UNITED NATIONS - / MaximsNews Network / 22 September 2008 --The agreement reached last week in the DR Congo has failed to stop the fighting between government troops (FARDC) and the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), which has been ongoing since August. The UN and other international observers have said that the violence contravenes the Actes d’engagement set out in January.

In recent days the UN Mission in the DR Congo (MONUC) has been involved in clashes near Kimoka as a result of FARDC soldiers establishing themselves in the vicinity. Also in the area, there has been conflict near Sake, located about 20 kilometers from Goma, in Kirotshe, and in Mayi-Mayi. This region, the province of North Kivu , has been a center of the renewed fighting.

Over the weekend, MONUC has dispatched peacekeepers to eastern DR Congo, to the provinces of Ituri and Orientale. Along with them were also Congolese federal troops. They were sent to the area following attacks on noncombatants by the opposition Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).  

The group also was responsible for the kidnapping of 90 students, 50 in Kiliwa from an elementary school there and another 40 from a secondary school in Duru. They struck in three towns on the same day, all in the Orientale province. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said today that they must be let go right away and without restrictions.  

The LRA is also reportedly responsible for the deaths of three noncombatants and the abduction of a village leader and two Italian missionaries. It also set fire to home, leaving just a single structure intact in Kiliwa and driving the population out and to neighboring Dungu. The LRA has also been attacking health facilities.

The local government says that it thinks the children are being held in forest in the area where the LRA has set up centers. The group has been seizing children for the last twenty-five years for use in its army. Although its forces are usually concentrated in southern Sudan or in the DRC, the LRA has been waging an ongoing campaign against federal troops in northern Uganda . The group and the Ugandan government have now made a number of accords and an end to the fighting between them may be near.

Julien Harneis, UNICEF chief of field operations in the eastern DRC, told the international community that, “UNICEF is very concerned that they will now be forced to fight or support fighting, putting their lives at risk” and made clear that UNICEF considers the kidnapping a crime against humanity. It says it is worried that violence will be necessary to free the children.

The ongoing violence in the DR Congo has not been affected by the disengagement proposals outlined by MONUC and accepted last week by Congolese leadership. The Secretary-General praised this step late last week and said the government should cooperate with MONUC to put its provisions into place. Ban Ki-Moon has further called on the CNDP and other opposition groups to join in the disengagement strategy as well.

One positive development is that the Congolese government is creating commissions that will adjudicate rapes and humanitarian violations among federal troops and will be set up in each military region of the country. They will be lead by both members of the army and from MONUC. International organizations report that such violations are prevalent throughout the eastern part of the country.

Alpha Sow, the head of MONUC in Goma, explained that “MONUC’s mission here is to support every effort to protect the population, particularly women and children.” He added, “Our support for these committees is unconditional.”

--- Caroline Patton

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