Human Rights Abuse in the Democratic Republic of Congo - Research Paper Example

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Name of Student Institution Affiliation Table of Contents Introduction 3 Origin of the Concept of Human Rights 3 Research Design and Methodology 4 A case Study of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 4 Phase I 5 Phase II 6 Phase III 7 Conclusion 8 References 9 Introduction Human rights refer to the minimum procedural rules or standards to which the people in power must or should uphold whole dealing with other people (Austrian Development Agency, 2010). Consequently human rights concern the state authorities like the armed forces, governments as well as the sections in the society that wield non-governmental power such as religious communities, business enterprises, international organizations among others. From a much broader perspective, human rights seek to set limits on the power as exercised by the governing authorities thus placing the concerned parties under an obligation to lay concrete foundations within which the people can adequately enjoy their rights However, like any other legal norm, these rights are violated daily and in various ways (Abouharb, 2007 & Willem, 2014). To counter the dangerous trend, international as well as national courts are just but some of the bodies that exercise oversight authority by way of monitoring the level of human rights compliance across the globe.. Across humanity, the lives of people are constantly affected, though in various ways, by the legal and moral rights although a smaller section of these rights have been considered very fundamental and as a result the same has been embodied in international laws in addition to customized national constitutions (Ball & Gready, 2006; Ishay & Kayess, 2014). Of the human rights, the most important and basic provisions include human life and dignity. Torture, enslavement, unlawful imprisonment, degradation or discrimination against is just some of the ways in which this basic human right has in the past few centuries been taken away. According to the International Crisis Group (2006), the right to human dignity has been violated when people are subjected to lives of abject poverty – lack of minimum food, clothing, and shelter. This is further compounded by the lack of access to quality education, medical care, job and social security. It is from the core of these existential human rights that the rights to freedom, equality, political and economic rights, cultural and social rights stem especially among the vulnerable members of our society (United Nations Population Fund, 2009 & Charles, 2009). Origin of the Concept of Human Rights Historically, the development of human rights has been a dialectical process oftentimes involving a series of revolutions (Steinberg & Gerald, 2015). The pair argues that the whole thing started with the emergence of the bourgeois chain of revolutions that sought to challenge feudalism and absolutism. The precipitate for such upheavals was the rationalization of the national law, social contracts, enlightenment of ideas, liberalism and constitutionalism across North America and Europe. The developments later culminated into the entrenchment of political and civil rights in the quest to protect liberty, life and democratic participation from as early as eighteenth century. On the contrary, the socialist views with regard to human rights changed considerably from the twentieth century when the real equality among humanity was interpreted to include social, cultural and economic rights to quality healthcare, good education, social security and better living standards (Barbara, 2014). Further, a third version of human rights started to take shape during the decolonization of Asia and Africa and this was pivoted on the right to economic and political self determination and development. Notwithstanding the serious ideological differences from various quarters of the world, the United Nations finally succeeded in developing a comprehensive set of norms with a view to protecting human rights. Since this draft was largely developed through consensus, it is widely seen as an account of a range of human rights perspectives. Research Design and Methodology The aim of the Research study was to understand the effectiveness of the UN Security Council intervention in maintaining peace and stability across the world. To realize this, the research paper sought to understand the role played by the UN peacekeeping forces in civilian protection as well as the factors that need to be taken into account while analyzing the effectiveness of this body in undertaking its core mandate. The study interrogates the resolutions made by the UN Security Council as well as the authority bestowed on the Democratic Republic of Congo Peacekeeping Mission from the year 1998. The study relies heavily on the documentation of the resolutions by the United Nations Security Council as well as the reports prepared b the UN Secretary General. A case Study of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) The civil unrest in the Democratic Republic of Congo is dated back to August 1998 when a rebellion erupted in the Eastern part of that country (Lamp and Trif, 2009). The rebellion is believed to have had a back up from the country’s Eastern neighbors – Uganda and Rwanda. The subsequent developments forced the other African countries to step in so as to bail out the then Congolese government fuelling more war in the process. Fast forward, the war morphed into massive internal displacements resulting from sexual violence, ethnic cleansing and intense looting majorly involving state parties and other illegally armed groups (Samuel & Moyn, 2010). To date, the conflict still continues – though at a decreased rate - despite the ceasefire agreement and withdrawal of foreign armies following the formation of National Unity Government. The United Nations (UN) first got involved during the signing of the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement in July 10, 1999.According to Lamp and Trif (2009) the agreement requested for the constitution, facilitation, and deployment of the appropriate peacekeeping forces in the DRC to oversee the successful implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement. Besides, the peacekeeping mission was to be allowed to not only provide but also but also maintain considerable humanitarian assistance to all the affected persons as well as other affected parties. However, despite the UN Security Council having expressed the desire to oversee the implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement, its response was quite a far cry from the Lusaka Agreement Provisions; the Security Council appeared to adopt a more cautionary approach (International Crisis Group, 2006). The then UN Secretary General stated in no uncertain terms that for a peacekeeping mission to effectively exercise its mandate in the DRC, it would be unreasonably expensive calling for deployment of tens of thousands of international troops. In addition, the UN Secretary General cited complex but unforeseen challenges that such a peacekeeping mission would have to contend with. Owing to the reservations expressed by the United Nations, the first mission was purely made up of liaison officers and sampled military observers whose key task was simply to establish contacts with the conflicting parties. The sole aim for this initiative was to explore and therefore understand the conditions under which a substantive peace keeping mission could be deployed. To make matters worse, by the time the Secretary General was expanding the DRC mission to move that five thousand in the year 2000, the military observers as well as the liaison officers had not yet fulfilled their respective tasks as observed by Pierre (2013). The move by the then Secretary General was largely motivated by the deterioration of the country’s security situation. Particularly, he pointed out that the mission may never have had the capacity to protect the individual civilians from armed attacks adding that the operation risked inflating unreasonable expectations from the world (Renouard, 2013). Over time, the subsequent resolutions provided for only troop strengthening while leaving the mandate intact. According to Lamp and Trif (2009), the implementation process was envisioned to go through three phases: the first phase, after adopting Resolution 1291 on February 24, 2000 spanned to the first troop’s deployment in the summer of 2001; the second phase covered capacity build-up to the Ituri Crises in the 2003 summer; the third phase constituted the subsequent time lapses to the new mandate adoption in October of 2004. Phase I At this first stage, the DRC mission had very insignificant influence on the Congolese population whose situation deteriorated with the continued ethnic clashes and displacement of the civilian population; observed (Landman & Todd, 2006 & Michael, 2012). Worse still, a considerable number of the military observers and liaison offices send to the ground were completely dependent on the local authorities and the conflicting parties for their security. In the 2000 summer, heavy fighting broke out in the city of Kisangani with protest staged outside the Peacekeeping Mission Headquarters in Kinshasa where the military observers were blamed for inaction. In a quick rejoinder, the Secretary General to the United Nations threatened the withdrawal of the officers and even complete abandonment of the mission in its entirety. As explained by Michael (2011), the frustrations expressed by the Secretary General were simply a tip of the iceberg since, reportedly, the UN member countries had been reluctant to send their troops for this noble mission. The dilapidated infrastructure of the DRC posed yet another serious problem to the military and staff mobility. Taking into consideration the extensive bombardment and campaigns against Iraq and Serbia at the time, the UN Security Council approach was seen as ‘unnecessarily over-cautionary’. In the harsh reality of the successive events, on February 2001, the Secretary General sought for a review of the concepts adopted in the operation to guarantee close and focused verification as well as monitoring of the degree of compliance among the conflicting parties with regard to the ceasefire terms (Lamp and Trif, 2009). In this case, the secretary general envisioned slow but consistent capacity building of the military personnel on the ground to more that 3,000; still he remained non-committal on the issue of protecting the civilian population. The UN Security Council subsequently adopted the reviewed concept of operation as part of Resolution 1341 in February 22, 2001 but at the same time re-affirmed the contents of resolution 1291.Additionally, the Secretary General, in a later address, acknowledged that the security of civilian population would be addressed immediately the foreign troops were withdrawn from the Congolese territory. Again, this was largely seen as insensitive and meant to cover for underlying but unmentioned weaknesses in the whole operation (Brownlie, 2013). Phase II According to International Crisis Group (2006), the first troops of the peacekeeping mission landed in DR Congo towards the end of March, 2001 hitting 2366 members of the military personnel by the end of June the same year. In their continued verification and monitoring of the situation, the troops also started to prepare the stage for the third and final phase that would involve the disarmament, reintegration, demobilization, repatriation and subsequent resettlement of the families of the warring groups. At the same time the UN Secretary General stood his ground and maintained that the primary responsibility of ensuring safety of the civilian population lay squarely in the hands of the de-facto authorities across the country in conjunction with the warring groups. Further, he cited limited number of troops and restricted deployment as the major challenge facing the mission – he explained that the troops deployed in the DRC conflict were not well trained, equipped or configured to adequately protect the individual civilians as need may be (Curtis, 2006 & Hanks, 2008). Lamp and Trif (2009) explain that the incapacitation of the peacekeeping troops continued to rise an ugly head on a number of occasions; one such incident was in May 2002 when violence erupted in Kisiangani City leading to loss of civilian lives to the tune of hundreds. It is a view that is supported by both (Hampson, 2007 & Barzilai, 2013). Despite the continued patrols by the peacekeeping mission troops, unprecedented violent protests greeted Kinshasa with response to the killing of unarmed civilians. As if that wasn’t disastrous enough, ethnic clashes on the Eastern part of Ituri Province quickly escalated to attain genocidal proportions. The bloodshed spiraled further into Bunia town of Ituri when the Ugandan forces decided to withdraw their 7000 troops’ presence in May, 2003. Kayess & French (2010) attribute this to armed militia that took over the town looting, raping and killing at will with the population’s anger turning against the peacekeepers who were even threatened with lynching. The UN Security Council had to urgently send well equipped personnel to bring back peace and guard vital installations in the town of Bunia as well as protect the civilian population by restoring the rule of law and order. Looking at the bigger picture, this greatly delayed the demobilization and disarmament exercise as earlier envisaged. Phase III The UN Security Council decided to split the United Nations Mission in The Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) in July, 2003 (David & Forsythe, 2010 & Chauhan, 2014). This was under the Resolution 1493 of the Ceasefire Agreement. On the one hand, the Security Council authorized the Ituri Brigade to exercise control over Ituri province after the withdrawal of the Operation Artemis – an urgent mission deployed to restore order in Bunia town. The 3800 strong army was given the mandate to ensure security stability in Ituri by improving the humanitarian situation, protecting the displaced persons in addition to the civilian population (Donnelly & Jack, 2013). Moreover, this number was later marked up in November 2004 after the Operation Artemis. To the rest of the country, MONUC was solely supposed to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence and within its capacity. Again in the summer of 2004, rising tensions between rebel leaders in Bukavu, capital of South Kivu, resulted into serious clashes again putting into doubt the preparedness and capacity of MONUC (Glendon & Mary, 2011). In fact, so overstretched and overpowered had been the MONUC officers that a correspondent of The Economist described it as the least effective of all the UN peacekeeping forces. Consequently, the UN Secretary General proposed another review of military concepts employed in the operations. In October, 2004, the UN Security Council adopted and endorsed the update thereby affecting significantly the effectiveness of MONUC. Further, in the year 2004, the Secretary General requested for troop reinforcement by providing additional 13,100 members with enhanced air support capacity (Lamp and Trif, 2009) to calm the growing tension. Conclusion The objective of this research paper was to critically examine and analyze the effectiveness of the UN Security Council and its troops with regard to the protection of ordinary civilians. This is against a backdrop of increasingly demanding tasks that the UN peacekeeping forces have had to assume in the recent past. It is the noble role of the international forces in the protection of civilians that warrants an urgent concern and academic interrogation. As pointed out in the Democratic Republic of Congo Case Study, integrating the aspect of human rights in pursuit of global peace has been quite an uphill assignment by all means. However, the examination of the humanitarian situation in the DRC offers some critical yet important lessons. To start with, the human rights approach adopted offers rare and a flexible example on planning, assessment, monitoring and evaluation as well as implementation of the specific strategies that can be accomplished in varying geographical settings and situations. The basic principles governing this approach offer valuable lessons on open-mindedness especially when approaching volatile situations in the world’s conflict zones. Nonetheless, it is important to see to it that such fundamental principles resonate well with the local people and contexts of operation if tangible success is to be realized. Secondly, as pointed out during the case study, it is important to note that the societies or communities with no prior experience on matters human rights also have got an opportunity to understand individual rights and how such rights are likely to impact on their quest to face daily challenges. In these circumstances, it might be tricky to convince the local people on how relevant human rights might be in cases of civil upheavals. It is in light of this compromising situation that the third aspect comes up – integration of human rights approach into minds of both the duty-bearers and rights-holders. Though the process may be resource –demanding and rife with unforeseen challenges, the range and wealth of possible positive outcomes cannot be overlooked. Consequently, it calls for careful balancing of needs and capacities of duty bearers and rights-holders for sustainability and effectiveness of any peacekeeping programme. This approach fosters a long-lasting sense of shared values in the quest to improve the well being of any community affected by war. References Abouharb, R. (2007). Human Rights and Structural Adjustment. New York: Cambridge University Press Austrian Development Agency (2010). Introduction to International Human Rights Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Ball, O. & Gready, P. (2006). The No-nonsense Guide to Human Rights. Cambridge University Press Barbara J. (2014). Reclaiming American Virtue: The Human Rights Revolution of the 1970s. Leiden: Cambridge University Press Barzilai, G. (2013). Measuring Human Rights: Problems of Methodology and Purpose. The University of Michigan Press Brownlie, I. (2013). Principles of Public International Law (7th ed.). Oxford University Press. Charles R. (2009). 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