Democratic Republic of Congo

The current outbreak of Ebola in eastern Congo's North Kivu province is taking place in a war zone, with rival militias and rebel groups inhibiting health workers responding the crisis. This is the tenth Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since the disease was first discovered in the country in 1976, and it has the potential to become the deadliest. There are currently at least 339 confirmed cases, with the epicenter in the city of Beni. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has raised the possibility that Ebola will become entrenched if health workers’ efforts continue to be disrupted.  The high population density of the region presents another challenge to health workers. In the past, Ebola outbreaks have been confined to isolated, rural areas, where they could be contained until they burned out. Now, the disease outbreak is in the second-most densely populated area of DRC. Even more worrisome for the World Health Organization and Congolese Ministry of Health is the threat that the disease will spread to population centers in the south and west of the country and become exponentially more difficult to manage. Compounding these problems is the highly porous border between DRC and neighboring Uganda, where much of the traffic is all but unregulated. Ugandan officials are expressing concern that the disease will cross the border, and they are taking emergency measures to screen travelers and vaccinate health workers with an experimental vaccine.  This most recent episode recalls the deadly Ebola outbreak that ravaged West Africa in 2014 and 2015. The current situation could be even more devastating if the disease spills over into neighboring urban centers and across international borders. There are still encouraging signs amidst all of this. The World Health Organization has declared that more than 30,000 people have been treated with the Ebola vaccine. While still experimental, the vaccine has proven itself effective in mitigating the spread of the disease. The Uganda health ministry has 2,100 vaccine doses available for health workers. Presuming that the vaccine continues to prove effective, production of the vaccine will need to be scaled-up quickly.       

The Norwegian Nobel Committee had its #MeToo moment last week, awarding its peace prize to two courageous leaders in the fight against sexual violence in armed conflict. 

Champions for Change is a series highlighting male allies working to advance equality across the globe. In this post, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege describes what inspired him to start the Panzi Hospital in the DRC to serve women victims of sexual violence. 

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to Nadia Murad, a survivor—and activist for other survivors—of sex trafficking by the Islamic State group, and Denis Mukwege, a gynecological surgeon from the Congo in recognition of their work “to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.” It is heartening that Mukwege and Murad are receiving the recognition that their work deserves. Let us hope that this publicity will turn into action.

Developments in conflicts across the world that you might have missed this week.

Developments in conflicts across the world that you might have missed this week.

Nolan Quinn is the Africa program intern at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He is a master of public policy student at the University of Maryland, where he is studying international development policy and international security and economic policy. Few modern diseases elicit the same level of fear as Ebola. Thus, observers were relieved when, in late July of this year, an Ebola outbreak in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that claimed thirty-three lives was declared over. However, this victory was brief. One week later, a new outbreak was confirmed in eastern DRC’s North Kivu province, home to around one hundred armed groups, over one million displaced persons, and the UN’s largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation, MONUSCO. As of August 28, seventy-five people have died in the latest outbreak, with more deaths expected as some areas remain inaccessible due to conflict. Containing Ebola in eastern DRC will be more challenging than the previous outbreak, despite the logistical advantage of having a new vaccine, which was used to stop the earlier outbreak, available in-country. Since North Kivu is an active conflict zone, health workers will need armed escorts to deliver vaccines. These difficulties may have already played a part in Ebola spreading to Ituri province further north—another area where conflict recently reignited. The Ebola virus can spread through contact with bodily fluids from an infected person, contaminated items (such as needles), and infected animals such as fruit bats and monkeys. Fruit bats, sometimes eaten as bush meat, are considered the primary reservoir for the virus since they do not experience symptoms. Ebola experts believe infected bats began the West Africa outbreak. However, other factors facilitate Ebola’s transmission among humans. Unsanitary living conditions, high levels of malnutrition, and unprotected sexual contact can quickly spread the disease.  Movement of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) complicates the emergency response. According to the most recent data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, there are almost 800,000 refugees from the DRC. More than half are located in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, which border the provinces affected by the current outbreak; DRC itself hosts more than 540,000 refugees and 4.5 million IDPs. The West Africa outbreak showed that once it reaches densely populated areas, Ebola is much more difficult to control than in remote villages. With poor sanitation and medical care, as well as a $333 million funding gap, camps housing displaced Congolese—some of which shelter close to 70,000 people—could become breeding grounds for Ebola. The West Africa outbreak, which spread to ten countries including the United States and caused 11,325 deaths, exhibited the virus’s global potential. Worryingly, there are signs this outbreak will continue to spread. On August 14, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, said he is “more worried” about the outbreak after visiting the region. On August 29, the International Rescue Committee warned that this outbreak could be the "worst ever seen in East Africa." More than 2,000 people are feared to have come into contact with the disease, a far larger number than those vaccinated or given experimental treatment to cure the disease. If negotiations with militias to allow experts into “red zones” prove unsuccessful, completely suppressing the current outbreak could be nearly impossible.  

After keeping his own citizens and the international community in suspense for over two years past the end of his mandate in 2016, President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced that he will not stand for another term in this December’s long-delayed elections. Reactions to Kabila’s announcement have ranged from the relieved to the encouraged, as Congolese citizens, regional neighbors and the broader international community had all feared the destabilizing conflict likely to accompany a blatant, and unconstitutional, effort on the part of the President to retain power indefinitely. But celebrations of a victory for democratic governance and stability in the DRC are decidedly premature.  Kabila endorsed Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, his former interior minister, to succeed him. Shadary, a ruling party loyalist with little political following and the dubious distinction of being one of the individuals internationally sanctioned in 2017 for his role in violently suppressing political protests, is not a particularly compelling choice. His name now joins those of Jean-Pierre Bemba, a warlord and former vice president recently released from The Hague after the International Criminal Court overturned his conviction for war crimes, and Felix Tshisekedi, the son of longtime Congolese opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi, in the top tier of contenders for the presidency. Moise Katumbi, a former provincial governor with a sizeable political base who has been living in self-imposed exile, was thwarted in his efforts to register his candidacy by Congolese officials who denied him entry to the country.  The heavy-handed treatment of Katumbi, the selection of Shadary, and the absence of domestic or international confidence in the capacity, independence, and integrity of the electoral commission all indicate that Kabila has no intention of throwing open the door to genuine democracy. But to some degree, focusing on who wins at the polls in December misses the point.  Kabila’s presidency proved that it is possible to hold the DRC together—though just barely—with a set of patronage relationships that reward loyalty and dole out spoils to elites with enough access to mineral wealth or power over armed groups to be useful. It’s a ramshackle set of often-shifting relationships designed for the survival and enrichment of the few and nothing more, and in this sense Kabila could be interchangeable with anyone canny and connected enough to continue at the center of an essentially parasitic network.  For real change to come to the DRC, for the state to begin to function in a way that provides security and political accountability to its citizens and channels the country’s rich resources into meaningful development gains, it would have to adopt an entirely different kind of governing model than the one familiar to most Congolese today. Leadership will be determinative, but it will not be a question of who leads, but rather how, that will make the difference between the status quo and a better future.   

Though Prime Minister Bruno Tshibala of Democratic Republic of Congo officially announced on June 12 that President Joseph Kabila would not stand for a controversial third term, this has not ended speculation that Kabila, whose term of office expired in 2016, will find a way to continue to stay in power. Shortly thereafter, in what will surely complicate the election, the International Criminal Court acquitted Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former Congolese vice president, an ex-warlord, and a fierce rival of Kabila. Before these announcements were made, I sat down with Comfort Ero, the Africa program director for International Crisis Group, to discuss a new Crisis Group report on the situation in Congo as the tentative December election date approaches. Our discussion focuses on technical issues facing election officials, challenges that the opposition faces, the role of international and regional actors, and President Kabila’s personal situation. You can listen to the podcast here.

Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post, covering June 9 to June 15, was compiled with support from Lucia Petty and Rebecca Turkington.

As technology companies and carmakers become increasingly reliant on cobalt, many business, government, and nonprofit leaders have grown concerned about the mineral’s controversial supply chain.

Voices from the Field features contributions from scholars and practitioners highlighting new research, thinking, and approaches to development challenges. This article is authored by Ambassador Cathy Russell, former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues and member of the board of directors of Women for Women International.

African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat announced that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has abducted over seven hundred people and displaced hundreds more in 2017. In February, it carried out sixteen attacks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR). Chairman Mahamat said that in addition to the DRC and the CAR, the LRA is active in South Sudan. The LRA, he continued, is funding itself through ivory poaching in the DRC and looting minerals from the CAR. Despite the LRA’s steady activity, Uganda is withdrawing its two thousand troops that participate in the AU’s Regional Co-operation Initiative for the Elimination of the LRA (RCI-LRA). The Trump administration is withdrawing 250 Special Forces soldiers deployed to track down LRA leader Joseph Kony, who remains at large with some reports claiming that he is in southern Darfur, Sudan. The AU has renewed the RCI-LRA’s mandate, but pledged contributions from the European Union and others are in arrears. There seems little doubt that the LRA commands little attention outside parts of the AU. With a full plate in the region—including an immense war in South Sudan and multiple peacekeeping missions—the UN is unlikely to assist the AU with an already decades-long fight to oust the LRA. A concern must be that with waning international attention, the LRA will revive. The LRA has some similarities to Nigeria’s Boko Haram, especially with respect to the use of violence and terrorism. As with the LRA, Nigerian authorities have been quick to proclaim victory over Boko Haram. In December 2015, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari announced that the Nigerian military “technically” defeated Boko Haram. One year after Buhari’s claim of victory, military operations against the terrorist group continue. However, Nigerian military officials insisted that the extremists had been defeated. Like the LRA, the threat of Boko Haram is often understated and glossed over in the interest of pursuing other priorities. The persistence of both organizations suggests that terrorist movements of their ilk are hard to destroy and should not be underestimated.