International Alert’s vision for the DRC is one of political and social cohesion, based on respect for human rights, citizen participation and good governance. It aims to work with national civil society organisations and other stakeholders - such as democratically elected institutions - to encourage good governance, promote inclusivity and the representation of marginalised groups, and facilitate dialogue between different actors and sectors. Projects are rooted in a context analysis which is built around three interconnected elements, namely power, identity and resources. Alert focuses on the following approaches in its work in the DRC:
- A community approach, based on our conviction that community initiatives, supported by local authorities, represent the most promising solutions to the problems facing Eastern DRC.
- A gender approach, focused to date on promoting women’s active engagement in public life, peacebuilding and politics.
- A political economy approach, addressing current issues including the management of conflicting interests over natural resources (particularly land) and the incorporation of conflict-sensitivity into community recovery and development.
- A governance approach which aims to help strengthen statutory authorities by ensuring their effective connection with community and civil society structures and initiatives.
Current programmes aim to promote community recovery, with governance, and peacebuilding and livelihoods dimensions; in North and South Kivu; to remove barriers (at community and institutional levels) to women’s access to politics and political institutions; and to support the business environment for mostly women small-scale traders, operating across DRC’s borders with Rwanda and Burundi; and to strengthen the capacities of Alert and its partners to monitor and evaluate their peacebuilding.
Where
Eastern DRC provinces of North and South Kivu, and Ituri district in Orientale province.
Conflict context
Violence and insecurity continue to impose suffering on the population of the DRC and create constraints to peacebuilding. In spite of the existence of elected institutions – and the promise of new elections now slated for December 2011 – the outlook in the political and socio-economic spheres remains is poor. Governance institutions continue to be dysfunctional, and there has been little advance in the decentralisation process. The Congolese state is effectively absent in the eEastern provinces, especially in the rural areas; identity and territorial politics, as well as sheer personal interests, continue to be the main influence on local leaderships rather than their statutory and constitutional duties. An ever-changing configuration of armed groups, both foreign and local, governs various territories – making laws and controlling resources (especially mining sites) in the areas they occupy. Civilian populations continue to suffer massive human rights violations, including sexual violence owing to the climate of impunity. Massive population movements continue, and poverty is on the increase.
Women make up less than 10% of the membership of elected institutions at the national and provincial levels, despite comprising 52% of the population. Levels of sexual violence are high. Particularly in rural areas, this prevents women and girls from working in the fields, fetching water or going to market, and girls from going to school. Although sexual violence has been largely generated by the conditions of armed conflict, there are fears that it is becoming rooted in the civilian population.
How
In the DRC, Alert uses a multi-faceted approach to building sustainable peace and promoting good governance at the local, national and regional levels. The approach involves:
- basing our activities on context analysis – involving all stakeholders concerned – at every stage
- promoting community dialogue, undertaken by local structures accompanied by Alert’s operational partners
- capacity building through training and institutional development
- research, advocacy and learning with the aim of identifying and disseminating knowledge about underlying conflict factors and the need for change
- promoting women’s leadership
- community recovery
Why
Alert and its partners are acting in varied and dynamic contexts on very sensitive issues. This requires regular and deep context analysis, as well as ensuring that interventions involve as many actors as possible, in order to maximise the quality, efficiency and impact of our work and hence generate significant change. Maximising impact means acting on a range of cross-cutting issues in conjunction with each other as well as researching and analysing to tease out the social, political and economic dimensions of the context. Community dialogue is important, as it contributes to restoring relations between individuals, groups and communities affected by violence, thereby helping to restore social cohesion. Capacity building supports the sustainability of our actions in the community. Advocacy aims to influence local, national, regional and international policies by using the results of research on issues relevant to the context.
This project, carried out by a consortium composed of CARE, FAO and International Alert, provides a combined response to the problems of poverty and instability in eastern DRC.
