Showing posts from category development.
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Rape, Resource Management, and the UN in Congo: What Can Be Done?
›Rape as a weapon of war is not unique to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but the scope and degree to which it occurs in this part of the world, especially in the resource-rich eastern provinces – an epicenter of violence during the war – is alarming and unprecedented.
Walikale, the site of a recent scourge of rapes and violence is not unlike several other cities and villages in the Kivus and in the DRC in general. Rich in both tin and gold, Walikale is beset by a convergence of several opposing military factions: the rebel Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple, (CNDP), whose members have supposedly been reintegrated into the official Congolese army; the FARDC, who have been accused of crimes as egregious as those committed by rebel armies; the Rwandan FDLR; Tutsi rebel factions; and numerous other smaller rebel groups and non-Congolese military groups.
The raping of more than 300 women, children, and men that occurred between July 31 and August 2 in the area of Walikale and the village of Ruvungi has made international news headlines and caused an uproar about the role and responsibilities of the United Nation mission in the DRC – MONUSCO (formerly MONUC) – and their capacity to actually keep the peace. UN peacekeepers, stationed about 30 kilometers away from the attacks, were reportedly aware of rebel activity in the area, but were not aware of the mass raping until after the crimes had been committed. Officials went on a fact-finding mission several days later once the rapes were reported by the International Medical Corps. Some, however, argue that officials should have acted differently, dispatching peacekeepers to the Walikale area as soon as they were made aware of rebel activity.
UN workers and other international organizations may have known about the rapes while they were occurring, and in retrospect the international community can criticize their inaction during the perpetration of this massive atrocity, but there are larger questions that loom: Why has the DRC become the “rape capital of the world?” And what can we do to enable UN peacekeeping forces to actually keep the peace?
More than two months after these crimes were perpetrated, rapes are no doubt still occurring across the region. The UN has declared that militias will be charged for the crimes in Walikale, arrests have already been made, and there are people doing good work to help the victims of sexual crimes after the fact. But despite these efforts and the ongoing presence of MONUSCO and efforts to integrate and train the FARDC as a legitimate army that protects the citizens of the country, sexual violence against civilians, and especially against women, has continued at an outrageous level.
The mandate of MONUSCO, carried over in part from its predecessor, MONUC, is to both protect civilians and backstop the efforts of the FARDC – a sometimes conflicting mandate. Designed to keep the peace and monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement, to “facilitate humanitarian assistance and human rights monitoring, with particular attention to vulnerable groups including women, children and demobilized child soldiers” (emphasis added), the UN mission has clearly not been able to successfully fulfill this mandate, even after almost 12 years on the ground. While the UN charter does not explicitly include the word “peacekeeping,” and there are those who argue that it is not properly structured to act as a peacekeeping body, the UN has more than 60 peacekeeping missions under its belt since its first mission in 1948 and the DRC is its largest ever. Still, the weak record of success of MONUC and of its successor MONUSCO together with the unreliability of the FARDC does not inspire confidence for the safety or security of civilians in the DRC.
Why the rapes continue and why neither MONUSCO nor the Congolese authorities are unable to stop them are complicated questions. Explanations range from political complications preventing peacekeepers from becoming involved in day-to-day human security to a simple lack of mission resources. The rapes in Walikale occurred in an area with abundant tin deposits and some of the largest gold mines in the country. The DRC, and the east in particular, is ripe with resources, and historically, underdeveloped regions characterized by such a heavy concentration of natural resources are often more cursed than they are blessed. The competition over resources and violence spurred by an unequal distribution of rents is perhaps part of the reason for such intense violence; it does not, however, explain why rape has become a weapon of choice, why women have become a target of war crimes in general, or why the level of violence against women in the DRC in particular has risen to such a horrifying level.
Justine Lindemann is program assistant with the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
Sources: AFP, AFRICOM, AllAfrica, BBC, Congo Siasa, IPS News, The New York Times, Panzi Hospital of Bukavu, UN, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, VII Photo Agency.
Photo Credit: “Congo kivu,” courtesy of flickr user andré thiel. -
Assessing Our Impact on the World’s Rivers
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In a special “Rivers in Crisis” issue of Nature, the lead article, “Global Threats to Human Water Security and River Biodiversity,” presents damning evidence that manipulation of river systems — through the construction of canals, levees, hydroelectric projects, and other infrastructure — has caused serious and lasting biological damage to watersheds throughout both the developing and developed worlds. The authors (all 11 of them!) report that key rivers have become shadows of their former selves in terms of the amount of aquatic life they can support. Without drastically improved stewardship of waterways, “we are pushing these river systems toward catastrophe,” warns Peter McIntyre, an article co-author.The human impact on the world’s river systems will be hard to reverse, says Margaret Palmer, author of a second Nature article on freshwater biodiversity loss, “Beyond Infrastructure.” Human-induced changes to watersheds affect local hydrology at a fundamental level, she contends, weakening rivers’ ability to deliver crucial “ecological goods and services” — such as clean water and nutrient-rich sediment loads — that help maintain the health of local environments and the human populations that depend on them. To fully understand the scope of the problem, Palmer says more research is needed to explore the linkages between biodiversity levels and “ecosystem services” that healthy rivers provide. -
Barbara Crossette on UNFPA State of the World Population 2010 Report
›“Particularly when you go into a society that’s been broken by war or conflict or is so impoverished that is has nowhere to start climbing up, there have to be integrated programs and they have to work with people in mind,” said former New York Times foreign correspondent Barbara Crossette in an interview with The New Security Beat. “The people themselves will solve a lot of the problems around them if they’re just given the tools to do so.”
Crossette is one of the lead authors of the UN Population Fund’s latest State of the World Population Report, “From Conflict and Crisis to Renewal: Generations of Change,” set to launch this Wednesday, October 20th. She spoke to us particularly about the challenges of women around the world and the unique storytelling aspect of this year’s report.
The “Pop Audio” series offers brief clips from ECSP’s conversations with experts around the world, sharing analysis and promoting dialogue on population-related issues. Also available on iTunes. -
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Council on Foreign Relations
MDGs for Women Largely Unmet
›October 15, 2010 // By Wilson Center Staff
Excerpt from a First Take by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon at the Council on Foreign Relations:
Ten years after global leaders vowed to work toward eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality, and more, the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – particularly those relating to women – remain a distant hope. Though women were a focus of much discussion this week at the MDG summit in New York, the forward movement so far has been discouraging on the two MDGs directly relating to women: “promoting gender equality and empowering women” and “reducing by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio.”
An MDG report released in June noted that when it comes to women, “progress has been sluggish on all fronts – from education to access to political decision-making.”While progress has been made on girls’ primary school enrollment, only three of ten regions are on track regarding women’s share of paid employment. The figure is even bleaker concerning women’s equal representation in national parliaments.
Data is still being collected, but early figures show the maternal mortality ratio reduction rate is “well short” of the 5.5 percent annual decline required to slash global maternal mortality by the MDGs’ stated 75 percent. Data from 1990 shows 430 maternal deaths per one hundred thousand live births. As of 2008, that figure had dropped only slightly to four hundred deaths per one hundred thousand live births, nowhere near the goal of below 150.
Continue reading at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Untitled,” courtesy of flickr user :Bron:. -
Welcome Back, Roger-Mark: A Powerful Voice Returns to PHE
›October 13, 2010 // By Geoffrey D. Dabelko“I’m thrilled to be back.” That was the sentiment that Roger-Mark De Souza relayed to me, in his famous lilting baritone, about becoming the new vice president of research and director of the climate program at Population Action International (PAI). De Souza has long been a leading voice on integrated development programs that feature population, health, and environmental (PHE) dimensions. But three years as the Sierra Club’s director of foundations and corporate relations took him away from day-to-day work on these issues.
In his new posts, Roger-Mark will lead PAI’s research team in establishing a strong evidence base and engaging new allies in the effort to support healthier women and families, according to PAI. “Roger-Mark’s diverse research experience makes him an ideal fit for PAI as we undertake critical projects on reproductive health, population and environment issues,” said PAI President and CEO Suzanne Ehlers in a press release.PAI is a research-based advocacy NGO long known for innovative work connecting demographic considerations with other key development realms: mainly environment, security, and poverty. PAI’s policy-friendly briefs on population’s links with water, forests, and biodiversity provide practical meta-analysis of these complex and evolving connections. The organization’s more recent work on demographic security has been instrumental in advancing research and policy in that largely neglected arena.
De Souza captured his insights last year for our Focus series, in his brief, “The Integration Imperative – How to Improve Development Programs by Linking Population, Health, and Environment” (see also his follow-up interview on NSB). He combines lessons learned from community-based development efforts in Southeast Asia and East Africa with a savvy sense of the policy debates among donors and recipient countries alike.
This move reunites De Souza with Kathleen Mogelgaard, with whom he made key contributions to the PHE field as colleagues at Population Reference Bureau earlier this decade, and who is now Senior Advisor for Population, Gender, and Climate at PAI.
De Souza returns to his former focus on PHE issues at a time when the field is collectively searching for the best ways to respond to the challenges of climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as ongoing hurdles such as scaling up, sustainability, and labeling. -
The “Condom King” speaks at TEDxChange on Poverty Reduction and a “9th MDG”
›“We have now found the weapon of mass protection,” said Mechai Viravaidya (a.k.a. the “Condom King”) at the recent TEDxChange event in New York. Viravaidya is the founder and chairman of the Population and Community Development Association and a former senator of Thailand. He spoke about his innovative approaches to addressing Thailand’s once high rates of poverty, child mortality, and HIV through the promotion of family planning and condom use.
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Rare Earths Wake-Up, Aid Shocks, and the “Securitization” Distraction
›October 8, 2010 // By Geoffrey D. DabelkoHere are some useful links to environment, population, and security work that recently crossed my desk.
• China’s willingness to cut exports of rare earth elements to Japan over its East China Sea dispute woke up the larger world to the heavy dependency on China for supplying these key inputs into the modern (and green, in particular) industrial economy. Chinese attempts to take back their shot across the bow are bound to fail, as illustrated by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke’s call for the G20 to guarantee rare earth access, Wednesday at the Wilson Center.
• The National Geographic headline, “Replacing Oil Addiction With Metals Dependence?” raises another key long-term question, explored in detail on NSB in several previous posts.• “Aid Shocks Likely Cause Armed Conflict,” is the provocative title on a post from the new blog AidData. The post summarizes a forthcoming scholarly piece in the American Political Science Review that suggests cutting-off foreign assistance (what the author team calls an “aid shock”) significantly increases the likelihood of violent conflict.
• Dan Smith, Secretary-General of the UK-based NGO International Alert, has multiple nuggets in his latest riff, “From the UK gov’t, a good message on development and peace.” Like the Global Dashboard post I mentioned last week, Smith uses the recent speech by UK Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell as his foil. The MDGs aren’t the sum total of development and a new narrative is needed. “Securitization” is a distraction that should be put to rest, and integration and focus on conflict-affected countries are the centerpiece of a welcome new narrative coming out of London.
• Finally, Wilson Center President and Director Lee Hamilton is stepping down this fall after twelve years heading the Center. His time at the Center comes after 34 years as a Congressman from Indiana. Lee’s departure has engendered numerous profiles; this one in Foreign Policy is one of the best. -
Google Data Maps Development Indicators
›If you have not had the (purely wonky) pleasure of playing with Google’s Public Data Explorer, do yourself a favor and direct your browser there now.
Born from Hans Rosling’s Gapminder, Google’s data explorer currently allows the user to choose from 24 different data sets, including information from the World Bank, U.S. Census Bureau, Eurostat, and Energy Information Agency. Users can then customize the dataset’s variables, save their work, and even embed the resulting chart, “unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact-based world view,” as the Gapminder site puts it.
The example dataset above uses development indicators from the World Bank to show areas of the world where high fertility rate and heavy reliance on subsistence agriculture have persisted over time. It’s worth noting that many of the countries in the upper right of the graph are also where we find persistent conflict, and, if one accepts the predictions that Africa will see some of the most profound effects of climate change, they also face real risk of continuing instability as declining crop yields threaten livelihoods and population growth continues.
