DRC crisis: UN no vehicle for any solution

Author: Samson Kasujja

• 2024-07-19 05:30:00

MONUSCO troops.

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres was quoted saying that in the end, “it comes down to values [...] We want the world our children inherit to be defined by the values enshrined in the UN Charter: peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance and solidarity.”

But this is not the case in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the UN’s peace keeping mission has been present for 25 years now. 

The UN mission has failed the Congolese people. Armed groups increased to over 260 from five in 2000, leading to the death of thousands of Congolese, while millions others are displaced internally and externally.  

Established in 2000 as the Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo (MONUC), their mandate was to protect civilians. In 2010, the mission was renamed MONUSCO. Currently, 12,800 of the original 20,000 troops are still deployed and costs about $1 billion (€910 million) a year.

But more than two decades later operating in volatile eastern DRC, the mission has brought no positive change.

Besides that, MONUSCO is leading and supporting offensive actions against the M23 alongside the FARDC, SADC, the FDLR genocidal militia, Wazalendo militia, European mercenaries as well as the Burundian national defense forces (FDNB). Since May 2024, UN troops, have been deployed in Beni territory to help FARDC to cope with the M23 advance.

The biggest concern is that the UN has been present since the beginning of the M23 conflicts in DRC, and is well aware of the root causes of the issues, but still chooses to ignore them and turn a blind eye on the crisis.

The blue helmets constantly failed the Kinyarwanda speaking community by fighting against M23 rebels who are fighting against an existential threat. The rebels are protecting the Congolese Tutsi from their government-led coalition, that encourages their persecution, and ethnic cleansing.

For the past decades, the UN idly watched as this community suffered. UN troops intend to help annihilate a community they are supposed to be protecting.

The sad events in DRC can be compared to the massacres of more than one million Tutsi civilians in neighbouring Rwanda in 1994. These people died despite the fact that a UN mission was posted there. After three decades, mass killings are witnessed in DRC where another heavily funded UN mission is present. 

Today, the UN is well aware of the continued use of hate speech to incite violence against Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese precisely the Tutsi community, the open mobilization of militias like Wazalendo and FDLR, to arm themselves with traditional weapons and target Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese, yet, the international chooses to turn a blind eye.

Under the UN mission’s watch, the security situation in DRC has only deteriorated. While MONUSCO could withdraw from DRC, it is safe to say that no one can expect any other tangible solution as they constantly failed the same population they were mandated to protect.