Regional work in the African Great Lakes

Our work at the regional level in the Great Lakes is carried out through a combination of capacity-building, networking and support for research, advocacy and lobbying, We work to stimulate and support intra-regional relationships, processes and structures, working with analysts, parliamentarians, churches and women:

	Working with parliamentarians – Alert helped create the Amani parliamentary forum for peace, a regional parliamentarians’ forum of MPs from 7 countries in and around the Great Lakes region. Now that it is independent, our work is to support the organisation.
	Working with churches – We are currently working with the Anglican church in the UK and in Burundi to identify potential joint projects for regional and local work in the Great Lakes.
	Stimulating a network of analysts – We have been working to establish of a network of independent Congolese, Burundian and Rwandan researchers and analysts who are active in the search for peace and development in their respective countries.
	Women's contribution to peacebuilding – We have developed a research initiative that builds on 10 years’ work with women’s organisations in the Great Lakes and the outcomes of a major conference on women and peacebuilding in Africa.

The context

Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are all in the critically vulnerable stage of political ‘transition’ towards a more democratic system of governance - and will remain so for many years to come. Burundi and Congo are also in the even more fragile state of transition from war to peace.

The violently entangled histories of the Great Lakes countries over the past forty-five years show that events and dynamics in any one country are likely to cause consequential or reciprocal effects in the others. Proxy armies and rebel movements are formed to fight civil wars exported to neighbouring countries. Fighters (and their weapons) recycle themselves from one theatre of conflict to another. Tides of refugees flow back and forth across the region, providing cover for rebel fighters and fertile ground for recruiting new rebels. Ethnic identities are manipulated for political and economic interests, and ethnic prejudices in any one country are reinforced by events in the others. The traumatising effects of extreme violence, mass killings and genocide, are felt across the borders of the countries concerned. Group loyalties are enforced by peer pressure, meaning that impunity is entrenched.

This combination of factors mean that there is a constant risk that daily insecurity and low intensity violence will escalate into widespread conflict in the region. The UN International Conference on the Great Lakes Region was set up in recognition of the regional dimensions of these issues. As an organisation with consultative status at the UN ECOSOC, Alert has Senior Programme Officers attending these conferences as an observer.

To read more about the tensions between DRC, Burundi and Rwanda, read our report on sexual violence in DRC, which gives an overview of the regional conflict (see chapter 2).

For more information, contact Sylvie Pereira

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Last updated: March 2006