On Monday 28 March, APPG member Jeremy Corbyn MP chaired “Where Women Stand: The challenges for women in the DRC” with Liberation.

Victoria Dove Dimandja, supported by Jose Musau Kalanda, represented Liberation and told the meeting that there was an urgent need to re-establish the authority of the Congolese state and rebuild strong institutions to defend people’s interests in the DRC.  

Liberation noted that any effort to re-organise and legislate towards changes in the Congolese mining industry without taking these fundamental steps into account risks failure.

You can read the full text of Victoria’s speech below.

You can also the see the interview-based documentary on eastern Congolese women’s aspirations - Women’s Voices 2011 – which was showed at the evening’s close, on the top right corner of this page.

Victoria Dove Dimandja's Speech

TORTURED HISTORY

For more than a century, Congolese people have witnessed unspeakable crimes and unimaginable atrocities.

The DRC has had 32 years of bad governance, followed up with 16 years of constant armed conflicts. 

In fact, the Congo crosses a period more humiliating and the most painful of its post-colonial history. 

Since 1996, more or less ten million people have died, millions of women violently raped and mutilated.

For 15 years to date, lobbies politico-gangster have plundered the many resources of our ground and underground, despite the several routine reports by the UN;

For 16 years to date, forces armed of certain close countries have invaded and occupied by force our lands, thus forcing the Congolese autochthons to flee their villages.  More than 2 million people have been displaced, living in horrible conditions in refugee camps, others are just wondering in the forest, exposed to bad weather and wild animals.

Killings and brutal sexual violence against women, girls and also men have extremely increased.  It is a process of depopulation and ethnic cleansing.  Many Congolese communities depend for their survival on the productive and reproductive work of women.

There is still no end in sight to the atrocities.  There is no great deal of commitment to the peace process in Congo's government. 

On June, 2010, when the Congo’s government was feasting with champagne and caviar in company of its famous guests, at the same moment, throughout the country, family fathers were deprived of their thin wages for years, women and children deprived of running water, food, education, medical care and electricity, and have right only to tears and moaning. 

Whereas hundreds of millions of dollars of the Treasury were wasted for the delusions of grandeur and extravagances of a government indifferent to the misery of its people, at the same moment, in the East of the Congo, thousands of women, and young girls were screaming of pain because of the rapes and all kinds of exactions and humiliation that they were subjected the same day by the occupants and other criminals.

The last time there was a holocaust in Congo; British and American people reacted with a great national revulsion.  A century on, the history is repeating itself; those who have died, have died in the dark, unnoticed and unmourned.  The media has given it little attention, and much of the world remains uninformed.

Any state’s most basic responsibility is to provide security for its citizens.  Congo’s weak government has never effectively represented or protected its people.We live in a state of total impunity, where corruption is institutionalized. There is no central government authority. No judicial system. These atrocities will continue as long as the perpetrators face no penalty.

WHERE WOMEN STAND

53% of the DRC populations are women.  Congolese women have suffered economic hardship just as men.  Since its independence, the country is unilaterally run by men at all levels.  Congolese women have faced cultural and social obstacles such as being politically underrepresented; many women are unemployed because they are undervalued.

Furthermore, Congolese women have been excessively affected by the conflict; they have paid a heavy price through their bodies where the current marathon to power has been run, they have been raped, mutilated, defiled and few only have been pacified with humanitarian assistance instead of policies and actions to eradicate the evil.

We call on the UK as one of the principal supporters of the UNSC Resolution 1325, to support Congolese women in their struggle to enjoy equal participation in all decision-making processes and, to foster a new generation of women capable of contributing to the development of their nation. Let our pending generation know how brave and positive we are for their future.

TAKE ACTIONS

The international community spends well in excess of $2 billion a year treating the symptoms of the Congolese crisis (with peacekeeping and emergency assistance), but they don’t address the core of the conflict, which is the struggle for control over Congo’s minerals.

While addressing the consequences, it is important to put in place appropriate mechanisms, to act on the deep causes and to propose appropriate steps for durable solutions.  And, also putting in place a justice mechanism to address past and present crimes will be crucial to ending this cycle of impunity and violence.  The UK and the IC should reconsider their policy towards the DRC, and also deal rigorously with the negative forces behind this conflict.

The UK should question the role of their companies trading in the region. More pressure needs to be placed on the multitude of multinational corporations, along with their allies, who have been at the root of the conflict.  They must stop the grotesque crimes they are committing, fueled by the looting of Congo’s riches.

MONUSCO

The UN mission in the DRC is the largest but yet it has failed to provide the proper security needed to protect civilians.  MONUSCO’s budget is too high for a mission that has done little to restore long-term stability and security in the region. But even if MONUC were not wasteful and unsuccessful, a U.N. peacekeeping mission is not a good long-term replacement for a competent and professional national army.

UN MAPPING REPORT

The UN has accused Rwanda and other neighbouring countries of wholesale war crimes, including possibly genocide in the DRC. The report catalogues years of murder, rape and looting in a conflict where millions were slaughtered.

We cannot overstate the fact that president Kabila was with Rwanda, when they first invaded the DRC.  A former warlord, Kabila once served in the Rwandan army and commanded Rwanda-backed rebel units in some of the areas cited in the UN mapping report. 

The UK has the opportunity to show, once again, that it is a leader in protecting the rights of the most vulnerable in the world by mobilizing the world opinion on making the UN Mapping Report a priority, address its recommendations, and support the Congolese request for the creation of an international tribunal, where all governments named in the report should be challenged for the massive sexual atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide. War criminals should be prosecuted without prejudice. 

If followed by strong regional and international action, this report could make a major contribution to ending the impunity that lies behind the cycle of atrocities in the Great Lakes region of Africa. 

UK AID

In the light of aid, most African governments have failed to put in place policies and structures that would make our countries benefit from natural resources. They have taken the aid option and revenues from crude natural resources; hence, they have systematically denied us our share of the resources, by transferring all the money into their bank accounts abroad.

The UK has becoming one of Congo’s largest donors, and it has an increasing level of influence but to date has shown little sign of exercising any real clout. We Congolese women deplore the fact that, the UK is supporting a government associated with corruption, killing of human rights activists and brutal oppression of opposition, a government which actually promotes insecurity to allow its top officials to enrich themselves, a government which covers and protects officially wanted war criminals. 

The argument is that the money will make such government behave properly. However, after a decade of aid, we still see the same government drifting towards a totalitarian regime, where all kind of abuses and atrocities carried out in total impunity.  There’s no way you can make someone stop behaving badly by giving them free money.

Our country needs a well-trained, unified army and police to ensure security. Unfortunately, the current government has always opposed to such initiative, and the provided financial support allows them to spend more on their private security and militia, in order for them to stay in power forever and oppress dissidents.

ELECTIONS

Until a responsible government, a professional army, a national police and law enforcement structures, are in place, we will not know peace, and, never be able to hold the long-awaited free and transparent elections. Such failure will continue to keep the Great Lakes region in chaos, with dire consequences for millions of innocent civilians, especially women.

There is a desperate need, an urgent need to work first of all towards the re-establishment of the Congolese state and to rebuild strong institutions to defend people’s interests.   Any efforts to re-organize and legislate either the Congolese mining industry or governance without taking this fundamental step into account risk failure.

THANK YOU

Victoria Dove Dimandja & Jose Musau Kalanda

Liberation/Congolese Women Group