This week, the governments of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) signed a Tripartite Agreement, setting the stage to help more than 50,000 Congolese refugees return home after living in camps in Rwanda.  

Since the creation of the Ken and Darcy Bacon Center for the Study of Climate Displacement, I’ve thought about how displacement caused by climate change fits with the long-term focus of Refugees International -- to advocate for solutions to displacement crises caused by conflicts. 

This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of speaking about my work with Refugees International on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the first ever Westport Circle event.

Organized by two young, energetic and passionate friends of RI, Peter Finlay and Sefra Levin, the event brought together more than 65 people from the Westport, CT and New York City areas to spend an evening learning more about RI and how they can support our work.

I last visited Mwenga in February 2009. At the time, we went there to see how people would be impacted if the Rwandan and Congolese militaries expanded their operations against the FDLR rebel group into South Kivu.    

In February, people in Mwenga told us that they were very scared about these joint operations. There is a large presence of FDLR in Mwenga territory and people said that any operations against the rebel group would certainly jeopardize their own security. People were also scared of the Rwandan army returning to the area given its history of past abuses against the local population there. They told us, “if we flee, we don’t know where we’d go, because in the forest is the FDLR who have threatened to attack us, and in town will be the Rwandan military who have targeted us in the past.”

When my colleague Erin Weir and I visited refugee camps in eastern Chad this past May, we heard repeated concerns of child recruitment by armed groups, including both rebel groups and the Chadian National forces.  This was a particular issue in the Oure Cassoni camp near Bahai.

Oure Cassoni lies very close to the border with Sudan, a fact that has long worried many of the organizations that work there, since it has led to problems within the camp related to the presence of armed groups – in particular, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). 

Two years ago I tried to visit Darfur to conduct an assessment mission with Refugees International, but was blocked from traveling there by the government of Sudan.  Now, on the other side of the border in eastern Chad, I’m finally getting a chance to speak with people from Darfur, forced to flee their homes because of the conflict in the western part of Sudan.

It’s happened again.  The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is off of the international radar screen, despite the fact that violence and displacement continue.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over this past weekend.

His visit comes at a time when the security situation on the ground is quickly changing. 

In January, CNDP rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, responsible for the violent upsurge in fighting in the fall that displaced 250,000 people, was arrested in Rwanda.  Following his arrest, the Rwandan national army entered North Kivu province to conduct joint operations with the Congolese national army against the FDLR rebel group.  The Rwandans, claiming that the operations had been a success, pulled out their troops days before Ban arrived in the DRC.

The last time I visited North Kivu was in April 2008.  Things were relatively calm then following the signing of the Goma agreement earlier that year.  Although armed groups were continuing to violate the ceasefire, humanitarian access was fairly good, particularly in Rutshuru, where several official displacement camps had been established, as well as a swelling number of spontaneous displacement sites along the road.

Nine months later, everything has changed.

This past fall, rebels led by dissident general Laurent Nkunda took Rutshuru during a violent escalation in fighting. In its wake, the fighting left an estimated 250,000 people newly displaced, pushing the number of displaced people in North Kivu to over one million. 

Sean and I just returned from our mission to Bangladesh and Malaysia, where we focused on the situation for Burmese Rohingya refugees in both countries.  I last conducted an assessment mission to Malaysia in April 2007.