Africa: Post-conflict Stabilisation

Lord Bishop of Winchester Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Winchester]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on getting this debate and on his perseverance over Questions, oral and written, on this region of Africa. It is a privilege to follow those who have spoken. The debate is timely not only because the DRC is celebrating 50 years of independence—celebrating, noting, whatever word may seem appropriate—but because there will be elections there next year, or at least we trust that they will happen. There are elections currently in Burundi, with a variety of difficulties attending them. There will be elections next year in Uganda and Kenya. Both places are much more fragile than is often realised in this country at a time when political space is narrowing right across the region in very worrying ways.

I come to this debate fresh from two recent experiences. On this day last week I had the privilege as an office holder, like the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes, of chairing a round table on the DRC 50 years after independence and its prospects for stability, with people from Congo itself, a human rights lawyer from Goma, people from the Foreign Office, DfID and NGOs, and academics. It was not at all an encouraging three hours. After Easter, I had eight days in the DRC in and around Bunia in the east, with Congolese from all over the country.

My contribution to your Lordships’ debate will focus primarily on the DRC but necessarily, as the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, and other speakers have noted, also on the region and the international level. It is important to realise that the breadth of international engagement in the region every year—British, European and other diplomacy—must grow. “International” means not only the region but South Africa, the Middle East, Malaysia, China, South Korea, India and Brazil, as well as the EU and the US. My strong sense, and that of others who work in the region much more than I do, is that there is an urgent need for a much tougher, more front-foot diplomatic effort by Her Majesty’s Government and a range of allies if the major financial commitments of the British Government through DfID are to be fully useful.

Nothing in the Foreign Secretary’s recent tour d’horizons of Foreign Office commitments noted the critical character of this region for peace more widely in Africa and elsewhere, or of British diplomacy. Yes, the 2004 Africa report was the work of the previous Government, but it was significant. They had lost sight of it, and I fear that the present Government have as well. The reality is that if roads, financial investment, education, employment, health, justice, and working financial and commercial systems are ever to appear in the DRC, then security and the confidence of the people must be right at the fore. That is largely a diplomatic question that requires quite fresh levels of diplomatic energy. Security and confidence are of course dependent on regional peace, as well as on the efforts of the Kinshasa Government. Their efforts are barely discernible anywhere in the country outside Kinshasa.

We must also understand that significant areas of the DRC are not yet post-conflict. A survey conducted by Oxfam in April this year showed that 60 per cent of the people in the Kivus in eastern Congo judged their security levels as markedly worse than last year. That figure is much higher among women in that area. Congo is 176th out of 179 on the Humanitarian Development Index. It is not remotely near reaching any of the millennium development goals.

As has been noted, a growing range of military groups are raping, looting, mutilating and killing. People cannot work the land or get to market if it is simply not safe. That is true for all ages and both genders, but it is obviously especially dangerous for women and children. Others have spoken of the LRA in the north. In spite of recent US legislation and US training of the Ugandan army, the situation remains very serious right across northern Congo, Southern Sudan and the Central African Republic.

A recent meeting of church leaders and government representatives from Southern Sudan, northern Congo and Uganda pressed Governments to take the security of their people more seriously. The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, mentioned real difficulties in the UN operations, both in northern Congo, where they are barely represented, and in Southern Sudan. There are difficulties co-ordinating their mandates across the borders.

The wars in the east are still extremely serious. All the neighbouring powers still have fingers of one kind or another in the pie in north-eastern Congo. Looming over the region is the Rwandan genocide and what many people in Congo see as the British Government’s still bland sense of approval of Rwanda and extreme difficulty in noting where critical things need to be said of Rwanda. That goes down really very badly in eastern Congo.

The FDLR is still there. For most people, it is not now really a threat to Rwanda, but it is still a source of profound threat to local people. Its leaders, whether in Congo, elsewhere in the region, Europe or North America, are still hard at it exploiting minerals and gaining land. A range of other groups, the failure of the wars of the past years and a chaotic lack of discipline in the national army all make for fearful effects on hundreds of thousands of people.

There are those who say that the decreasing political space in Rwanda is again forcing people across the border back into Congo and with a renewed political commitment to the wars in eastern Congo. Still fuelling Congo’s present want of stability is the almost completely uncontrolled exploitation of Congo’s immeasurably rich mineral, forest and now oil resources. Now, as variously since 1994, these are in the hands of armed groups and are beyond the reach of the Government, fuelling violence and misery. We need a quite fresh regional and diplomatic energy as well as energy on the part of the UK Government in relation to UK-based or part-UK commercial mineral enterprises. There is an urgent requirement for a much greater level of insistence on due diligence regarding provenance, supply chains, and end smelters and end users. “Blood diamonds” gained currency as a term in Sierra Leone, but Congo has blood diamonds, blood tin, blood gold, blood coltan in our phones, blood timber, and now blood oil. All these things largely bypass anything remotely beginning to resemble a tax system in Congo. Some of them are flown straight out, not even going to the Congolese comptoir, to elsewhere in the region, the Middle East, South Africa, Malaysia, Europe or North America.

The question for the British Government is how these questions can be worked at with fresh diplomatic energy in the region and more widely. The Congolese Government and others—understandably, as independent Governments—are resistant to being told what to do. On the other hand, this Government and other European Governments have significant levers. If DfID’s investment is to be safeguarded, front-foot Foreign Office work is essential.

The noble Lords, Lord Chidgey and Lord Sheikh, and others have mentioned the 2006 pact on security, stability and development that was ratified in 2008. It says all the right things; the question is whether those who signed it can be encouraged to take some notice of it, reread it and work at it. Then there is the matter of bringing local and international people—financial and commercial actors as well as Governments—to look to the needs and welfare of the people.

The noble Baroness, Lady Cox, made a point about both the CSAR and northern Uganda. There is a need for a particular and fresh, cross-cutting emphasis on children at every point in these diplomatic and DfID enterprises, because it is on children that future security, education, health and long-term stability depend. The questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, are of critical urgency for all the reasons mentioned, especially in those parts where it is not yet possible to speak of post-conflict; and because those who know this region well seem to be extremely anxious that, right across from Congo to Kenya, conflict may be reappearing, and may reappear more in the next year or two.