Public statements made by the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, MONUC, have been the subject of much controversy in recent months. On October 28, a group of international agencies focusing on protection sent a letter to the top UN official in the country, Alan Doss. In the letter they criticized the tone of the last Secretary-General’s report on MONUC which they said minimized the humanitarian crisis ongoing in the east of the country. Although Refugees International was not involved in this letter, my colleague Erin Weir and I raised the issue of optimistic language with senior MONUC management on our recent trip to Congo last month.
It’s a common view within MONUC that since the mission is subject to such harsh criticism they need to champion some of their own successes or nobody else will. This is most likely true. Although some criticism of MONUC is certainly justified, on RI’s last few trips to the DR Congo [1] we noticed that antagonism towards the peacekeeping mission from many in the humanitarian community has risen significantly. Because of the UN’s involvement in ongoing government military operations against rebel groups, hyper-criticism was at fever pitch and constructive engagement by some humanitarian actors, unfortunately, was on the decline.
In interpreting facts and events in eastern DR Congo, where you stand still appears to depend on where you sit. For example, news of massive returns of internally displaced people from camps around Goma this summer was welcomed by MONUC as a sign of stability. Yet, it was also met with a high degree of suspicion and discomfort (though not publicly) by many humanitarian actors who feared that these returns were manipulated by the government to show military success.
I think the real question is whether MONUC’s attempt to portray its successes is having an impact on all of our efforts to end the conflict in the DRC. There is genuine concern that too much optimism may lead the UN Security Council to declare “mission accomplished” in the Congo, so that it can move on to other more pressing matters. Some of the most serious conflict drivers in the DRC have not even begun to be dealt with by the international community in a meaningful way. By this I mean corruption, the involvement of the Congolese military in the mining sector, the inability and unwillingness of the Congolese government to genuinely reform the security sector and the failure to really address toxic ethnic and land tensions in the eastern part of the country. Unless these things are addressed, I see little cause for such optimism that the situation in the Congo will improve significantly in the long run.
At the same time, an all-too-common mistake is to believe that MONUC should shoulder the burden of addressing all of these underlying problems. As international governments often provide largely technical assistance interventions in governance and Security Sector Reform, MONUC is somehow expected to do the political work of the international community, by struggling to force unwelcome reforms on the Congolese government without upsetting them. At the same time, individual member states look the other way while protecting their separate bilateral relations and interests in the Congo. It is no surprise that this hasn’t resulted in significant improvements in sensitive areas.
Yes, some genuine successes in the Congo have been achieved over the years, but the underlying problems remain. Although MONUC can not be expected to resolve all of these problems, they have an extremely vital role to play. They are on the front lines of the international community’s work in the country. If there are danger signs ahead, MONUC needs to be the first one to say so, and unequivocally.