 Good morning, and welcome to the U.S. Institute of Peace. I am Chantal Liouma-Antraat. I am the Associate Vice President here at USIP, in charge of the Jennings Rental Fellowship Programs. This morning event is part of a three-day program, a three-day conference, organized with the generous support of the Dutch Embassy, USAID, and Creative Associates International. And with the creative juices of 10 other international, 10 other civil society, governmental and academic institutions, including women in international security, the International Civil Society Network, the Institute for Inclusive Security, Women for Women International, Peace by Peace, the UN Association of the National Capital Area, the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, the World Bank, and the Office of Global Women's Issues at the U.S. State Department. The two days thus far have been terrific and really extremely inspiring. Now, yesterday and the day before, we talked a lot about UN Security Council resolution in 2013-25, the UN resolution that is all about power and protection, power in the sense of giving voice to women and recognizing that they have to be part of the polity, that they have to be part of the negotiating tables, and protection in the sense that we can no longer tolerate the atrocious crimes that are being committed under the disguise of war. Or as it was said by Margot Wolfstrom, the UN Special Representative on sexual or against sexual violence in conflict, we cannot really wait for peace to give peace to women. Of course, in this context, we talked a lot about the DRC. In a way, the DRC has become sort of symptomatic of the changing nature of war and of some of the most horrendous behaviors of mankind. But as we think about these issues, I think it is good to remember two points that were made by Margot Wolfstrom yesterday. Namely, one is that sexual violence is not something that happens only in Africa. Europe, Asia have seen and are seeing similar abhorrent behavior. And second, that sexual violence is neither cultural nor sexual, it's just plain criminal. Now, in the two panel discussions this morning, we thought it would be good to drill down a little deeper and look more specifically at what is happening in the Congo, to take a more general view of what is happening and then in the second panel to examine how UN Security Council resolutions like 1325, how international diplomacy may affect and guide the action of international actors. I think we have a terrific lineup for you in these two panels. This first panel is the more general panel. And I'm very proud to introduce Severine Hautecer. Severine is a former USIPP scholar that is a recipient of a very competitive Jennings Randolph pre-doctoral competition. She is now an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College at Columbia University and has just turned her doctoral dissertation into a book entitled The Trouble with the Congo, a book that was published by Cambridge University Press and our flyers outside for the book with a 20% discount if you want to buy the book. I think Severine has developed a powerful, new and very provocative argument about what I would call a powerful argument that emphasizes what I would call the context blind culture of international peace builders. And I will leave it up to her to develop her argument in a few minutes. After Severine, I will give the floor to two expert commentators. First, we will hear from Christine Karumba. Christine is the DRC country director of Women for Women International. And I'm not going to read her bio, you have it all in your package, but Tammy Duckworth, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, yesterday said, women are strong because of the steel of their determination. And in that sense, Christine is a real iron lady. She has an unhealthy amount of courage and determination, a wealth of experience and has touched and changed the lives of thousands of women in the DRC. She's also the author of a new report published by Women for Women International on the DRC called Stronger Women, Stronger Nations. And the report is outside as well for you to take a copy from. I will then turn to Raymond Gilpin, my friend and colleague here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Raymond is associate vice president at USIP and directs the Center of Innovation on Sustainable Economies. Raymond is also our in-house expert on the DRC. So with that, and without further ado, let me turn it over to Sivirin. Thank you so much, Chantal, and thank you to all of you for coming. In the 15, 20 minutes that I have today, I want to tell you a little bit about the argument of my book, The Travel with the Congo. The book started from the observation that in the Democratic Republic of Congo, from 2002 to 2006, a peace settlement was reached at the national and regional level. So when I say regional, I mean at the level of the Great Lakes region, Burundi, Uganda, Burundi, Congo. But there was no peace settlement at the sub-national level. What I mean is that since 2003, we have seen the official reunification of the country, the re-establishment of diplomatic ties between former enemies. We have seen the establishment of a transitional government. We have seen the holding of national elections in the Congo. And yet, during all those years, and up to now, the eastern provinces have faced massive population displacement and horrific human-right violations on a daily basis. Countless women have been subjected to horrific human-right violence and horrific sexual violence often multiple times. And persistent fighting has regularly brought the Congo back to the brink of civil and international war. So the main question orienting my research was to understand why have the international actors succeeded in helping the Congo build peace at the national and regional level, but not at the sub-national level. And closer to the theme of the conference, I was trying to understand why have women remained at risk in the Congo. The existing policy and scholarly answers to this question are of two kinds. The first one is that peace builders may do their best to establish peace, but economic, political, security, or contextual constraints may impair and adequate treatment of the problems at the root of the violence. Second, vested political, security, economic, or institutional interests may lead some peace builders to consciously ignore violations of the peace agreement. My book develops a different answers that revolves around two central findings. First, violence has continued in the Congo since the war officially ended in a large part because of the persistence of local conflict. And when I say local, I really mean at the level of the individual, the family, the clan, the community, the district, sometimes the ethnic group. Second, when we try to understand why there has been so little work on grassroots conflict resolution by international actors, we see that of course constraints and interests matter. And of course that did influence the intervention strategy. But even more importantly, what I call the dominant international peace building culture shaped intervention in a way that precluded action on local violence and that ultimately doomed the international efforts. My research shows that Western and African diplomats, United Nations peacekeepers, and the staff of most non-governmental organizations involved in conflict resolution share a set of ideologies, rules, rituals, assumptions, definitions, standard operating procedures. This common culture influences the peace builders understanding of the causes of violence, the past world peace, and the roles of foreign actors. In the Congo, the presence of this peace building culture explains why massive international peace building efforts have only very rarely targeted local conflicts and therefore why the international intervention has failed to have the Congo build a sustainable peace. So in this presentation, I will very briefly develop these two main ideas. I'll be really extremely brief because I'm basically summarizing 350 pages in 10 minutes. But I'd be of course very happy to give you more detail on any point of the argument during the discussion. Also, please keep in mind that the book focuses on the period of the transition, so from 2003 to 2006, and things have evolved a little bit since then, and I'd be very happy to talk more during the discussion about the few recent changes. But overall, you will see that local conflicts and the peace building culture remain just as influential now as they were during the transition. The argument that I developed in the book builds on all the data that I collected for the project. So just very briefly, I spent a year and a half just doing field observations in the most violent provinces of the Congo. I also conducted over 330 interviews with Congolese political, civil society, and military and diplomatic actors with victims of violence, with perpetrators of violence, with foreign diplomats, staff of international and non-governmental organizations. And I did all that in the Congo mostly, but also in France, Belgium, the United States, and South Africa. And of course, I drew on document analysis. So the book first shows how in the Congo, the dominant peace building culture shapes the international understanding of violence. Basically, most international actors understand the continuing violence in the Congo as a top-down problem. So as you all know, UN officials and diplomats and the staff of most non-governmental organizations interpret continued fighting and massacres in the Congo as the consequence of national and regional tensions. So for example, they focus on tensions between President Kabila and the various leaders of the different rebel armed groups. Or they focus on the tensions between the Congo, Ravindra, Uganda, Burundi. And I show in the book that these kind of top-down understanding is mainly the result of socialization and training processes. And in addition, these international peace builders usually view local conflicts as the result of either insufficient state authority or of the Congolese people's so-called inherent propensity to violence. And I want to highlight two shared understanding that are particularly influential and detrimental and that still persists today. The first is that since June 2003, international actors have labeled the Congo as a so-called past conflict situation. And this label determined a change of strategy for most peace builder. For example, since the Congo was not at war anymore, side-national actors could not be conceptualized as rebels or warring parties anymore. The Congolese actors participating in the transition became and in the past transition process, they became the only legitimate partners for diplomats and UN staff. The actors who refused to participate in the transition and past transition process and who continued to wage violence were labeled illegal and therefore diplomats and UN staff were not supposed to meet with them. So, mediation between different combatants was not an option anymore because at least one of the parties was considered illegitimate. And we could see how detrimental this construction was in 2006, 2007 when it prevented mediation between President Kabila and rebel leader Laurent Kunda who was considered an illegitimate actor at that time. And mediation was prevented until it was too late and Kunda has attacked Goma. Everything was under siege and large scale violence had resumed. And at that point, diplomats and UN staff were forced to mediate and to meet with Kunda. The second shared understanding that I want to highlight today is that international actors believe that violence is pervasive in the Congo. Many international actors I met still picture the Congo as an inherently turbulent country where violence is normal and to be expected. I even heard many international peace builders explain to me that rape itself and a high level of rape is normal for the Congo. And this presentation of violence as normal for the Congo strengthens the lack of international interest for ongoing local conflict. And it turns the lack of interest for local conflict means a lack of resources to address grassroots conflicts. The dominant peace building culture also shapes the international actors understanding of their role. It constricts intervention at the national and regional level as the only natural and legitimate task for UN staff and diplomat. It elevates the organization of elections as a favorite state reconstruction mechanism over more effective approaches. For example, it puts election organization over reconstruction of the bureaucracy, the justice system and effective and disciplined coercion forces. So in brief, this peace building culture has enabled foreign actors to pursue a top-down intervention strategy that permitted and even at time exacerbated fighting massacres, rapes, massive human rights violations during, after the transition and even now. And this culture has enabled international actors to view their intervention as a success at least for a time in 2006, 2007. I then success an alternate analysis of violence which in part explains why the international efforts have failed to build a sustainable peace. In the Congo, now justice during the war and the transition. Continuing violence is motivated not only by the regional and national causes emphasized by most policy and academic analysis but also by longstanding bottom-up agendas whose main instigators are villagers, traditional chiefs, community chiefs or ethnic leaders. Many conflicts revolve around political, social and economic stakes that are distinctively local. For example, there is a lot of competition at the village or district level over who can be chief of village or chief of territory according to traditional law. Who can control the distribution of land and the exploitation of local mining sites? And who can be appointed to local administrative positions? This competition often results in localized fighting and quite frequently it escalates into generalized fighting. So mass violence in the Congo is not coordinated on a large scale but it is rather the project of fragmented micro-level militias which each try to advance their own agendas at the village or district level. And there is an interaction between the local and the national and regional levels namely alliances between local actors and national and regional actors. But since 2003, local actors and local agendas have become increasingly autonomous and self-sustaining and autonomous from the national and regional tracks most notably in the Kivus, Norskatanga and Ituri. And there in these three areas, local disputes have led to clashes that no national or regional actors could stop and that eventually jeopardized the national and regional settlements. So my book progresses to an analysis of the reasons why in these circumstances foreign actors neglected to implement local peace-building programs. And I found that diplomats and UN staff members considered local conflict resolution as an important and familiar and ill legitimate task and admirable. The very idea of becoming involved at the local level clashed so fundamentally with existing cultural norms. And it's so threatened key organizational interests that neither resistance nor external shocks could convince international actors to revise their strategies in a way that took into account the critical role of local conflicts. So in some my main argument is that the dominant peace-building culture shapes the intervener's understanding of peace, violence and intervention in a way that precludes action at the local level. The resulting in attention to local conflicts leads to unsustainable peace-building in the short term, constant violence on the population and potential war resumption in the long term. And I would be very happy to show during the discussion how this analysis can help us better understand many cases of international intervention failures, not only in Africa, but also in the rest of the world. Local conflicts are usually critically important in sustaining violence in most war and post-war environments. And the international peace-building culture almost always precludes international action at the local level. And of course, I have developed really detailed and extensive policy recommendations based on these research findings. And I will just take one minute to mention the main ideas. And of course I'm really happy to talk more about that during the discussion. The main point is that in addition to any top-down intervention, conflict must be resolved from the bottom up. Again, my main argument is not that national and regional tensions don't matter and that national and regional peace-building is unnecessary. My argument is that both macro-level and micro-level peace-building is are needed to make peace sustainable. And of course, local NGOs, local authorities and civil society representatives should be the main actors in this bottom up process. But there are obstacles. Local actors often lack the funding, the logistical means, and sometimes the technical capacity to implement effective peace-building program, effective grassroots peace-building program. So international donors should expand the funding available for local conflict resolution. And they should do so either by shifting their priorities away from immediate elections in post-war area or by increasing their aid budget. And in the Congo, donors, the UN, international and non-governmental organizations and Congolese state authorities at all levels should focus on two high priority areas, land reform and inter-community reconciliation. So again, it's a very brief summary of my research findings and I'd be delighted to talk more about all of this during the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much. Christine. Thank you very much. Once she was talking, I remember when I grew up and we used to go to the villages every holidays and while going to the village, it was the time for us to reconnect with our own identity. The way our mothers and grandmothers flash water, they farm, we go to farm. It was a moment for us to receive stories from the grandmothers about their courage, about how they are making life to be more and more enjoyable. That was the memories which came to me when she was talking. And now in the DRC is in the eastern part of Congo that is no longer possible because of the atrocities and violences which started since 1994 when the refugee randies came to the DRC. And I feel like I'm dying when I do understand that people can think that it's in our culture or to killing one another, to raping one another, to destroying, come again, to destroying our communities. It's not in our culture. We have been living in a beautiful context and the beauty of that context has made us to strength because we still link to that as part of our self, as part of our DNA. We still have those memories as strong as we live even despite the atrocities we are seeing. Back to the work we do as women for women international, we have the women to be able to move from a victim state to become an active citizen. And what we developed is a market-based skill trainings and right education because most of the women we do work with are social excluded women. They are women on the grass roots who does not, does they never had a chance to education. And they are those women who have been in a situation or denial not having access to education. So what is the entire love is her family, her children, and her husband. And we have seen through the process that now those women have been refused to be wives, mothers because of being raped. Can you imagine in your family you are cooking a meal and your child refused to eat that meal just because you were raped? You are cursed. That's the way the women are living in the DRC, eastern part of the DRC. We developed a men's leadership program because we saw that men, sometime we know that they are perpetrators but also they are ignorant. Ignorance lead them to act or to run from their responsibilities. So our main purpose with the men's leadership was to let them understand the women's rights and how they can protect the women. Which role they have to play in the process. And we also developed a commercial integrated farming initiative where we help the women to use the farming practices to grow crops and to sell and to feed their families. The program in the DRC started in 2005 and as a women for women organization we have so far served around 271,000 women and we have distributed as direct aid around 89 million. But in the DRC specifically, we have served around 37,000 women and we have distributed around four million in direct aid. The men's leadership is a piece of women for women activity which really enable the leaders to be advocate for women's rights. Put them in a position. I remember when I participated in Walung on one of the men's leadership training, one leader stood and say, women for women sometimes you don't understand where we are. These women they were raped before us or we are there to protect them. We couldn't protect them. We are feeling ashamed to not be able to protect those women. It's like we have been disarmed from our authority as leaders. So for us to be able to know how again to reconcile with the women, with the community and to play our role is somehow our priority. It was the way of saying, let you engage us. Let us men understand how we can contribute. And that's where I feel like we miss our approach programs are missing that substance in our prioritization, in our program implementation for building pieces in the DRC. In the survey we conducted, we have seen that around 93 men leaders after they have graduated, they have expressed their commitment to work to prevent the sexual gender-based violence committed so they are willing to stand and to defend the women. They are willing to stand in the side of that women to say that has happened to you but has happened to the entire community. They have targeted you, but they were targeting an entire community to paralyze the community. I am not the first person who said that the rep was used as a weapon of war. It really was used and still used as a weapon of war. And you know, when women are down, they are sick, they are traumatized. I do know that health and wealth goes together. So when they are at that level, the poverty will continue and the cycle of violence will continue. When somebody was around a gang group who which pays, they will be motivated to go to that gang group. I'm not defending that they should go to gang group because there are some values they should protect but that's the fact, that's what is happening. And again, before the men leaders attended the program, 51 of them, they were saying that actually women, they don't have nothing to receive from their husband and community for their integration. They rep victim, they don't have nothing. Men doesn't have no role to play on that. But that has increased after the training session to 96%. And for us to see that the men can understand, we have a role to play, to appease the suffering of the rep victim, who are our mothers, our wives and the citizen of the community. And I remember one man is a military military officer in Uvira, who attended the men's leadership training. And for him, he was saying that sometimes we neglect to, or we don't pay attention to what is happening to women. And even when they come to us to report the case, we just, we don't care. It's like, what does that, doesn't have any concern to us and why should we punish the perpetrators, why? So he was saying like that, but when he received understanding on the consequences on the larger scale, on the community, then he started changing his perceptions. And that's why me I strongly believe that, as he said himself, that we have to train military and soldiers, they have to be disciplined. They have to know their roles. They have to work on economical development, farmers, they have to be mechanics, all the job they should do so that at least they don't destroy the population they are protecting. In the survey we did, we discovered that what the women are just saying, they still trust that peace is achievable. And that has really shaped my head and my understanding. When in the chaos where we see that in the leadership, in the security, in the institution is like chaotic, but the women still believe that peace is achievable. Who are we not to believe and build on that momentum? If the women on the grassroots still believe, despite the failure of the international community to accomplish its promises, you can see the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. The failure is so obvious. The millennium development goal, where are we in the DRC context? It's a failure. And we have to acknowledge it. When we acknowledge it, we can develop strategies at least to appease the life of Congolese. Imagine five million people died in the DRC. My sister from Bosnia told me that there are 4.5 million population in Bosnia. Imagine the entire Bosnia vanished. That's what is happening. We are citizens of the earth. And sometimes those figures does not matter sometime because it's a far away story. But me, I live, I feel the fear of being in that context. And what the women was expressing to us, for them, 41% of the women, they fear to go to work out of their home work, home. So for them to go to farm, to go to flush water, in that context of conflict, it is like dying. But what should they do? They have to farm. They have to survive. They have to flush water to survive. And the fear for us of seeing that 87 of the women participants, they have experienced people who have lost their siblings. And what that mean fear to them, what that mean peace to them? We have to look on the eyes of the women. For them, peace is to be able to go out and to farm. Peace for them is to have market for their produce. That mean peace to them. And let us engage the grassroots. And let us engage the grassroots. Let us engage the grassroots as peace builders so that we can reverse what is happening. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think this brought us down to the bottom, the field. And I'll now turn it over to Raymond Gilpin and try to tie this all together. Thank you very much. And thank you all for joining us. I have a very difficult task following two very able speakers and trying to condense the wealth that they have shared in five minutes. I'm also very pleased that we are focusing not just on macro issues or generalities but that we have a sense of how we connect the dots not just in the policy environment because that's where a lot of the discussion starts and ends. How do policies connect? But connecting the policy conundrum with reality on the ground is a much larger challenge. Let me flog Severin's book a bit. If you haven't got a copy, get one. Are there discounts outside? Yeah. What I like about it is the fact that she spends quite a bit of time talking about how practical ways reality on the ground could be so much different if we just had the approach right from the beginning. We talked a bit with the previous speaker. Christine talked about the scale of the tragedy not just in terms of numbers but in terms of the indelible impact it has on the lives and livelihoods of families. That's not just a woman of families and I think she really brought us down to why are we engaged? Why are we involved? Why are we thinking about this? On page 76 of the book which I told you to buy you're not leaving without it. I'm joking. On page 76 of the book Severin recalls a discussion with a French official who likened the Congolese approach to violence to Europe in the Middle Ages and reading the book that's one of the sentences that stood out not just because I find it abhorrent but because it's indicative of the milieu. The approaches we believe that we are operating in a middle-aged type setting and therefore a lot of the international approaches have been very medieval in their approach. They have a Hobbesian view of the world where life is short and brutish and therefore we really don't have to do much at the local level. However, anyone who knows anything about the conflict dynamics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo knows that we're dealing in a space, in a theater where although we do have state-to-state and interstate complexities a lot of the dynamics are at the local level and so the ability to comprehend that and discard the notion that life is short and brutish therefore let's focus on the policy and it will trickle down eventually is misguided and the policy pronouncements that Severin rightly points out are spot on. However, there's some things I don't agree with in Severin's book. I wouldn't list them. But the one thing that I think she did that I have a hobby horse about is the tendency when we're dealing with either humanitarian or development issues to default to jargon. Jargon is good because it's catchy, top-down, bottom-up but again that really doesn't tell you what you're talking about because top-down in Liberia is different from top-down in the DRC that Christine is talking about and when you read the book and what you leave with is a context that you need the top-down formula. Many times we, and one of the things that Severin's book and Christine mentioned is that we think that we are in the theater we've heard that millions have died millions have been displaced and therefore we need to do something. However, the people really don't know what to do so let's get there and we need to think outside the box. I think that is one of the worst phrases that business schools have bequeathed to the world. I agree. When you enter a theater the first thing you do is look inside the box because the answers are probably there. Both Severin and Christine have given examples how at the community level you really don't need rocket science or brain surgery to figure it out and we really need to pay some more attention to this. One thing I think that Severin did not mention I think is probably because of the time the duration she's talking about or she's dealing with or she's analyzing is the importance of an international champion in these sort of interventions. If you look across the world at Bosnia you had NATO front and center. Sierra Leone you had the British front and center and so there was some consensus on who is leading, what will be doing, how we will be engaging because even think about it even if we did have the will and the commitment and there are so many different players doing different things you will not be able to get the objective to accomplish the objective of engaging the communities, engaging the households and moving whole societies from instability and violence to stability and peace. That's one thing that I would have loved to see a bit more and we could talk about how that is evolving as we speak. Let me just very quickly mention three things I think we need to consider moving on. I think the first is linked to my last point. We need a champion whether it's a coalition of the willing or a group of countries but we need a champion that has the credibility the resources and long term commitment not just to formulate the policy framework but to link it directly to community needs over time. And this is very important not just because the transition from humanitarian to development takes time but also because you're dealing with healing societies and that does take a lot of time and so there needs to be a lot of flexibility as the societies adjust to new realities to be able to have approaches to speak more to their needs. Secondly I would say and Christine's book is excellent at this let's avoid reductionism. Let's don't try to reduce the problem to bite-sized slogans we can feed to advocacy groups or legislators. Let us take time to understand the dynamics in various areas and apply accordingly. And thirdly I think this is an excellent example and a great candidate for the use of smart power. Smart power involves diplomacy that would isolate the spoilers development that would empower the enablers and defense that protects communities. I don't think that there is that the trouble with international efforts has analyzed 2003 through 506 but the trouble is that repeatedly we don't have this coordination we don't have this focus and approach and we don't accord complex problems like the DRC the intellectual rigor that they deserve and we are a little surprised that we missed the mark in terms of outcomes and impact. I will stop here and be more than happy to respond to questions of participating in Q&A. Thank you. Thank you very much Raymond I think you have pointed out the dilemmas and problems when we are trying to dissect some of these issues I would like to give Sivin maybe just a few minutes to give some quick reactions to what Raymond has said and you can stay maybe from here from the table and then I want to open it up to the audience. Sivin. Thank you so much. Can you hear me? First thing on Christine's presentation to me what Women for Women International is doing is exactly the kind of thing that we need in the Congo the kind of organizations that really know the specific local areas the specific villages and that has solutions and programs that are really tailored to the community and that put local actors that put the villagers in the driver's seat so that they decide what they want and how they want it and I think that everything that Christine was talking about on how they approach peace building and human rights in the Congo is really illustrative of the kind of grassroots movement that are going on in the Congo and that can be supported effectively by international actors. On Raymond's presentation yes, the thing about linking violence in the Congo to violence in the Middle Ages it's something that I saw in 2003 to 2006 and now back to the Congo for a year to work on another research project and I continue to see this approach this idea that well it's really an environment we need to reconstruct the state now the big mantra is we need to do state building we need to do restoration of state authority and as Raymond was saying one of these slogan is like top done bottom up now with state building and state building now in the Congo means we're going to build road and we're going to build big buildings prison, jails and administrative buildings and justice buildings and we're going to build them and then the main idea for the state building strategy is to make sure that we reconstruct a state state authority in the provinces in the rural areas where there is no state authority because we think that reconstructing state authority by itself is good the problem with this kind of approach it really helps an approach you have anarchy you need to reconstruct state authority the problem is that when you talk to people in the Congo they will tell you well the worst thing that can happen to me in a day is to meet with a soldier or to meet with a police officer so we're coming with our thing we need to extend state authority we need to make sure that the national army, the soldiers the policemen, the authority can now be in the villages but the problem is that there is no questioning on what kind of soldiers who are deploying in the villages what kind of policemen, what kind of state authority so basically we're increasing human rights violations by deploying soldiers and policemen who are preying on the population I'd be happy to talk more about that in five years when I finish this research project I see we have now a long line of people with comments and questions so I would like to ask all of you to keep it brief Agnes, I believe you were first but I also remember you can sometimes go on so could you please keep it brief and one question because we have a long line of people we're trying to find a solution for the Congo and we need to pinpoint all the people who are responsible for the situation who are who are responsible who are the true perpetrators of those violence they are known and we can see that on other side of the Congo not in the eastern there is no sexual violence or gender based from the FRDC in the eastern side of the Congo those are Rwanda's military who have been integrated in the FRDC army I'm trying who gave them weapons who trained them I will end by asking the question those people who are today in the army group were former in the time who gave them the weapon or those material that they need to perpetrate the violence in the eastern I would like to thank each one of you for your great book and analysis and the commentaries thank you you alluded to the importance of natural resources and in particular mineral resources and when you mention the local conflict you indicated that part of it is for access and control of a land but not only land as farming land but land as where you have mines and those vast richness and quite exclusive richness that the DRC has in particular in terms of Colton which is an absolutely resource that the DRC has almost exclusively in the world do you actually see this as one of the major factor of fueling the conflict and if so what could be the policy implication should we envisage something along the line of a Kimberley process to replicate what has been done for Diamond on other resources such as Colton and is that an option thank you thank you very much good morning, I'm Sanam Anderlini International Civil Society Action Network as you were speaking, I felt as if I was back in 1996 in London because we were talking about I was working at International Alert and we were doing things like coming up with conflict and peace analysis as the basis of first understanding what's happening and looking at who are the actors, regional, local and so forth and to get the analysis to then be able to determine what kind of programming needed to be done with who and where were the positive and where were the negative forces and so forth and it was all meant to be multi-stakeholder what I've seen over the last 10-15 years is that those frameworks have filtered somewhat into the work of development actors but when it comes to being used in a cursory way, sometimes they arrive in country and they're sitting in their hotel rooms and just cutting and pasting, other times they do the framework but then they say oh no, we can't do this because our 5-year plan says that we should be doing something else and so my question is what are we seeing in terms of the donors or the international community coming in, in terms of how they engage the different stakeholders really to get that initial understanding because I agree, I think we do need to work the regional, think about the Kimberley approach and what is Rwanda doing but at the same time clearly what you were saying also makes sense and who out there is doing it and how do we make sure that it actually gets done, thanks. Okay Agnes, yes there are Rwandan perpetrators there is a Rwandan environment in the Congo the violence is linked in part to the presence of the Rwandan state of Rwandan actors but it's not the only problem for example most, I mean this analysis everything is because of Rwanda and if Rwanda would be out of the Congo then we would be at peace I don't think it holds because for example in 1993 Rwanda was not in the Congo the Rwandan genocide had not happened yet and yet you had extensive local conflicts in Masseise you have massive human rights violations so I'm afraid that by continuing to say there is no local conflict there is no conflict among Congolese people it's all the fault of Rwanda we're just pushing international peace builder to continue to work at the regional level and to ignore what grassroots people what people on the ground really want which is to live at peace with their neighbors but also to be able to, for example to know who owns the land to know who is entitled to traditional power to legitimate power basically they want to have conflicts resolved on the local level and not only on the regional level Cecil the importance of national resources as, yes it is one of the factors leading the conflict it is extremely important at the local level just as it is at the national level in terms of what is best what's best to do I think we need to look at each specific mineral and how they are dug out and what are the social implications of the minerals in the different communities and I haven't looked very much at the response to mineral exploitation per se but I would be afraid of having one blanket solution designed in international capital and then that just trickles down on the ground and that may be disrupt the livelihood of people there have been really interesting analyses done by various Congolese and international groups on what mining resources means for people in the villages and every time the policies that are thought about and that are designed in western capital usually they actually hurt people on the ground more than they help them so I would be more for an approach that actually goes to the various villages, the various mining areas and that really makes sure that the solution is locally grounded and international alert is actually one of the in the book I talk about exceptions to the dominant approach and actually I have a lot on international alert and search for common ground and life and peace institute what we see in terms of Donna and how they engage the different stakeholders what I've seen mostly is that they are like oh yes we do have local partners but local usually means national so engaging local partners still mostly means talking to the government in Kinshasa or at best talking with the governor of North Kivu it doesn't mean going to Masisi, to Ruchiru to Walikale and sitting down with the villagers and asking them what they want and how they want to do things so I think we need to in terms of the framework and in terms of what kind of advocacy we want to do I think we need to incite it's great now you're taking national authorities into account but you know let's let's go a step further Christine do you have a comment maybe on the the local international interaction? I think she said everything that the way we had to the views, the eyes of the experts in the ground as the grassroots people is really matters because they may give us some insight we cannot as an international community and that can help us that our investment in terms of program is more effective and can be there can be a ownership on what we are implementing because overall is for those communities so we have to live and empower those communities to be able to stand on themselves and to develop a sustainable piece in their environment just a very quick one on the resource question I completely agree with you that we need to have things that work at a local level but we also need to have instruments that speak to like the companies that do business and the I'm not sure if you know about the franks bill here in the United States has specific language on the DRC requiring companies to specify who they bought it from where it came from etc and this is recognized internationally as taking a leadership role in trying to bring transparency to a very opaque process it's a first step but I think it's an important step and the next issue will be how that then connects to reality on the ground let's go to the next and last round please I'm going to start with Congo Global Action just like Sanan just say listening to the presentation of Miss Otisere I went back 10 years ago when the framework about the Congo conflict was about ethnic conflict I think that was the big mistake when everybody was pushing to see the Congolese conflict as an ethnic conflict and that's why mistakes have happened a lot because they forgot to mention the regional and everything that goes around because I'm going to disagree the problem in Congo is not local itself because saying that we have to take put a special interest on the local conflict between neighbors or between people living in the same village it's saying that in the Congolese are some kind of suspicious of people where law and order cannot be implemented we have to listen to the villager to have like a specific way of dealing with conflict between neighbors conflict between neighbors happen all over the place I mean in the Congo all they have to do is to implement the laws and we have a constitution how land is reformed how we belong to what land but saying that we have to forget about that and have a specific where the NGOs with the people trying to figure out how to reform the land and I mean talk about that's criminality when a neighbor kills another neighbor that's criminal matter in 1993 like you said the reason why people start fighting is because the states just failed the Mobutu regime was failing and there were no order, no authority that's why people start avenging themselves but in the setting like now we are we passed that 10 years, 15 years ago where we have laws, we have a government we have all those things we stop talking about local justice and local and traditional peace building and we have to implement the laws I mean the Congolese are human being just like everybody, they know about rights and about the justice system they just have to implement that so I really have an issue with that I think we got your point Hello, my name is Valérie Rousseau and I am a senior fellow here at the USIP thank you very much for your presentation each of you, Severina I really really appreciated your book thank you very much two brief questions the first one is that you mentioned that things have evolved since since I would like you just to stress the main points the second thing is you stress two priorities areas Land Reform Commission, Truth Commissions what would be concretely the role of international peace builders in these processes and I have some I have a concern in mind I know quite well the Belgian case since I am a Belgian and in Belgium there is a fear to be seen as a post-colonial power of course and it's a real feeling of guilt which is untenable but which is extremely important in terms of foreign policy I think and knowing that the Land Reform and the Truth Commission are by definition local what could be their implication in this local area because they will not feel comfortable it's much more easier to give money for the election right thank you we have four more people may I ask you to be very brief so that we can all four of you can get your comments or questions my name is Jean Cassando I speak in French I would only like to apologize I don't have any questions I am Congolese I don't have any questions okay can you comment if it can be very brief if you please madame we are here at the institute you can use the microphone my voice is very loud is it for peace if we really want peace in Congo we have to speak with Congolese what they say is what they want for their country we are at the US institute of peace if you really like the peace to get back in Congo you need to go talk to the Congolese to go tell them how to bring this peace I will give you an African Nadaj there are a lot of Congolese experts because they have lived 5 years in Congo they have read books on Congo but there are a lot of Congolese who have been here for 30 years in America they are not American experts but there is an African Nadaj who says this a piece of wood he can make hundreds or thousands in the water or in the river he will never become a crocodile I will give you one short Nadaj a proverb there are so many experts on the Congolese matter because they have spent 5 years in Congo and read so many books but there are so many Congolese who have spent 30 years here they will never say they are experts in America and also in Africa we say a piece of wood can spend 20 years in the water he will never become a crocodile what is it when it's about water or everything in the sea go ask the question to the crocodile with the panel like today we would wish that with the Congolese speak on the panel speak about the Congolese to tell you how we can use that and you ask him ask your question it's not every time we give this possibility it's been 3 days we came to a conference that talked about women with war during every 3 days we talked about the Congolese the problem of the Congolese is very important she emphasizes that over these 3 day conference we have talked a lot about the Congolese so it means it's really important issue I would like to say we talk a lot about the democratic elections that took place in the Congo I am here I have lived democratic elections here the candidates we put it there we put their names it's where they were born what are their studies Dr. Assisi has it excuse me we put where they came from we will put my 4th and 5th generation in the Congo there were elections democratic there were 2 candidates in the first round there was one who had 60% of votes who was born in the Congo who had it Dr. Assisi had it there was another we didn't know even 2 generations of the Congo we didn't have all of it the one who didn't give us so now I don't say it's not Congolese Dr. Assisi because for someone to be there it's someone who has the knowledge we didn't say he must be an expert but he still has the knowledge it was a young boy who came as a rebel we understood my colleague Raymond Gilpin will give a brief answer and also translate what you have just said during this time there was a mapping report Madam, please please I just want to I'm not going to translate because that will be a catastrophe but there's no need to there's no need to translate I think the gist of the issue was that this is the Congolese issue we should be listening to the Congolese I'd just like to point out that the United States Institute of Peace is the only institute in Washington DC that has an ongoing Congolese diaspora series over the last two years we have had meetings with just the Congolese telling us what the problems are what the solutions are we have brought Deputy Assistant Secretary of State here we have brought people from the Treasury from the Department of Defense here to listen to just the Congolese and we have also brought people from the World Bank the UN, the IFC here to listen to the Congolese we are currently editing a document written by Congolese so I think it is very very disingenuous for the lady to suggest that we disregard the Congolese voice the interpreter is one of the authors on the book on the paper that we are writing just by the Congolese and so I think that anybody who thinks that the Institute of Peace disregards or does not engage the Congolese diaspora or Congolese people or the crocodiles in the river should be I think that is I take this very personally because we have gone over and beyond to make sure that the Congolese diasporas voices are heard, no need to translate George, no need to translate no need to confirm I think people can take me at my word this panel again illustrates that of all the countries in the world we are spending an entire panel on Congo and I think it helps for us to understand the value of bringing different perspectives in and then what is wrong we say this exactly is what is wrong this is the right way to do it rather than suggest that if you are not from the region you don't have an opinion or you don't have a voice I think that is very on democratic on Congolese and on American I think it's probably a very sour note on which to bring a really really good panel to the close because we have actually run out of time but I still want to give both Christine and Zidane a few seconds to have some I also want to remind you that the whole morning we continue talking about the Congo so please hold your fire if I may for the next session I can feel the way she's feeling but that's not the way we can solve problems the way we can solve problems we are bringing really the reality of Congolese on the table it is clear that they may not be Congolese by nationality but there are many many people who have the heart of Congolese who cares about what is happening for Congolese and who are willing to see the changes reason why three days thinking about how we can solve problems it can is very very something for me to know that people are just here not for anything but to see how we can solve problems in Congo it is for me a plow for everybody and we are in the process and we need everybody on board to make sustainable changes in the country and across the region thank you on the first question the ethnic framework thinking that the Congo is an ethnic problem it's still one of the misconception that we hear today I just want to clarify when I said that conflicts are local it doesn't mean that conflict are ethnic it's different you can have local conflicts about political power about economic resources about social status it's not an ethnic problem it's just local versus national regional and a bit puzzle as to conflict resolution in the Congo means treating the Congolese as a subspecies we have local conflict resolution in every country in the world it has different names different implementers sometimes it's NGO sometimes it's the justice system we have it in France we have it in the United States we have it in African countries in Asian country so I don't see why we couldn't have it in the Congo and I think that Congolese are entitled to it just as are Americans and other citizens of the world on Valerie's question how things have evolved basically I see two steps in the right direction the first one is that now we start to have an acknowledgement that local conflicts matter so for example when I'm based in Norskivu this year in Goma and people very regularly talk to me about land conflict and the importance of land conflict which is something that they never do they would never do five years ago so I think that's a step in the right direction the problem is that then when they talk to me about land conflict it's about the problem of refugees returning to the Congo so it's still this local conflict linked to a big regional issue the return of refugees based in Rwanda coming back to the Congo and they don't talk about land conflict that matter for villagers who are not linked to refugees return so it's just a small step and same thing in terms of programs to support local conflict resolution we have a small step in the right direction for example UN Habitat now is doing programs to resolve land conflict in the two Kivus again it's a very very small step because when you look at how many people they have and the resources they have they have six people working on the two Kivus and one car it's great to have a program we just need to give them so much more resources and same thing for all kind of local conflict resolution programs and finally concretely how international actors can support local conflict resolution and make sure that we're not imperialist or neocolonial et cetera to me when we really put Congolese grassroots actors in the driver's seat and we have a role just as enabler you need money then we give you money you need logistic resources you need a car, you need some training on how to do something or something else when we actually respond to what they ask us to do and we really make sure that they are the spoke person that they are the program manager that they are the program director that they decide what they want to do and how they want to do it then to me it's not a neocolonial enterprise but it's the work that Congolese grassroots actors themselves want to do thank you very much I hope you will join me in thanking the panel thank you and Raymond Gilton and I would say stay tuned because Raymond is indeed the one who regularly organizes events here at USIP on the Congo I would suggest that we take a very short break of five minutes and then reconvene here at 11 o'clock for the next panel