Peace keeping in the DRC: MONUC and the Road to Peace

The peacemaking process in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) began virtually at the outset of the war, long before many of the Interlocutors understood the dynamics of the conflict. It took merely a year from the firing of the first shots of the DRC war in August 1998 to reach an extremely complex ceasefire agreement, and for the UN to authorize a peace operation in its support. The Lusaka Peace Agreement included provisions on the normalization of the situation along the DRC border; the control of illicit trafficking of arms and the infiltration of armed groups; the holding of a national dialogue on the future government of the DRC; the need to address security concerns; and the establishment of a mechanism for disarming militias and armed groups. The Mission de l’organisation des Nations Unies AU Congo (MONUC) was mandated, among others, to develop an action plan for the overall implementation of the Ceasefire Agreement by all concerned with particular emphasis on the following key objectives:the collection and verification of military information on the parties forces; the maintenance of the cessation of hostilities and the disengagement and redeployment of the partie’s forces; the comprehensive disarmament, demobilization resettlement reintegration of all members of all armed groups; and the orderly withdrawal of all foreign forces, The aim of this monograph is to enhance understanding of the complex array of actors and actions that underpin the current Congolese peace process’- from the key protagonists and their interests in the DRC, to the deployment of MONUC, and attempts to initiate the Inter-Congolese Dialogue. To a large degree, key to the conflict in the DRC as well a that in the Great Lakes region, can be found in the eastern Kivu provinces. Since 1959, the various crises in Rwanda and Burundi have generated four major refugee flows that have affected security in the Great Lakes region, and the Kivu provinces in particular.