The role of Civil Society in peacebuilding in the Great Lakes Region

The International Peace Academy (IPA) organized a half-day Civil society Dialogue for civil society activists from the Great Lakes region of Africa in New York on 26 March 2004. It featured seven civil society actors from the Region and drew participants from the United Nations community and academics from institutions within the New York area.The aims of the 2004 meeting were to: Assess the role of civil society in conflict prevention, management, and peace-building in The Great lakes region: Evaluate the relationship among civil society groups with regional and sub-regional organizations; Enable the civil society activists and participants to share experiences and expertise; establish networks; and take stock of their capacities, challenges, and opportunities for peacemaking, peace-building and democratization in the region; Provide an opportunities for the UN community to gauge the interest and readiness of the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the Great Lakes region to effectively engage in processes such as the international Conference on the Great Lakes Region (IC/GLR): and Offer recommendations for improving capacity in conflict management and good governance efforts. The positive record of CSOs to date in various regional and international initiatives underscores their relevance and growing importance to on-going peace building efforts in the region. The complex, interlocking, and regional nature of the Great Lakes conflicts, the spillover across national boundaries of small arms, the large refugee movements, inadequate physical space for the populations, and environmental destruction from the exploitation and plundering of the region’s natural resources clearly require an integrated regional response. While many challenges to CSOs in the region persist, progress has been made in a number of countries. In Rwanda and Burundi, women’s organizations are at the forefront of the reconciliation and integration efforts. In Kenya, Coos have been instrumental in fostering the democratic transition and are still exerting considerable influence influence in the debates on public issues. The concerted efforts of Ugandan CSO as both pressure and opposition groups wee instrumental in the government’s agreement’s to return to a multiparty political system by 2006. Finally, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), CSOs were part of the negotiations that led to the establishment of the Transitional Government in 2002. The complex, interlocking and regional nature of the Great Lakes conflicts, the spillover across national boundaries of small arms, the large refugee movements, inadequate physical space for the populations and environmental destruction from the exploitation and plundering of the region’s natural resources clearly require an integrated regional response. Nonetheless, sever political, financial, and institutional constraints remain obstacles to CSOs. Many governments in the region view the work of CSOs with suspicion and sometimes subject civil society leaders to severe harassment and intimidation. States often crate barriers by constructing laws to insulate their actions from scrutiny or to curtail CSO activities. In some cases, civil society leaders are labeled agent of foreign interests or proxies of political opposition in order to justify hostile action from the government. Operationally, CSOs are constrained by inadequate resources and over-reliance on external donor support.Policy Recommendations The key recommendations from the Dialogue were: Securing Longs-Term Funding Development partners interested in security and democracy in the region need to commit long-term resources to CSOs to engender institutional stability and a more robust organizational capacity