Seven Ways Canada Can Help Africa's Great Lakes Region

If Canada hopes to help address human rights violations, abuses against women, and persistent poverty in the DRC, policymakers are going to have to get creative.

Canada’s policy strategy in the Great Lakes Region of Africa has been to follow the diplomatic and donor consensus, which for the most part has meant urging the government of the DR Congo to assume primary responsibility for resolving the persistent conflict. This is a safe and ineffective policy. The central dilemma in the DR Congo is to minimize the predations of rebels and brigands who sow disorder in the east through commandeering the mineral trade and using the proceeds to enhance their military capacity for preying on civilians. This disorder is at the heart of the human rights violations, abuses against women, population displacements, diversion of national income from the mining sector and persistent poverty. For the moment, the public sector in the DR Congo is too destitute and too embroiled in the conflict itself to meet these challenges. The policy reflections of the Africa Canada Accountability Coalition must take this into account in proposing ways for the Canadian government to experiment with different partnerships and paradigms.

It is true that the land question must be addressed, perhaps by the UN Group of Experts, but then there must be some guarantee that the crimes arising out of the conflict over land and other resources be addressed effectively. It is also a fact that measures must be taken to end the impunity of rogue businesses and rebel merchants throughout the DR Congo dealing in natural resources. For this, as with other related matters, Canada’s policy must support workable solutions. It is time to think outside the state. This means support for external legal mechanisms, an international tribunal or a mixed international/national court with jurisdiction over financial and human rights issues. It means also direct support for the legitimate and reputable private sector to do what the public sector can not, which, in the first instance, means barring access to the international market for rebels and brigands and unlawful militias presently controlling large number of mining sites.

Canada’s reluctance to venture away from public sector partnerships weakens rather than strengthens its policy leverage. Instead of addressing the specific problem of promoting corporate social responsibility in Katanga and halting the commerce in conflict minerals in the east and northeast, Canada’s policy largely avoids this issue. For reasons that remain obscure, Canada has thrown the weight of its national reputation behind a company, First Quantum, whose corporate reputation in the DR Congo has been questionable while keeping model mining firms such as Anvil Mining Ltd at arms length. And instead of supporting measures to stop the trade in blood tin, tantalum and tungsten, Canada has so far given aid for much less controversial and unpromising projects such as reforming the armed forces. The DR Congo is a challenge for any donor or investor truly concerned with social reform and if Canada is to rise to the challenge, its policy initiatives must not be satisfied with conventional approaches which, till now, have failed to address the heart of DR Congo’s governance dilemmas.