - in the Congo as well as in Darfur - that genocide occurs not only because of the machinery of death but also because of crimes of indifference, because of conspiracies of silence.

Indeed, what made the genocide in Rwanda so unspeakable was not only the horror of the genocide itself, but that this genocide was preventable. No one can say that we did not know. We knew, but did not act. Just as no one can say today that we do not know what is happening in the Congo. We know but we are not acting.

What is so necessary now is to articulate - and implement - an action plan including:

First, the UN Security Council must expedite the effective deployment of the reinforced UN peacekeeping force.

Second, the UN, EU and the African Union must join to bring the perpetrators of these war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice, lest the culture of impunity continue.

Third, the UN Human Rights Council must ensure that the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, focuses on human rights considerations in addition to diplomatic initiatives; In particular, taking into account the need for justice and responsibility to end the cycle of human rights violations.

Canada - in addition to joining in these international efforts - should institute its own initiatives, including enhancing our humanitarian assistance; helping to activate the Goma Peace Process, while calling on all armed groups to abide by the cease-fire agreement; ensuring corporate accountability in our mining operations in the DRC; revisiting and revising our decision not to include the Congo in the Global Peace and Security Fund priority countries list; supporting the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) Joint Initiative Against Sexual Violence; and implementing the recommendations made by the 2002 Report of the Sub-Committee on Human Rights and International Development (which I chaired) by sounding the alarm on these horrors - and galvanizing the international community to act.

Irwin Cotler is a Canadian MP and former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of Canada. He is Professor of Law (on leave) from McGill University. He was the chair of the Save Darfur Parliamentary Coalition in the last Parliament.