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Democratic Republic of Congo

: I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman. All over Africa, and particularly in the DRC, there are millions of small arms, and that situation requires robust action by the international community. There are a number of things we can do. As well as the treaty, one of the ideas raised while we were there was the possibility of instituting air traffic control, which I know has been raised in the past. In Africa, there is very little air traffic control, which explains how arms get moved around. A fairly modest-sized project was proposed a few years ago by the UK Government, but it did not go ahead—it was quite a contentious issue at the time. I am not sure whether the Minister is in a position to comment on that, but one of the things we could do, besides the international treaty that the hon. Gentleman suggests, is look again at the possibility of establishing some means of air traffic control to monitor who is moving what around. At the moment, people can move weapons around pretty much with impunity. As well as physical solutions to the security problems in the DRC, we need political solutions. At the beginning of our visit, we were fortunate enough to meet Dr. Murigande, the Rwandan Foreign Minister, together with the Rwandan ambassador to the great lakes region. It is clear that Rwanda has had some success in encouraging some of the Interahamwe back to Rwanda. There is a package and some have semi-settled back in Rwanda peaceably, but that process has had limited success so far. Some people will not return to Rwanda because they will be brought to justice, and not necessarily through the Gachacha system. They may well be put in prison, so they are reluctant to go back, and often they are the most powerful people in those communities. Clearly, the UK Government, who are listened to very intently by all the Governments of the great lakes region, could have some influence in encouraging more diplomatic efforts to get all the people we can back to Rwanda. Not all of these people are Rwandans, of course—many may be recruited Congolese—so the problem is fairly opaque. Rwanda has been doing a great deal, it deserves to be commended, but there is a great deal more that we can all do. On a more specific level, I would like to mention briefly an ongoing problem with marginalised and abused children. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield will speak a bit more about this. In an impoverished society, it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to look after children. There is a series of mechanisms by which people in the DRC simply reject their children, who are left to live in the street or in the forest, if they survive at all. There is a phenomenon that has received quite a lot of publicity in the UK press recently. In essence, where the unreconstructed aspects—if I can put it that way without being too pejorative—of the theology of some of the more evangelistic Churches comes into contact with people who are not able to afford their children, the children are accused of witchcraft or some such superstitious nonsense as a mechanism to explain problems in the family and the difficulties that beset extremely impoverished people—and as a means for people to divest themselves of a troublesome child. We met quite a large number of churchmen—they were all men, I think—and a fair number of them were using a rather odd qualifying argument. Not all of them made the argument, but enough did to make it quite worrying. They argued that the problem was not that there was witchcraft among children, but that sometimes the wrong children were accused of witchcraft. In other words, some of the churchmen were saying, ““We think that witchcraft exists among children but the problem is that far too many kids get accused of it when they just have psychological problems””. That exacerbates the whole problem by bedding in and giving validity to the idea that such a phenomenon exists. There may be ways in which the Government and other agencies can encourage Churches, which in other modest but important ways operate extremely well—they provide social services and churches, schools and so forth—to look again at those practices. Those practices do exist, that argument is deployed and we came across it. The phenomenon is seen in the UK because some children from London have been sent back to the DRC and remain there. The UK embassy and the ambassador in the DRC have their eye on the problem, but there is little they can do except monitor it. However, it is important to raise it here and perhaps other agencies, including some of the Churches, will look again at the problem. The UK Government, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary of State for International Development, the Foreign Secretary and Members of all parties in this House, take a great interest in the role of education in the developing world. We had the opportunity to chat to President Kabila about the possibility of some kind of modest link between some schools in the DRC, probably in Kinshasa, and some in the UK. I think that it will be possible to facilitate that in one way or another. Mr. Andy Sparkes, the UK ambassador in Kinshasa, was very encouraging. I wonder whether it might be possible for the Minister to commend the idea of having a link-up because it would benefit kids in the UK as well as kids in the DRC, although it would be fairly modest and, of course, Francophone. The DRC is led by President Kabila at the head of an interim Government. Elections will take place soon. The UK Government, particularly through our ambassador to the country, Andy Sparkes, and through the Minister and others, have played an invaluable role in facilitating those elections. Not every party is taking part, although I think that most people will vote. It is a pity that it looks as though the Union for Democracy and Social Progress—a major opposition party with a good record in opposition under Mobutu—will not take part, but I think that many of the DRC's voters will take part in the elections. At one level, it is a little odd that Britain will soon be the largest donor to the DRC. We have no great history there—it is a Francophone country—but that is the way things are currently. Belgium and France could perhaps take more of a leading role. Who knows who will win the election? There must be a modest chance that President Kabila will win it. We got the impression on the trip that if he does, he will take an inclusive approach to choosing his Government and to governing, as opposed to a winner-takes-all mentality, which would send people straight back to the bush and alienate very talented people such as Vice-President Ruberwa and others whom he needs on board. Let me mention the groups that made the trip, which we found to be invaluable, possible. They include Oxfam, Christian Aid, Tearfund, the Rainforest Foundation, War Child, Save the Children and Amnesty International. All those organisations have hugely valuable programmes in the DRC. They help to support local non-governmental organisations and to build capacity among those NGOs, which will perhaps be their most important role in the longer term. In addition, our embassy in Kinshasa is doing a sterling job—a magnificent job. Andy Sparkes, Jo Gauld and their colleagues deserve recognition for that.