IRIN Weekly Round-up 48 covering the period 25 November - 1 December

CONTENTS: DRC: “One of world’s worst humanitarian crises” DRC: Fighting continues DRC: Peace summit held in Maputo CENTRAL AFRICA: UN envoy to assess spillover on CAR, RoC BURUNDI: Mandela launches committee to monitor peace deal BURUNDI: Little progress in Arusha BURUNDI: Rebels urged to join peace process RWANDA: New commission to examine border disputes UGANDA: Thousands flee as rebels attack UNITED NATIONS: Humanitarian appeals launched DRC: “One of world’s worst humanitarian crises” The situation facing DRC was on Tuesday characterised as “one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises” in terms of both intensity and magnitude. In a briefing to the UN Security Council, the acting UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Carolyn McAskie, spoke of the critical humanitarian situation in the country, where civilians continue to flee fighting amid a collapsing economy and poor access for relief workers. “As the humanitarian situation becomes increasingly more grave for growing numbers of Congolese, the efforts of the UN and its implementing partners are being hampered by the lack of security, limited access to these affected populations, and critically few resources for life-saving interventions,” she said. Underscoring the fact that humanitarian agencies must be able to reach to those in distress, she urged Council members to “impress upon all parties to the conflict the need for cooperation to ensure full access to all areas of the DRC”. McAskie said that some 16 million people - or one third of the country’s population - were affected by the conflict. She cited a study by the International Rescue Committee, an NGO, which found that up to 1.7 million people, including some 600,000 children, had died as a result of the war in eastern DRC alone. “About one third of those deaths are actually attributable to violence; the rest are due mainly to preventable diseases and malnutrition caused by the lack of access, the lack of assistance, and the sheer inability of people to live a normal life,” she said. “The people of Congo are becoming exhausted, no longer able to cope with the violence and impoverishment to which they are subjected on a daily basis.” She therefore stressed the importance of support for the UN’s consolidated appeal for the DRC, which aims to provide the country with immediate life-saving support and to implement longer-term assistance programmes. Meanwhile, a report issued by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Kinshasa, said the humanitarian crisis in the country had entered a new phase. In the beginning, the crisis had been limited to a few distinct epicentres of humanitarian emergency, but “currently, complex humanitarian crises cover more or less proportionally the entire territory of the country”, the report said. There were now over 2 million internally displaced people (IDPs). “Logistical miracles and emergency operations in practically all parts of the country in 2000 have failed to save the lives of vulnerable people affected by conflict,” the report said. DRC: Fighting continues Sources on the ground have warned of escalating violence around the northeastern DRC town of Butembo. The village of Maboya, 25 km from Butembo, had been “emptied of its citizens” due to constant fighting between Mayi-Mayi militia and soldiers of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-ML), IRIN learnt. The leader of the Mayi-Mayi rebels, “General” Padiri, has been given 30 days to lay down his arms. “We will take matters in our own hands and fight him if necessary,” a statement from the Batembo community, quoted by the pro-government Rwandan ‘New Times’ newspaper, said. The ultimatum was issued through the traditional head of the Batembo tribe, Katola Ndalemwa, last week at Bunyakiri, north of Bukavu. The BBC reported that Ndalemwa and traditional chiefs in his area had for some time been trying to mediate with Padiri who is also from the Batembo community. “He no longer has a just cause to fight for, but has instead been collaborating with the Rwandan Interahamwe [militia] and turning his guns against his own people,” Ndalemwa said. He claimed over 2,000 Batembo had been killed by the Mayi Mayi and Interahamwe. Meanwhile, RCD-Goma has said that it is again in control of Pepa in Katanga Province, southeastern DRC, as well as the localities of Kasongo and Salamabila in Maniema, North Kivu, in the east. According to RCD’s secretary-general, Ruberwa, the places were recovered from the Interahamwe and Mayi-Mayi militias during fierce battles last weekend. Ruberwa said a top rebel army officer, Charles Okiti, was killed in the battle. Okiti had been second in command of the Sixth Brigade in South Kivu Province, he added. Fierce battles have been raging in Katanga for several weeks now between government forces and its local and foreign allies on the one hand, and RCD-Goma and their Rwandan allies on the other. DRC: Peace summit held in Maputo South African President Thabo Mbeki on Monday chaired another summit of regional African leaders in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, to try to get the Lusaka peace process back on track. Presidents Laurent-Desire Kabila and Robert Mugabe were present to represent DRC and its military ally, Zimbabwe, while Kabila’s other allies in the conflict, Namibia and Angola, were represented by Prime Minister Hage Geingob and Defence Minister Kundi Pahyama respectively, news organisations reported. Uganda and Rwanda, which back the Congolese rebels opposing Kabila, were represented by Presidents Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame, the reports said. The summit was the follow-up to a 16 October meeting in Maputo at which all the state combatants in the DRC conflict (but not the rebel groups, who have not been included in the Maputo summits) agreed withdraw their troops by at least 15 km from the positions they held when they signed the Lusaka accord in July 1999. That agreement has not been implemented. During the meeting, Kabila promised greater freedom of movement for the UN observers trying to oversee a ceasefire agreement, the BBC reported on Monday. Mbeki said he was encouraged by the new pledge. “President Kabila’s commitment to cooperate with MONUC [the UN Observer Mission] in an open manner has been another step forward,” Mozambican President Joachim Chissano later said on Mozambican radio. However, DRC state television said on Tuesday that the summit “did not live up to the expectations of the Congolese people”. The meeting had been expected to discuss the results of initial deliberations since the 16 October summit, “but had been prevailed upon by Uganda and Rwanda to discuss only one issue: the disarmament of the Rwandan Interahamwe militia”, the television said. Subsequently, on Wednesday, Kabila said that UN demands for totally free movement for MONUC military observers amounted to an invasion of the Congo’s sovereignty, Reuters reported. “With Ambassador Morjane [UN special envoy to the DRC, Kamel Morjane] it’s always a question of more freedom, in other words the scrapping of sovereignty,” it quoted Kabila as saying on Congolese state television. But Kabila had added: “We will give what it is necessary to give,” the report stated. CENTRAL AFRICA: UN envoy to assess spillover on CAR, RoC UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday appointed a special envoy to the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic in order to “assess the humanitarian, economic, political, social and security consequences of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on these neighbouring states.” Amara Essy, who was president of the UN General Assembly in 1994 and is a former foreign minister of Côte d’Ivoire, is due to start his mission on Saturday and report back to the Secretary-General on 18 December. Meanwhile, Annan’s Special Representative to the DRC, Kamel Morjane, on Thursday welcomed the outcome of this week’s Maputo summit and the subsequent meeting of the parties to the Lusaka ceasefire agreement, which helped pave the way for the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, a UN press release stated. Morjane, who attended the two meetings, “expressed hope that effective and comprehensive implementation of the disengagement and redeployment plan would help resolve the crucial problem of ceasefire violations, and lead the parties to withdraw their forces from the frontlines to previously agreed positions,” it added. BURUNDI: Mandela launches committee to monitor peace deal Burundi’s peace process mediator, Nelson Mandela, on Monday inaugurated the Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC), which will oversee implementation of the Arusha peace accord, signed on 28 August, the Hirondelle news agency reported. He also announced that the chairman of the new body would be the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the Great Lakes, Berhanu Dinka. The IMC has 29 members comprising the 19 signatories to the accord, and representatives of donor countries, the UN, the OAU, regional states and Burundi’s civil society. Speaking in Arusha, Tanzania, Mandela stressed that the IMC’s function would be to implement decisions taken by the signatories to the accord, and not to negotiate. The IMC’s temporary seat will be in Arusha, and will meet on Tuesday under Dinka’s chairmanship. “I would like all the outstanding problems solved before the Paris [donor] conference on 11 and 12 December,” Mandela told the delegates, underlining that this would create a good environment for donors to make pledges to Burundi. The main sticking points are leadership of the transitional period and agreement on a ceasefire, and it is hoped these issues will be resolved by the time the Arusha meeting ends on Wednesday, Hirondelle reported. Ambassador Dinka, for his part, urged Burundians “to continue their forward march”. BURUNDI: Little progress in Arusha Signatories to the Burundi peace accord met behind closed doors in Arusha on Tuesday and Wednesday in a bid to tackle outstanding issues such as leadership of the transitional period. However, according to the Hirondelle news agency, they are already at stalemate, unable to agree on the methodology for tackling this sticking point. One delegate said the stumbling block lay in the text of the 28 August peace agreement, which “contains no provision for the nomination of transitional leaders”. Three sub-committees have been established to deal with the leadership issue, a timetable for implementing the accord, and technical corrections to the document. BURUNDI: Rebels urged to join peace process The mediation team involved in the Arusha peace process on Burundi on Thursday urged rebel groups to lay down their arms. “To the belligerents, I would like to make a special appeal that if the reason for taking to arms was the restoration of democracy, we are now on the way to achieving that, so it does not make any sense to ignore this development,” the independent Hirondelle news agency quoted the facilitator Nelson Mandela’s representative, Mark Bomani, as saying. Bomani was speaking at the close of the latest round of peace talks in Arusha. “If they [the armed rebel groups] have doubts on whether the agreement reached here will be honoured, I think the answer is that the agreement will stick,” Bomani said. The Hutu rebel Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) and Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie-Forces de defense pour la democratie (CNDD-FDD) have not been part of the formal peace process, and did not sign the country’s 28 August peace and reconciliation agreement in Arusha. RWANDA: New commission to examine border disputes Rwanda intends to make new efforts to settle border disputes with its neighbours, Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda, news organisations reported on Wednesday. “Rwanda has had frontier problems with Tanzania concerning a peninsula in the River Akagera, which marks the border,” AFP quoted Rwanda’s foreign minister, Andre Bumaya, as saying during the formation of a commission to look into the claims. Bumaya also referred to frontier problems with Burundi in the Kirundo area and, recently, in the forest area of Nyungwe/Kibera. The areas at issue with Uganda are around the Virunga volcanoes. Bumaya blamed the problem on colonial powers, which, he said had moved border markers to Rwanda’s detriment. “Dialogue to settle the differences will be held with strict respect for the inviolability of colonial borders set out in international treaties,” he said. “With the DRC, everything will be solved under the framework of the Lusaka accords,” Bumaya said, reiterating that the commission would not be dealing with any territorial disputes with the DRC for the time being. UGANDA: Thousands flee as rebels attack Over 3,000 people have fled their homes following an upsurge in attacks by the rebel Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in western Uganda, the independent ‘Monitor’ newspaper reported. It said ADF raids in Kabarole District, launched on 21 November, had left six people dead, and local officials were urgently appealing to the government for assistance. Residents estimated the number of attackers at 200. They launched the attacks from their bases in the Rwenzori mountains and were said to be heading for Kibale National Park. The newspaper quoted local residents as blaming the army for the attacks, saying they were too few in number to defend the area adequately. The Ugandan army had been reducing its presence in the area, reporting successes in flushing out rebel bases. UNITED NATIONS: Humanitarian appeals launched UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday launched consolidated interagency appeals for US $2.26 billion designed to alleviate the suffering of more than 35 million people around the world. “That is less than the world spends on military purposes in a single day,” Annan said in New York. “The people on whose behalf I speak do not want hand-outs: they want a helping hand in their efforts to help themselves.” Annan emphasised the importance of well-funded and coordinated humanitarian action, citing the example of East Timor, where a rapid and generous response by donors helped to avert a crisis last year. But he noted that this year the UN had received only 55 percent of the funds it sought. Flagging support for UN appeals risked marginalising the organisation’s efforts while increasing the enormous burden borne by countries affected by humanitarian emergencies.[For full story, see separate IRIN item of 28 November headlined “UN: Over $2 billion sought to help millions worldwide”] Click here: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/cea/countrystories/other/20001128.phtml In Brussels, the UN Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Sergio Vieira de Mello, accused governments of responding “more and more slowly and less and less generously”. He told a news conference on Wednesday that many contributions arrived too late. “We would like more regular and more predictable contributions,” he said, according to IRIN sources attending the news conference. “In November 2000, the contributions were inferior to those of November last year,” he stressed. “The appeals reflect current needs.”