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Democratic Republic of the Congo

I thank Mr. Speaker for granting this debate on UK Government assistance to the post-election Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is now more than three months since Joseph Kabila was sworn in as the first democratically elected President of the country since Congolese independence. Those elections have been described by some as the most important in Africa since the election of Nelson Mandela. The registration of 25 million voters and the smooth running of a national election in a country that has only 300 miles of paved roads but is nearly the size of western Europe, was a major achievement. Those of us who were privileged to act as election monitors can testify to the basic fairness of the process. The verdict of the international and national observers on the presidential and national elections was that there were some hiccups, but that the process was basically fair, although there have been some questions since on how some of the provincial governorships have worked their way through. I salute the bravery, maturity and determination of the Congolese people, who have suffered so much and who we saw behave with the most extraordinary dignity in those elections. They would walk miles and miles to the polling stations to cast their votes and queue overnight to play their part in the process. Now, of course, they are filled with expectations for the future, which we cannot afford to betray. I am also proud of our Government’s role in recognising the vital strategic importance of the DRC by moving to become the largest European bilateral donor and by giving major support to the elections. I am proud of the personal commitment to the country shown by our Secretary of State for International Development. The DRC is in the heart of Africa and is emerging from a civil war, which has been called Africa’s world war, involving six neighbouring countries and leaving 4 million dead from conflict, disease and starvation, and more than 3 million people displaced. Rebel groups from other countries have rampaged over its land and continue to do so; members of the Lord’s Resistance Army have been camping out there. That has been a continuing problem. All that follows a century and more of the exploitation and plundering of the DRC’s resources and longer still of its people being taken into slavery overseas, a fact that I am sure will come forward this year as we celebrate the ending of slavery, although it has continued in a modern form. The DRC is rich in resources. It has huge potential, but also huge difficulties. It is astonishing that it has not been given more prominence in our national and foreign affairs debates. If we could bring stability and development to the DRC, the effect on the rest of Africa and international security would be immense. Like other hon. Members who visited the DRC for the elections or to look at the problem of street children or more general issues of international development, I have been profoundly affected and moved by the experience. I hope that the debate gives us the chance to focus on the future of the Congo and its people, and on the role of our Government and the international community. As Mr. Speaker knows well, I have been seeking this debate ever since the elections; I put in for it on a number of occasions and have only just managed to secure it. I have three main reasons for raising the subject. First, the DRC has emerged from the peace process, the transitional Government and the elections, as a country that remains politically fragile and very volatile. It could hardly be otherwise, given its history. Between the two rounds of elections and since, we have seen sporadic violence break out, and the country could always disintegrate into violence again. I have been concerned about the recent violence in Bas-Congo and how it was brutally dealt with, and about the disturbances that continue in the east of the country. It is a very fragile country. Of all times, now is when it most needs support. The international community cannot afford to let its focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo slip. We need to reassert the statement made in June last year by the Secretary of State in evidence to the Select Committee on International Development’s inquiry on post-conflict reconstruction. He said clearly that we are in the DRC for the long term. We need to reassert that. The DRC has not been afforded the priority that it should have been in our public debates, although we have recently done better in raising questions in Parliament. However, we need to reassert that serious commitment and for it to be there for the long term. As the International Crisis Group sets out graphically, there is no point in going somewhere and feeling that we have done our job because the election has happened. The danger time is during the next couple of years. During the election, the focus was on all the work going on around it. In the following period, it will be very easy to fall back into the conflict that we seek to avoid if people feel that nothing has been achieved. The Secretary of State put the problem well in his evidence to the Select Committee, when he said:"““If this goes wrong again in the DRC, then the knock-on consequence for the whole of the Great Lakes region really does not bear thinking about. Given the scale of the loss of life there has been because of violence and disease, a very good question is why did not more people do more about it earlier.””" I would like to hear it reasserted—I know that the Secretary of State has made this assertion already—that our Government are committed to keeping their eye on the ball and being in the DRC for the long term, and that we will not be diverted by the next most high-profile issue in the news, important though things in other parts of the world and the continent are. My most important point is to reassert our country’s commitment and our involvement in trying to engage other countries in their commitment to the DRC. My second reason for raising the debate is that we have to commit ourselves to helping and supporting the DRC on the hugely difficult issues that confront it. I would like to get a sense of where we are on some of those, although I cannot possibly cover them all. No doubt other hon. Members will want to raise other matters. There is a huge range of complex issues that we should assist and persuade the politicians of the DRC, civil society and others to tackle: governance and democracy; the role of civil society; corruption and what happens to revenues that are spirited away; natural resource extraction and the role of companies and mining contracts; development generally; the provision of basic services; and security. The agenda is massive. The Government have helped on some of those, but we have to keep our eye on the ball. My third reason for being concerned is that I feel a very personal debt to Christian Aid, which sponsored my visit and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) and of Stephen Carter, the co-ordinator of our group. I am also indebted to the civil society organisations that hosted us. On the banks of the Congo itself, we were read a wonderful declaration by the organisation Dynamique Interactive de la Société Civile du Bas-Congo et du Maniema. You may wonder how civil society in Bas-Congo and Maniema managed to come up with a wonderful joint declaration, given that they are several provinces apart. The declaration came out of the discussions that we had during the two rounds as monitors in those two provinces. The first round was in Bas-Congo, where Jean-Pierre Bemba’s support was strong, while the second was in Maniema, where Joseph Kabila’s support was strong. We felt able to speak with some authority about the fairness or otherwise of the elections and we saw what people were thinking in two contrasting parts of the country. The declaration was developed, and I should like to pass it to the Secretary of State. It sets out a number of concerns. For example, it starts by describing the DRC as a ““country belonging to others””—a good description. It talks about how, given the history—the explorations of Stanley and Livingstone, the colonisation, the dictatorship, the moving into the form of a UN protectorate and how the country had been plundered by others—it would be difficult to claim that the country had ever belonged to Congolese citizens. The organisation is concerned that that should not be the case in future, when the country should belong to its citizens. However, it also pointed out ways in which the British Government had made a great contribution, and it gave a plea for continuing attention to the various issues that it raised, including the development of civil society as an essential part of the democratic process.