Peace through education in Kigali

Like other countries in the African Great Lakes region, Rwanda has a dual identity when it comes to conflict. On the one hand, the country has known many forms of conflict and violence. On the other hand, however, Rwandans are deeply invested in the search for solutions to the violent conflicts that have torn apart their country.

Violent post-colonial ethnic conflicts in Rwanda began in 1959, followed by other outbursts in 1965 and 1973. This violence culminated in the 1994 genocide, in which the vast majority of victims were Tutsi. After the 1994 genocide, the new Rwandan government began efforts to rebuild a peaceful society. Government leaders started practical initiatives to strengthen national unity, such as: initiatives for restorative justice (whose practitioners were called Abunzi, or “the restorers”); the repatriation of Rwandan refugees from different countries; the institution of national commissions for peace, unity, reconciliation and the fight against genocide; and peacebuilding lessons in public schools.

Amidst these initiatives promoting peace in Rwanda, the Evangelical Friends Church of Rwanda, with the help of MCC and Change Agents for Peace International (CAPI), established the Friends Peace House (FPH) in 2000. With a strong history of leading peace trainings and uniting people across dividing lines, Friends Peace House, like the country of Rwanda as a whole, now finds itself shifting more towards development projects. Peace and development are not unrelated. The French proverb “pas de pain, pas de paix” (“without bread there is no peace”) illustrates the link between poverty and peace; likewise, without peace there can be no sustainable development.

As part of our peace and development programming, Friends Peace House runs a vocational training center called Mwana Nshuti (“child, my friend”). Commenting on the context of the village where he teaches, one of the Mwana Nshuti instructors remarks that “In my service I have seen that youth lack peace because of joblessness, not war only.” In the past in Rwanda a large amount of violence was committed by unemployed and
uneducated youth in gangs and militias who were easily manipulated to see other ethnic groups as targets for expressing their economic frustration and anger at the discrimination they had endured. Through Mwana Nshuti, Friends Peace House seeks to give value and practical skills to disadvantaged youth, encouraging them to think for themselves so that they are not vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.

The Mwana Nshuti program first began as a response by the Evangelical Friends Church to the large number of orphans (many of whose parents had been killed in the 1994 Rwanda genocide) living around a garbage dump in the Kicukiro neighborhood of Kigali. These children were often called mayibobo (a derogatory term for street children) and were marginalized from society. The name Mwana Nshuti is a deliberate act of honoring the youth, telling street children that “you are not mayibobo, you are mwana nshuti—a child who is my friend”.

Today’s Rwanda is being shaped by a new generation: none of today’s youth saw the genocide firsthand, yet they and other Rwandans live with the genocide’s aftereffects. In 2014 the Rwandan government ran another campaign called Ndi Umunyarwanda (“I am Rwandan”) to reinforce the message that we are all citizens and we choose not to discriminate along ethnic lines. In a recent Mwana Nshuti social studies class, teachers asked students to discuss in groups whether they would marry someone from a different ethnic group. Most students answered yes, because love is more important and we don’t value those distinctions, but some acknowledged it could be difficult for their parents’ generation to accept.

Throughout our lives we are educated by many different people, such as our parents, teachers, pastors and friends. In Mwana Nshuti the teachers seek to be good role models who create an atmosphere of inclusion and trust. As part of these efforts, Mwana Nshuti offered the Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) trauma healing training, a program developed by a Rwandan and a Burundian, for its students. This three day training explored the causes and consequences of trauma, loss, grief and mourning, examining what kind of society Rwandans want to see and how they can help create it.

Feedback from an anonymous evaluation survey of students suggests the impact of the initiative. One student shared that “this training helped me discover the grief which was in me.” Another reported that “I appreciated the lessons because they helped me to move from where I was (in grief) and now I am feeling OK.” Still another participant shared that the training “helped rebuild me and also to live peacefully with others wherever I am.” After students complete their practical training at Mwana Nshuti in hairdressing, mechanics or tailoring, FPH tries to place them in co-operatives and train them to work together and do their own projects for development and peace. Mwana Nshuti includes training in entrepreneurship, peaceful conflict resolution and trauma healing and encourages the transfer of this knowledge to the households of origin. The teachers also visit the students at home to get to know them, their situation and their extended families better. On one visit we were looking at an English reader with one student’s five-year-old neighbor who was also visiting. The book contained a picture of one person chasing someone else with a stick. The girl looked up and said, “I saw a movie where people were beating each other with machetes.” We asked her, “Is that good or bad? What do you do when you have a problem?” Her attention had already wriggled away to another picture on the page, but there will be one day when she will learn more of her country’s history and have to grapple with these kinds of questions. The country is moving on and deliberately teaching its youth to be peacemakers on a national and local level. If peace is built by youth, the country can hope for a sustainable peace.

Mwana Nshuti is an MCC Global Family education project. 

Antoine Samvura is the Program Coordinator at Friends Peace House, an organization of the Evangelical Friends Church in Kigali, Rwanda, that works with at-risk youth. Teresa Edge was a participant in MCC’s Serving and Learning Together (SALT) program. For the last two years, she has served as Program Assistant at Friends Peace House.

For more, check out the Summer issue of Intersections on Conflict, Reconciliation and Partnership in Africa’s Great Lakes Region. 

The economy of armed groups in the eastern DRC

The phenomenon of “armed groups” (illegal militias, rebel groups and mafias) in eastern Congo contains two strands, dating to roughly 1996: the first, a string of foreign militias, who for various reasons have set up bases of operation in eastern Congo; the second, various youth movements who took up arms to protect themselves from these foreign forces.

Historically, the weakness of the DRC’s government has been the fundamental reason for the persistence and multiplicity of these groups. Although the presence of these armed groups has been a constant, the militias themselves have evolved with time, with new generations of leaders emerging. As a consequence, the actors of 1996 are no longer the actors of today. And these groups have proliferated: in 2008, the territory of Fizi in South Kivu province alone was home to seventeen different militias.

In addition to the visible effects of war, these militias have created a deeply-established war economy in eastern Congo in which civilian populations and local resources are diverted towards the funding of armed groups. However, this complex economy is little-understood outside of Congo. Aside from the funds that armed groups derive from the DRC’s vast mineral resources (“conflict minerals,” as they are often called internationally), minimal discussion of the economic forces behind the war occurs. Failure to address these economic forces means that outside nations often make policy decisions based on an unclear understanding of the conflict dynamics in Congo. We must understand the origins of the various weapons and resources that strengthen the armed groups in the eastern DRC in order to create smart responses both within the country and internationally.

Free and easy access to a military arsenal
Several studies conducted between 2012 and 2014 have shown that the supply chains of weapons and goods to armed groups are simultaneously extremely complex and loosely structured. Armed groups’ resources flow from many sources, among them pillage, contraband sales and informal taxes. Patrols by the Congolese national army often run across ambushes set by militia members seeking to pillage the army’s weapons or encounter militia-run roadblocks and barriers at which militias pillage or tax travelers. In the resulting skirmishes, militia members pillage weapons abandoned by fleeing or dead soldiers. Often, however, militia members simply buy arms from members of the army engaged in illicit arms sales.

Collaboration between local and foreign armed groups represents another source of arms. In the province of South Kivu, two foreign groups— the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and the Burundian Forces Nationales de Libération (FNL)—often exchange goods, supplies and munitions with local groups. The FNL, for example, often traverses the Burundi-Congo border with arms, munitions, cows and other goods. The border area between the two countries has become one of the key sites in eastern Congo for illegal arms trafficking. The trade in contraband arms constitutes a huge source of resources for armed groups in the area (Life and Peace 119).

A diversity of funding sources
For their survival, many armed groups pillage goods from civilian populations. So, for example, rarely do two weeks pass in South Kivu province without at least one case of a civilian community being pillaged by an armed group. In the course of these pillages, armed groups take nearly everything: money, livestock, clothing, cell phones and so on. Sometimes, armed groups go so far as to burn down entire villages as a means of intimidating their victims and to cover their own tracks.

Illegal taxation constitutes another funding source for militias, who habitually set up illegal barriers on roads between agricultural areas and markets or on commercial waterways. On one such road in the Fizi territory of South Kivu, militias erected four barriers on a 27-km stretch of road between two villages. Those passing through these barriers were obliged to pay according to the wishes of the groups controlling the territory. Militias often block waterways, with boats taxed at 1000 Congolese francs (roughly one US$) per person.

Another revenue-generating strategy deployed by militia groups is to collect goods and money household-by-household from different villages, calling this illicit tax a “war effort.” In these cases, militias levy taxes between 500 and 1000 francs (between US$0.50 and US$1) per week, although sometimes they take an equivalent amount of food or goods instead. Ordinarily, this “tax” is compulsory: refusing to pay the levy results in imprisonment or worse. In some cases, however, community leaders fund those armed groups with whom they perceive themselves to be strategically aligned or from whose existence they benefit. Many Congolese leaders are currently in power because of support from armed groups: these leaders range from those at the local level to members of the provincial and national parliaments.

Another extremely lucrative aspect of this war economy is the control of mining sites (a familiar part of the “conflict minerals” narrative popular outside of the DRC). A great number of armed groups can be found near mining sites. Up to fifteen such groups are active in the South Kivu territory of Shabunda. These groups typically do not exploit minerals themselves, but rather impose taxes on artisanal miners. Those miners who attempt to oppose this taxation system are often the subject of harsh retaliation in the form of torture, imprisonment or death.

This concentration of armed groups around mining sites contributes to the wealth of illegal warlords. Their presence is a cause of daily conflict, as these warlords do not hesitate to confront other groups seeking to impose taxes of their own. In all circumstances, the civilian population pays the greatest price, be it through the taxes armed groups extort from them or from the violent conflict that surrounds them.

Smarter responses needed
This informal economy, instituted by armed groups in eastern Congo, paralyses the economic life of the region. The reduced state of agricultural production (attributable in large measure to the local population’s fear of going to their relatively insecure fields) is one of the visible consequences. This armed group economy destabilizes the life of civilian populations by fostering a perpetual sense of insecurity.

What is needed, then, is a dose of determination from the political leaders of the country and the region to restore peace and the authority of the state in the DRC. Honest and open regional cooperation is needed as the foundation of that peace. The respect of the cardinal principles of democracy, coupled with strong community outreach and good governance, could establish peace and end the problem of armed groups.

Internationally, those nations and blocs who hope to establish incentives for “conflict-free” minerals must understand that armed groups are not the only beneficiaries of artisanal minerals. In fact, armed groups’ involvement in “conflict minerals” mining usually comes down to taxing the work of others. Thus, interventions that hinder the sale of hand-mined minerals harm civilian population, not only armed groups. For smarter action on the international level, a fuller understanding of the complexities of the eastern Congo war economy is necessary.

Laurent Mikalano Mulotwa is the director of the Council for Peace and Reconciliation, a network of civil society and church organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

For more, check out the Summer issue of Intersections on Conflict, Reconciliation and Partnership in Africa’s Great Lakes Region. 

The church and peacebuilding in the African Great Lakes

In many corners of the globe, the church as a cultural and spiritual reality brings people together to love and respect the Lord. Many people, however, believe that the only valid societal role for the church is to preach the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ. But in Africa in general, and in the Great Lakes region in particular, the church’s mandate goes much farther than this spiritual proclamation, to include active commitment to foster peace in societies divided by violent conflict.

In places where people are torn apart by conflict or where people are divided by diverse interests, the church often remains one of the very few institutions still capable of unifying people, of connecting them, and of bringing them together to speak the same language, the language of peace. To be sure, the church is scarred by divisions among denominations and too often the church reflects rather than overcomes divisions within the
broader society. Yet at its best the church reminds people to forget the factors that divide them, since within the church we are reminded that we are in the presence of the One who created all, God Almighty.

In this article I explore the following questions: “Why does the church have this capacity to unify people and then bring them to forget that which divides them? What accounts for this capacity the church possesses of being able to work effectively for peace?” In trying to answer these questions, I attempt to show that in the Congolese context the church is capable of going farther and doing more to promote peace when compared to other actors.

The church constitutes a respected power in the Great Lakes region of Africa, a region in which the majority of the population is Christian. The church’s social status thus poises it to engage in the work of building unity and social cohesion. The church’s ability to unify people across political divides is clearly evident in the case of the Great Lakes region. Diplomatic relations among countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda have been torn apart because of invasions and rebellions. For example, over the past several years political conflicts and mutual recriminations between the leaders of the DRC and Rwanda have jeopardized good relations between the populations of these two countries.

While tensions have flared among the countries of the Great Lakes region, sometimes erupting into violent conflict, the leaders of churches in the region have played a large role in laying the groundwork for the re-establishment of peace and peaceful cohabitation among the peoples of the region. Several ecumenical Christian organizations in the Great Lakes have assisted these efforts for peace, including the Great Lakes Ecumenical forum (GLEF), the Great Lakes Initiative (GLI), the Fellowship of Christian Councils of the Great Lakes Region and the Horn of Africa (FECCLAHA) and the All Africa Council of Churches (AACC). These organizations frequently bring together church leaders from across political divides, despite the lack of understanding among their different governments, with the purpose of learning from one another and of searching together for peaceful ways to change how political leaders view the world and to help them speak the language of peace.

Matthew 5:9 tells us: “Happy are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Scripture passages like this one have helped the divided populations of the Great Lakes to no longer consider themselves as primarily or exclusively citizens of different states, with their identities tied up in the conflicts among those states, but instead to view themselves as men and women created in the image of God, persons having the same identity, namely, that of children of God.

What is it about the church that allows it to bring people together in this way, engaging in the uncertain field of peacebuilding, when the states they come from are in open war? As already noted above, church members compose a great majority of the population of the concerned Great Lakes countries. Persons in positions of authority and influence in the church, then, possess a power that regional political leaders cannot ignore. The political authorities of the Great Lakes are, in fact, forced to rely on the church if they want to keep their political power. When a crisis situation strikes a country, that country’s population often looks to the church for guidance. The word of the church in these situations, in my experience, is heeded by an overwhelming majority of the faithful, with many following the church’s guidance over their own political leanings, thus demonstrating the unifying power the church possesses.

The church receives this enviable power from the high regard in which it is held by the community and from the number of people who consider the church to be their last remedy, especially in moments of crisis and difficulty. The moral strength of the church comes from the word of God and the good news that the church preaches, but in moments of conflict the church’s moral power can be transformed into a benevolent political influence as well. Thus, at its best the church is considered neutral, a space where people can come to put down their burdens, even their political burdens, within a structure that brings people together.

The neutrality of the church is justified, not only by the behavior of its leaders, but above all by its prophetic mission, namely, the sharing of Christ’s gospel with the goal of transforming humanity. In their role as influential regional figures, church leaders distinguish themselves by their engagement for peace and the peaceful resolution of conflicts, to the point where even politicians must listen to them when the country goes through difficult times. At their best, church leaders work by the power of the Holy Spirit and fight for the well-being of the population in general. At this time in the Great Lakes region many church bodies are responding to the devastations wrought by human rights violations, among them sexual violence as an instrument of war. For example, the Church of Christ in Congo (ECC), through its Program for Peace and Reconciliation (PPR), is actively involved in the cause of peacebuilding. As part of the PPR, the ECC operates a biblically-based outreach program to disarm combatants in eastern Congo. This initiative has led to the voluntary disarmament and repatriation of more than 21,000 Rwandan refugees and 1,600 excombatants as part of efforts to promote peace in eastern Congo and in the Great Lakes region as a whole.The PPR shows the power of the church to intervene in a non-polarizing way in situations of intense conflict. Given the splits and divisions that characterize the African Great Lakes region, the unifying power of the church is needed more now than ever before.

Serge Lungele is Program Officer and Logistician for the Program for Peace and Reconciliation of the Church of Christ in Congo, an MCC partner organization that facilitates the voluntary repatriation of Rwandan refugees and combatants in the eastern DRC.

For more, check out the Summer issue of Intersections on Conflict, Reconciliation and Partnership in Africa’s Great Lakes Region. 

Conflict, reconciliation and partnership in Africa’s Great Lakes region

The Great Lakes region of central Africa—the countries grouped around Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika—showcases both the very best and the very worst of humanity. The region has seen its fair share of war and conflict: the 1994 Rwandan genocide, a twenty-year ongoing legacy of conflict and war in eastern Congo and a prolonged civil war in Burundi (a country where, just weeks ago, political tensions broke out again after ten years of peace) have all left their marks on the bodies and psyches of the peoples in the region. At the same time, the Great Lakes region is home to a vast and ever-growing community of peacebuilders, researchers, teachers, civil society actors and citizen activists who strive to re-establish and maintain peace.

The past and current conflicts of the region are nothing if not interconnected, both to each other and to the wider world. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda emerged from the same ethnic tensions (created and fostered by the colonial powers) that fueled the Burundian civil war. The conflicts in Rwanda and Burundi caused the displacement of refugees (and rebel groups) into Congo. International organizations and actors are omnipresent (although not with uniformly positive results). Through all of these events, the ugly specter of colonialism makes its enduring presence felt across the entire Great Lakes region.

Local dynamics often have regional and international causes: in eastern Congo, for example, a mine worker’s livelihood can be affected by the local military commander, by merchants in neighboring countries or by legislation enacted in the United States. In the Great Lakes, as elsewhere, following one single thread often leads to the discovery of a rich and varied tapestry of causes, effects, solutions and consequences, all tied into
one another, each one impossible to consider on its own.

True understanding is an act of compassion and the root of real peace. In this issue of Intersections, a team of authors from the Great Lakes region, along with MCC workers, present several windows into the dynamics that shape the region as a whole. While their articles do not present definitive solutions to the challenges facing the Great Lakes countries, the authors do highlight several key dimensions of the quest for durable peacebuilding and sustainable development in the region, including: the vital role played by
the church in durable peacebuilding efforts; the importance of supporting the efforts of local organizations; the pressing need to address the economic and human security devastation created by militias in the DRC; and the promise of grassroots peace initiatives in Burundi and Rwanda.

Patrick Maxwell is MCC’s Eastern Congo Peacebuilding Coordinator

Learn more by reading the summer edition of Intersections here.