Eastern Congo

In their forthcoming book, The Enough Moment, John Prendergast and Don Cheadle present the stories of celebrities, activists and survivors who have dedicated their lives to advocating for human rights in Africa. It all begins with an "Enough Moment" -- an experience in your life when you realize you have to stand up, speak out, and organize with others on vital human rights issues in Africa.

The book hits stores Sept. 7, but you don’t have to wait to share your own Enough Moment. We’re interested in hearing your story now, so we’re gathering video versions of personal Enough Moments.

Just begin the video by introducing yourself: Tell us your name, where you live, and what you do. In three minutes or less, describe how you are involved in fighting for human rights in Africa, and the moment in your life that prompted you to take action.

Most importantly, be yourself. Film your video in a simple, natural environment. It's just you, on camera, sharing your story.

Want to see an example? Here's Enough's own Mari Wright sharing her Enough Moment.

When you're finished with your video, upload it to YouTube with the tag "enoughmoment." Please title it “[your name]’s Enough Moment.” For example, John would title his video “John Prendergast’s Enough Moment.” Finally, email the link to us at yourmoment@enoughproject.org.

Later this summer, we'll be launching a special Web site, www.enoughmoment.org, where your video will appear alongside other Enough Moments from celebrities, activists, and survivors.

To learn more about the book and to pre-order your own copy, click here.

Thank you, and we look forward to hearing about your Enough Moment.

• Advocacy
• Africa
• Conflict Minerals
• Darfur and Southern Sudan
• Eastern Chad
• Eastern Congo
• Genocide
• Northern Uganda
• Peace
• Prevention
• Protection
• Punishment
• Sexual Violence
• Violence Against Women
• War Crimes

The Brookings Institution has published a podcast from last week’s event about Africa’s two biggest wars – Congo and Sudan. Brookings senior fellow Michael O’Hanlon moderated a panel featuring Enough’s John Prendergast, Congo expert Tony Gambino, and Mwangi Kimenyi of Brookings’ Africa Growth Initiative. Listen to the full event here.

Below we’ve summed up some of the key takeaways from the speakers.

The event started off with John Prendergast’s remarks on Sudan, with an emphasis on the Obama administration’s current handling of the Darfur peace process and negotiations on North-South issues. He described the current efforts underway – coordinated by African Union and United Nations mediators – to build a peace process for Darfur and work with the northern and southern governments to prepare for the referendum in the South and make post-referendum arrangements to ensure that the two sides do not slide back to full-scale war. The U.S. government has surprisingly taken a back-seat role, even though the history of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement provides evidence of the value of having the United States lead a group of countries willing to exert pressure on the Sudanese parties. Here’s that explanation:

We have a successful model in peacemaking in Sudan and that is the CPA, the 2005 North/South deal in which African nations led the peace process with a single mediator who had the confidence of the parties, a general from Kenya, and the United States and a few other countries provided very, very close diplomatic support on the ground 24/7 for a 3-year peace process. This doesn’t happen – you know, people fly in for three days and think they can make any kind of progress. You’ve got to be on the ground, on the ground for a long period of time to get gradual shifts in the tectonic plates that are required to align for the possibility of a peace deal. And so, we don’t have any of that. We’re walking away from the one successful model that exists for peacemaking in Sudan.

Prendergast went on to describe an alternate approach, which hinges on high-level engagement from key Obama administration officials.

Tony Gambino, a longtime Congo expert and former USAID mission director there, took the stage next and discussed the increased instability and violence since Congo’s landmark election in 2006. A number of missteps by the international community, carried out by the U.N. peacekeeping force, have not only failed to curb atrocities by armed militia groups; with tacit U.S. support, U.N. peacekeepers backed the Congolese army in a military operation that resulted in the death and displacement of thousands of civilians. The Congolese army itself is as “notoriously abusive” as the armed groups that Congolese soldiers are meant to target, Gambino said. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for one has spoken out about these abuses by the Congolese army, but “nothing has changed.” He highlighted the lack of follow-through shown by the Obama administration:

U.S. policy today towards the Congo badly needs focus. Since [Secretary Clinton’s] trip [last August], the U.S. has sent team after team after team after team of Americans to the Congo to look at what to do. This has resulted in a tremendous amount of activity and things to report on, but is it making much of a difference? I have to say the pithiest critique I have found of the U.S. approach comes from a now-deceased college basketball coach. The legendary John Wooden was known for his aphorisms and I think this one captures the flaw in U.S. policy. “Never mistake activity for achievement.” We’ve seen lots and lots of activity, but we have very, very little to show in terms of any real, measurable, important achievements.

Mwangi Kimenyi commented on the regional implications of the conflicts in Sudan and Congo and suggested that these longstanding conflicts will leave a mark on President Obama’s legacy, in the way that Rwanda haunted President Clinton’s. But he emphasized the role that African countries must themselves play in resolving conflicts.

[Y]ou cannot win the wars in Congo or in Sudan with the United States. Even if the United States was going to enter there with all the military might, that’s not going to be winnable. You would have to work with the African Union, but particularly facilitating the United Nations.

I think where we have seen – and if you compare – look at the case of Liberia, for example. It’s really interventions by the African Union the Nigerian forces supported through the A.U. and U.N., and then through the U.N. itself. So, we have to get the African countries more committed to peace in their region (...)

Mike O’Hanlon’s follow-up questions and remarks from the audience led to other insightful remarks, so the full podcast is worth a listen.

Photo: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in eastern Congo, August 2009 (AP)

• Darfur and Southern Sudan
• Eastern Congo
• Prevention

This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.

Deep in the mountains that separate the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Rwanda, largely hidden from public view, a war has been raging for the past 14 years. In this gruesome conflict, rape is frequently the weapon of choice, and a wide array of armed groups with many different patrons fight mercilessly for control of mineral riches.

There is no easy solution to ending the war in Congo, which has claimed more than five million lives, making it the most lethal conflict since World War II. But the Wall Street reform legislation signed into law by President Obama includes a far-reaching provision designed to reduce the horrific violence. Building on the work of a coalition of a dozen major humanitarian organizations and industry pioneers, the bill establishes a new mechanism that will limit the ability of armed groups to profit from the illicit mining and sale of cassiterite, coltan, and wolframite and other "conflict minerals."

My colleagues and I have been working for months to pass this provision, and by partnering with the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, and several other key allies in the House and Senate, including Rep. McDermott and Senators Brownback, Dodd, Durbin, and Feingold, we were able to secure broad, bipartisan support for a requirement that companies doing business in the Congo and adjoining countries disclose both the provenance of the minerals they use and the efforts they have taken to ensure that their dollars do not directly or indirectly support armed groups that employ rape as a tool of war and otherwise perpetuate the conflict.

Let there be no mistake: this is only one critical step of many that must be taken to stop one of the world's longest running wars. But it is a major step.

To be effective, this action must be paired with other efforts. By companies, who will need to build on the work of peers who have already started to develop conflict-free supply chains for the minerals they use. By consumers, who will need to make conscientious choices about the products they buy. By regulators, who will need to ensure that the disclosure process is taken seriously, and that loopholes are not reopened. And by Congress, which will need to carefully monitor the effectiveness of the new mechanism, and take other steps to enhance the ability of the United States to work for peace in places like Congo.

Several of those efforts are currently under consideration in the Foreign Affairs Committee. One that is a particularly high priority for me would overhaul U.S. foreign assistance programs for the first time since 1961, thus enabling our nation to more effectively and efficiently target and deliver our aid dollars.

In these difficult economic times, it is sometimes hard to understand why we should care about what happens in faraway and largely forgotten places like the Congo. But in our increasingly globalized world, conflicts in even distant corners of the world can create ripple effects – from mass migrations and the spread of infectious disease, to deforestation and the depletion of other key natural resources – that impact the current and future well-being of Americans.

Despite the difficult challenges we face here at home, Americans are a generous and compassionate people. Our values compel us to fight injustice wherever it occurs, and to reduce the suffering of innocents. The men, women, and children of the Congo have endured unimaginable hardships for more than a dozen years, and it is time for us to act. The conflict minerals provision in the just-passed Wall Street reform bill is an important first step in changing the situation in that beleaguered country.

The author is the Democratic Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He represents the 28th District of California.

• Advocacy
• Conflict Minerals
• Eastern Congo
• Peace
• Prevention
• Protection
• Punishment
• Sexual Violence
• Violence Against Women

Working for an organization that has focused since its inception on drawing attention to conflicts that remain obscure to many Americans – despite being some of the world’s deadliest – it was remarkable to see Congo in so many prominent headlines recently.

One of the leading stories last week was of course President Obama’s signing of the Wall Street reform bill. But several news outlets delved into the 2,300-page bill and highlighted the provision that addresses the role that U.S. companies play in funding atrocities carried out by militias in eastern Congo.

In a front page story in The Washington Post, reporter Mary Beth Sheridan wrote about the impact the new law could have on thousands of U.S. companies:

"This is one of those issues that is below the radar for about 99.9 percent of Americans. . . . Everyone has their cellphone up against their ear, nobody is thinking of Congo or conflict minerals. But everybody's got some, potentially, right next to their ear," said Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), speaking recently at the Center for American Progress.

Although little noticed by the public, the provision in the regulatory bill could have a broad impact. It applies not only to electronics companies, which are major users of Congolese tantalum, but also to all publicly traded U.S. firms that use tin and gold.

"This is a law that is going to affect virtually the entire U.S. manufacturing sector," said Rick Goss, vice president of environment at the Information Technology Industry Council.

CNN’s The Situation Room also picked up the story and aired this segment by Mary Snow that features an interview with Enough’s John Prendergast and the viral “I’m a Mac” video by actress and activist Brooke Smith for the RAISE Hope for Congo campaign. (By the way, the video spoof now has an astounding 570,000 views.) Here’s the full clip:

One other prominent article was this analysis piece out of Kigali and Kinshasa by Reuters. Quotes from industry and mining interest groups in the region help illustrate the challenge ahead to ensure that the regulations enacted by the Securities Exchange Commission, the agency charged with devising the plan to implement the law, aren’t weakened by interests who benefit from Congo’s unregulated trade in minerals. Many of those groups seem to have quickly adopted the tactic of crying foul on behalf of the miners whose livelihoods depend on the minerals industry in eastern Congo.

On that point: In reality, of course, the well-being of miners in Congo is forefront on the minds of proponents of this new law. Across the board, from Congress, to advocacy organizations, to U.S. government agencies, to the Congolese government, people pushing for regulation of the mining industry in eastern Congo emphasize the importance of creating alternate employment opportunities and of working closely with industry leaders to ensure that the law doesn’t lead to a boycott. The status quo is far from defensible. The new law won’t be a silver bullet that ends the war in eastern Congo, but it is an important step that confronts some key components perpetuating the conflict: funding for armed groups and lack of Congolese government oversight.

The blogosphere too was abuzz with posts about the new conflict minerals law, culminating today with a post by Congo expert Jason Stearns. He summed up the various points of criticism raised in recent posts by writers critical of the law, and addressed them one by one. Stearns pointed out that while many issues need to be addressed to end the conflict in eastern Congo, regulating the supply chain for conflict minerals doesn’t preclude action on the host of other issues. He wrote:

Yes, I wish we could have greater engagement in strengthening the Congolese judiciary and police. I wish there could be meaningful land reform and that disputes over farming rights could be settled by expert mediators (UN Habitat is beginning to do this). I wish we could have transparent democratic institutions throughout the country. But none of those issues stand necessarily in contradiction with due diligence in the minerals trade. I can't tell you how often I have been in meetings with officials at the State Department, insisting that they help in security sector reform and in paying attention to the return of Congolese Tutsi refugees. Nothing much came of that. Now that we have a chance to help promote meaningful reform in the minerals trade, I think we should seize the opportunity.

• Advocacy
• Conflict Minerals
• Eastern Congo
• Peace
• Prevention
• Protection

Just a day after President Obama signed into law legislation that will demand U.S. companies to be transparent about the origins of certain minerals in their products, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed the U.S.’s support and efforts toward ending the conflict minerals trade, one that is contributing to ongoing violence and atrocities in eastern Congo. The secretary said of the situation in Congo:

“[T]he trade in ‘conflict minerals’…has funded a cycle of conflict there that has left more than 5 million people dead since 1998, displaced countless more, and spawned an epidemic of sexual and gender-based violence.”

The statement, a brief summary of the U.S.’s “holistic strategy” toward the deadly minerals trade since the issue hit Clinton’s agenda just a year ago, serves as a reminder of the long road ahead in fully ending the trade—one that will depend on the efforts of the Congolese government, neighboring governments, and the U.N. Security Council. It’s also evidence of the influence of the Congo advocacy movement, which rallied behind the conflict minerals legislation and pushed for Congress to act despite a challenging legislative climate. 

• Advocacy
• Conflict Minerals
• Eastern Congo

With President Obama’s signature, the highly anticipated bill on financial reform became law today, and with it, the United States also took a significant step to address the mineral trade fueling conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The financial regulation bill includes a provision requiring U.S. companies that import products containing certain minerals to file an annual report declaring whether they source their minerals from Congo or one of the nine surrounding countries, since much of Congo’s mineral wealth is smuggled out of the region through its neighbors. If a company declares that its supply chain passes through the region, it will have to report what steps it is taking to trace the origin of the minerals and ensure that its purchases don’t fund armed groups responsible for atrocities in eastern Congo.

While the provision doesn’t ban companies from importing conflict minerals into the United States, companies will have to publish this information on their websites. Consumers will then be able to choose which products to buy based on a company’s track record in Congo, not to mention give advocacy groups information to organize around.

“The consequence is a market-driven one. Consumers can make their choices,” said Rory Anderson of World Vision, quoted today in a front page story in The Washington Post. “Do they want their electronic products to be funding gang rape in central Africa? I don’t think most Americans would want that,” she said.

One of the key Congressional champions of conflict minerals legislation is Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA). The Conflict Minerals Trade Act, which he co-sponsored last year with Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf (R), was a precursor to today’s law. “Making something like this happen in Washington, D.C. in this climate (…) you don’t understand how difficult it is (to do) what we were trying to do,” said McDermott this morning at an event he hosted for advocacy organizations, to recognize the success made possible by the collective effort of advocates in Congress and in the grassroots movement active across the country. Both the congressman and Enough’s John Prendergast, who spoke at the gathering, praised the indispensable work of activists who kept up the pressure on their elected officials to move the bill through Congress. Here’s a clip:

Congressman McDermott is one of a bipartisan group of representatives and senators who pushed Congress to take action on an important element driving the decade-long war in Congo that is marked by atrocious human rights crimes, including an epidemic of rape. Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Russ Feingold (D-WI), Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA), and Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Chairmen Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Barney Frank (D-MA), who ushered the bill through both houses of Congress deserve special praise for taking a major step to ending the neglected conflict in eastern Congo.

With the news last week that the Senate had passed the financial reform bill, sending it to President Obama’s desk, the Congolese government issued a statement commending the U.S. Congress for its effort to help Congo tackle an issue that has long plagued its eastern region. Translated from its original French version, the statement said that the bill helps address the sensitive topic of blood minerals “while reinforcing our commitment to develop responsible business practices that allow our people to make real dividends from resources in the soil and below the ground of the Republic.”

Now that the bill is signed, the Securities and Exchange Commission has nine months to devise the regulations to implement the law. Industry groups attempted to gut the conflict minerals language from the draft bill, and they will surely fight hard to water down the provision at this stage.

There’s a long road ahead, no doubt littered with ploys by those who currently benefit from the trade in conflict minerals. But consensus is clearly building around the belief that cutting off militias in eastern Congo from a key source of funding is good not just for Congolese civilians and the Congolese government, but also for U.S. consumers and companies that prioritize social responsibility.

• Advocacy
• Conflict Minerals
• Eastern Congo
• Prevention
• Protection

The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will host a panel tomorrow, July 20 on U.S. policy toward Sudan and Congo. Enough’s John Prendergast will participate. The event will take place in the Falk Auditorium at Brookings from 4-5:30.

Here are the invitation and the details:

Over the last two decades, no wars anywhere in the world have been more deadly than those in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan. As the DRC celebrates the 50th anniversary of its independence, its seemingly endless war continues, fueled in part by corrupt governance. Sudan also faces the ongoing conflict in Darfur and, potentially, a bigger war across the south in the run-up to southern Sudan’s independence referendum six months from now. It is a critical time for U.S. policy.

On July 20, the Brookings Institution will host John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project and co-author of the forthcoming book The Enough Moment (Random House, 2010) for a discussion of the ongoing conflicts in the DRC and Sudan. Anthony Gambino, former USAID mission director for the DRC, and Senior Fellow Mwangi Kimenyi of the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings, will also join the discussion. Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon, who served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the DRC, will moderate the panel.

After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

• Advocacy
• Darfur and Southern Sudan
• Eastern Congo
• Peace
• Prevention
• Protection
• Sudan Now

Enough researchers in eastern Congo and southern Sudan sent two new field dispatches that are up on our website now. With these two short reports, we welcome and introduce Enough Said readers to Fidel Bafilemba, our new researcher based in Goma in the eastern Congo. We also mark the departure of Maggie Fick from the Enough team. Her regular updates and insightful analysis from Juba have given us all a valuable glimpse into southern Sudan at a historic moment. We will miss her greatly.

From eastern Congo, Fidel explores the land controversies that are being exacerbated by or cropping up as a result of the ongoing return of refugees to North Kivu province. He writes:

"The return of Congolese refugees from neighboring Rwanda remains a particularly contentious issue here in North Kivu, eastern Congo. (…) I recently traveled to some of the areas where displaced people are settling, and spoke to people closely involved in refugee returns in the region. This dispatch presents a closer look at some of the patterns of returns and specific types of land disputes that have emerged during the past months, and their potential to further destabilize the region."

In particular, Fidel highlights the parallel administration run by the former rebel group CNDP, which is giving some displaced people the peace of mind to return home but creating tension among many others. Read the dispatch here.

From Juba, Maggie describes some of the challenges that the Government of Southern Sudan is facing with six months to go until the January referendum, which is widely expected to yield an independent South. The dispatch describes three distinct uprisings that have occurred in southern Sudan since the April elections that question the authority of the Juba government and state-level leadership. “Aside from the threat of violence these rebellions pose, what is perhaps most alarming is that the southern government, led by the ruling SPLM party, and the SPLA itself, have proved incapable of resolving them, either politically or militarily,” Maggie writes.

Increasingly repressive behavior by the SPLM and the army have also marked the post-election period. Maggie reports:

“A recent Enough research trip to Bentiu, the capital of Unity state, found that state government officials view political opposition, both during the elections and currently, as a crime against the state—an attitude that motivates the heavy-handed approach the SPLM/A has adopted against dissidents.”

The southern ruling party maintains broad support as southerners await the chance to vote for unity or independence in January. But regardless of the outcome of the referendum in relation to the South’s ties to the North, the fact is that these pressing internal tensions in the South aren’t going to suddenly disappear. Read Maggie’s dispatch here.

• Darfur and Southern Sudan
• Eastern Congo

Nominations are out for the 62nd annual Emmy Awards, and Enough is thrilled and honored to learn that the Congo Gold episode of CBS’ “60 Minutes” was nominated for television’s biggest award of the year. The Enough team in Washington and in Africa’s Great Lakes region collaborated with “60 Minutes” producers Solly Granatstein and Nicole Young and correspondent Scott Pelley to research and shoot the documentary. Enough Co-founder John Prendergast and our newest addition to the field team – eastern Congo researcher Fidel Bafilemba – both appear in the piece.

In consultation with Enough and Human Rights Watch, the “60 Minutes” crew investigated the trail of Congo’s conflict gold from rebel-held mines through Uganda and on to U.S. consumers. They also captured footage illustrating the conditions in gold mines, where children as young as 11 work to pull the valuable metal out of the earth. Watch the segment:
 

CBS also featured an extended interview with John Prendergast and this collection of photos by Enough consultant Sasha Lezhnev.

Since it aired last November, the Congo Gold segment has proved to be an important resource for spreading the word about the conflict in eastern Congo and the role of the minerals trade in fueling the fighting. It helped galvanize the growing movement of Congo advocates across the United States, and provided a valuable illustration of the problem to members of Congress, who succeeded in including a landmark provision about conflict minerals in the financial reform legislation passed yesterday.

We wish our friends at “60 Minutes” the very best at the award ceremony on July 31.

• Advocacy
• Conflict Minerals
• Eastern Congo