UN chief pleads for Congo peace deal

The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called on regional countries to support the Congo peace framework, fearing any indifference will render the efforts futile. The UN boss said the framework is “the best chance for peace in many years”, appealing to all leaders to play their part in implementing it and meeting their commitments. Ban made the remarks yesterday at the conclusion of his visit to the country, together with the World Bank president, Dr. Jim Yong Kim. The duo visited the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda for the common purpose of securing peace in the Congo and helping the region to move towards peace and economic development.Ban believes Rwanda is critical to the success of a new deal to restore peace in eastern DR Congo, and asked President Paul Kagame to fully support it. Speaking to reporters in Kigali, the UN boss said when he met President Kagame on Thursday night, he lauded him for leading Rwanda into the path of sustainable development but also asked him to fully support the peace deal which stands as the latest effort at securing peace in eastern DR Congo.“I told him (President Kagame) that I also count on his leadership to help bring peace and stability to the region,” Ban said, also highlighting that “Rwanda is critical to the Framework’s success.”The world’s top diplomat has appointed former Irish president Mary Robinson as his new Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa who is now charged with overseeing the implementation of the peace deal.Under the peace deal, the DRC commits to strengthening its security and governance institutions to ensure the rule of law in the country, especially in eastern Congo’s conflict-torn provinces of South and North Kivu as well as ensuring peace with neighbouring countries.As for the region, which is defined in the treaty as the rest of ten countries signatory to the peace deal, it is required to avoid any interference with internal affairs of neighbouring countries, including the DRC.But Rwanda remains particularly concerned over the genocidal group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, whose members are largely responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The group has been involved in creating instability in the region along with several armed militia roaming in eastern Congo and it attacked Rwanda twice last year killing two people.According to experts, such as Rwandan scholar Aloys Mahwa who works as the Executive Director of the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Kigali, FDLR is the main challenge for security in eastern Congo and the UN can only succeed by both fighting it and preventing it from working with the Congolese government.“My fear is that Congo is working with Interahamwe (FDLR). Rwanda is concerned with its security and that’s the real problem. It’s been there and we hope it ends soon,” Mahwa said in an interview with Saturday Times yesterday.The researcher’s advice to UN if it is to succeed in making peace in the Congo is two-fold. Either the body uses diplomatic means such as peace talks because using force to stamp out the rebels would create a humanitarian crisis or it uses regional forces who know the region better to deal with the rebels instead of deploying soldiers from as far as South Africa or Bangladesh to fight them.As part of the World Bank’s efforts to tie regional countries together and making the implementation of the regional peace deal a success, the bank’s president offered to lend $1 billion in new funds to promote cross-border trade, renovate and build new regional hydropower plants shared by Rwanda, the DRC, Burundi, and Tanzania, as well as bankroll health and agricultural projects in the Great lakes countries.

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UN chief pleads for Congo peace deal