On 26th October, the APPG hosted a screening of ‘Field of Hope’, a film produced and directed by award-winning producer and director Fiona Lloyd-Davies. 'Field of Hope' addresses the issue of sexual and gender-based violence in the DRC through the experience of Masika Katsuva, a Congolese woman who has set up a community programme that has helped more than 6,000 victims to overcome their trauma.

After the screening, which was preceded by a keynote speech by Minister for Equalities and International Violence Against Women Champion Lynne Featherstone MP, Fiona Lloyd-Davies, Senior Researcher for the DRC at Human Rights Watch Anneke van Woudenberg, and Marie-Claire Faray from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom discussed the responses to be made to the ongoing scourge and outlined recommendations to the UK government.

In cooperation with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the APPG hosted a roundtable bringing together members of parliament and a bi-partisan delegation from the Uganda Parliamentary Commission on 26^th October. The delegation included Hon. Nathan Nandala-Mafabi, Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Dr. Chris Baryomunsi, Backbench Commissioner, Hon. Dombo Emmanuel Lumala, Backbench Commissioner, Hon. Bintu Jalia Lukumu N. Abwooli, Backbench Commissioner and Hon. Elijah Okupa, Backbench Commissioner for the opposition.

The meeting discussed the post-electoral political environment in Uganda, marked by ongoing protests over economic difficulties and what observers have described as a governmental clampdown on the opposition. The roundtable also offered an opportunity to address the role of parliament in promoting transparency and combating corruption.

On 24^th October the APPG hosted a meeting with the organisation Conciliation Resources to discuss regional responses to the threat posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in the DRC, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. Teresa Dumasy from the People Peace-Making Perspective Project, Pastor Mark Kumbonyaki Soro, Assistant Bishop of Western Equatoria State, and Kennedy Tumutegyereize from Conciliation Resources discussed the challenges that national governments have faced in responding to the LRA threat and called for greater cross-national cooperation and civil society involvement to promote security in the region.

The participants put forward four central recommendations: the adoption of a holistic approach encompassing military, peacebuilding and governance measures to resolve the LRA problem; the prioritisation of civilian protection by national governments in the region and the planned AU Regional Intervention Force (RIF); a greater recognition of the important role civil society can play in understanding and resolving the conflict; the development of a coherent regional framework for the return and reintegration of LRA abductees.

A summary of Conciliation Resources report on the LRA can be found here.

On 11^th October, the APPG hosted a meeting with representatives of the National Episcopal Conference of the Congo (CENCO) Mgr Fridolin Ambongo, President of the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace and Bishop of Bokungu-Ikela diocese, Mgr Marcel Utembi, Archbishop of Kisangani diocese, the Reverend Abbot Léonard Santedi, Secretary General of the CENCO, and Sister Marie-Bernard Alima, Secretary of the Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace.

The CENCO delegates called attention to the need to ensure the transparency and credibility of the presidential and legislative elections in November, in order to guarantee that the different parties will accept the election results and refrain from violence. To this end they urged the international community to step up its engagement in the electoral process and send additional election observers. The CENCO itself has committed to deploying 30,000 election observers. The delegates also urged the Congolese Electoral Commission to address any disagreements or contestation of the electoral process to prevent the outbreak of violence and called for the establishment of a dialogue platform between political actors with the involvement of international actors.

The CENCO delegates also expressed their concerns over the continued presence of Congolese and foreign armed groups in eastern DRC, in particular the Lord’s Resistance Army, and urged national governments in the region to pursue a political rather than a military solution to these conflicts.

Field of Hope is a film produced, directed and filmed by Fiona Lloyd-Davies, which raises the issue of sexual and gender–based violence in DRC through the story of Masika Katsuva, a survivor of such violence. Masika encourages victims to gather and participate in therapeutic processes by working the community’s land.

Field of Hope will show on Al-Jazeera “Witness” from 30 August until 6 September 2011 (please see timings below).

The APPG Secretariat attended a two-day experts' workshop on conflict and forced migration in the Democratic Republic of Congo hosted by the Refugee Studies Centre of the University of Oxford in December 2010.

Fifty practitioners, academics and policymakers from the DRC and beyond explored the relation between conflict, displacement, the return of populations and the interaction between armed actors and civilians with the aim of discussing potential policy suggestions for regional and international actors. The event was funded by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (DRC office) and DFID.

Download the report.

Télécharger le rapport en français.

Following the parliamentary voting process on the new electoral code that did not retain amendments relating to the implementation of parity within electoral lists, the community-based women organisation CAFCO (Cadre Permanent de Concertation de la Femme Congolaise) organised a march in Kinshasa on Friday 3 June to protest against the electoral code that was about to be passed in violation to the Congolese constitution, which stipulates there should be parity within political institutions.

The march was a success and gathered around 300 women from various political parties and organisations.

Below are pictures of the March

Médard Mulangala, President of the Union for the Republican Majority (UMR) and founder and current Vice-President of the UK-DRC Friendship Group, attended UK Parliament on 10 May in order to meet with APPG members, mainly to discuss the context of the upcoming elections.  On the same day Mr Mulangala gave a speech at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) on the need for transparency in DRC’s extractive industries. The transcript of this speech can be downloaded here.

On 21 May, Mr Mulangala gave an interview to David Frost on Al-Jazeera, in which was raised this same topic of transparency in natural resource management as well as the November elections. A link to a video of the interview can be found here (scroll down to second video, interview at 10:40).

The APPG attended on 6 May a lecture organised by the Oxford Central Africa Forum (OCAF), on the Eastern African Standby Force (EASF) and more broadly on the regionalisation of peace and security in Eastern Africa.

The EASF, a regional brigade of the African Union’s military arm, was established in 2007 and brings together troops from 13 member countries, including Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It belongs to a context of increasing numbers of regional actors developing a peace and security unit (EAC, EGAD, COMESA, etc).

Such regionalising process seems particularly appropriate for east Africa and its interstate conflicts, following the rationale that the area’s security issues are frequently of regional dimension – so, then, should be the solutions.

The lecturers, who included a Foreign Office analyst, considered that even if the EASF seemed to be the most advanced and appropriate body to take the lead in a confused and redundant myriad of actors attempting to reinstate security across the region, it suffered from the same drawbacks as its counterpart entities: no lead nation among country members, no harmony in donor action, weakened by conflicting goals and hidden agendas, and most of all a lack of adequate resources.

A memorandum of the meeting may be downloaded by clicking here. 

On 4 May, APPG member Jeremy Corbyn MP chaired a meeting hosted by the Million Women Rise coalition in cooperation with the APPG. The event presented the findings from the Million Women Rise UK delegation to the Third International Action of the World March of Women, that took place in DRC in October and involved an estimated 3,000 women from 41 countries.

The meeting – to which Million Women Rise founder Sabrina Qureshi contributed, among other speakers – focused on the violence inflicted on Congolese women as well as the solutions that are to be deployed in order to put an end to this scourge.

The findings report from the UK delegation will be published shortly.