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Eric Joyce MP, Chair
WELCOME to the website of The UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This is a political website, but not party political: we are all passionate about the development of a region so vital to the future of Africa. The point of politics isn’t to get elected for its own sake – it’s to drive and influence change for the better. Most people agree that the government is doing a pretty good job on development, but people across the spectrum feel equally strongly about the desperate need for progress in the Great Lakes region. There’s a lot all of us can do to keep pressing for more resources and more development assistance - something that starts with raising awareness of the region as widely as possible in the UK. We try to do that by producing our own reports on the region, by convening working groups like the one below on corporate responsibility, by flagging up latest developments and reports, by lobbying ministers to help effect change.
The Great Lakes Region is the heart of Africa and potentially its driving force. But it has been wracked by years of conflict. In 1994, the Rwandan genocide shocked the international community, which did little effective to stop it. Since then, the region has seen wars ranging from the long-running conflict in Burundi to the devastating rebellion of the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. More than 4 million people have died as a result of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: the most devastating war since the Second World War, and one that few people in the rest of the world know of. Now, after 12 years of remarkable reconstruction in Rwanda, after elections in Burundi and Uganda, and with elections pending in the DRC, there is hope across the region for a brighter future.
On this site you will find information and debates about the big issues facing the region, contributions from great writers, and links to NGOs and others involved in Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda. Once you’ve had a chance to look us over, check the list of MPs signed up – if yours hasn’t done so yet, write and ask them to here.
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APPG Delegation Visit DRC Report
Oral Parliamentary Questions and Debates July 2011
The OECD Guidelines and the DRC cases
JOHANNESBURG 03 February 2012 (IRIN) - The belief that the end is nigh for Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) - a small but ruthless transnational armed group operating in four African states - underestimates its resilience and overestimates the unity and capability of the forces ranged against it, say analysts. 
NAIROBI/KINSHASA 02 February 2012 (IRIN) - The lives of thousands of HIV-positive people in the Democratic Republic of Congo are at risk as the country faces declining donor funding and a severe shortage of HIV treatment, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. 
BUJUMBURA 27 January 2012 (IRIN) - There are fears of a looming food shortage in Burundi after heavy rains damaged two successive harvests, say officials. 
NAIROBI 28 December 2011 (IRIN) - Launched in 2004, IRIN’s film unit has won numerous awards for its productions, several of which have been aired by prominent international broadcasters. Here is a list of the unit’s most-watched films in 2011. 
KAMPALA 02 December 2011 (IRIN) - Brandishing a plea for developed countries to make good their promises to reduce carbon emissions, 300 farmers, youths and activists took the scenic route to the COP17 conference in Durban, travelling more than 7,000km from Burundi in 17 days, through 10 eastern and southern African countries, aboard a convoy of buses draped in various national flags. 
POINTE NOIRE 25 January 2012 (IRIN) - Forced child labour remains rampant in Central Africa, where poverty fuels the trafficking of children from poorer countries to oil-rich states such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea and the Republic of Congo, according to experts. 
LONDON 26 January 2012 (IRIN) - Breast cancer continues to be misunderstood, under-diagnosed and fatal, particularly in developing countries, say researchers, despite more than one million official annual diagnoses and almost half a million recorded deaths annually. 
KIGALI 09 January 2012 (IRIN) - This will be a busy year for Rwanda's health centres as the country attempts to reach its goal of medically circumcising 50 percent of men by June 2013 as part of HIV prevention efforts. 
JUBA/KAMPALA 30 January 2012 (IRIN) - Petty traders from Uganda, South Sudan's largest trading partner, crowd into Konyo Konyo market in Juba selling used clothes, vegetables and household wares. Lacking economic prospects at home, they come in the hope of finding better opportunities in Juba's booming post-war economy. 
BUNDIMASOLI 26 January 2012 (IRIN) - The marginalized western Ugandan Basua community is fighting extinction; forcibly removed from their forest home two decades ago, they have struggled to cope with modern life and have been ravaged by health crises, including HIV. 
ISIOLO, 3 February 2012 (IRIN) - Politically motivated violence in the northern Kenyan town of Moyale, which has left dozens dead and tens of thousands displaced in recent weeks, shows little sign of abating and there are fears that the clashes could continue until elections are held for new local government positions. 
LAGOS, 3 February 2012 (IRIN) - A month after an angry public launched protests across Nigeria over skyrocketing fuel prices due to the removal of a government subsidy, a measure of calm has returned and people seem to have settled into accepting a compromise. 
HARARE, 3 February 2012 (IRIN) - With global funding for HIV/AIDS on the decline, Zimbabwe's innovative AIDS levy - a 3 percent tax on income - has become a promising source of funding for the country, with a dramatic increase in revenue collected in the past two years. 
