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Congo

My Lords, I, too, warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Chidgey, on initiating this debate, which is particularly timely given the critical situation in the DRC and other countries in the region. My small NGO, HART, or the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, has been working in southern Sudan and northern Uganda, where we have witnessed the havoc created by the Lord’s Resistance Army—the LRA—in those countries. Therefore, I hope that a contribution that highlights the problems caused by the LRA may be helpful in understanding this aspect of the problems facing the DRC today. We were working in northern Uganda while the LRA was still creating terror in that region. For 20 years it killed and maimed innocent civilians, displaced more than 1.5 million people and abducted at least 25,000 children, subjecting them to the utmost brutality and forcing them to become child soldiers to fight against the Ugandan army. Eventually, a ceasefire was negotiated for northern Uganda, but the LRA remains a threat to the people of eastern DRC, southern Sudan and parts of the Central African Republic. In Sudan, Human Rights Watch has reported continuing LRA attacks throughout 2009 in central and western Equatoria. October reports confirm this, citing a growing number of abductions by the LRA, including those of children. These attacks have particularly serious implications, since they create fear and instability at a time when the people of southern Sudan face many challenges. The war instigated by the National Islamic Front regime in 1989 left 2 million dead and 4 million displaced. A comprehensive peace agreement has brought some respite from fighting, but the people are desperately trying to rebuild their shattered land and lives. The CPA also provides for a referendum in which the people of southern Sudan would vote whether to remain part of a united Sudan or to secede. However, there is a fear that the north, which does not want the south to secede, might reignite conflict to prevent the referendum and/or secession. Therefore, there are also great fears among the local people that the LRA might be used for this purpose. In the DRC itself the LRA is seriously destabilising the fragile peace. The UNHCR released a report on 21 December 2009 that describes how, between September 2008 and June 2009, at least 1,200 people were killed and 1,400 people abducted in an LRA rampage, including some 600 children and 400 women, and at least 230,000 people were displaced. According to a CAFOD field office report, LRA attacks on 17 December in Isiro diocese forced 50,000 people to flee their villages. Reportedly, 30 people were killed, many houses burnt and a number of women abducted. Numerous military offensives over the past year have failed to bring an end to the LRA’s campaign of violence across the Great Lakes region. For example, Operation Lightning Thunder reportedly cost the Government of Uganda £10.5 million sterling. According to the Ugandan Chief of Defence Forces, the operation rescued 195 abductees, but at exceptional civilian cost. The notorious Christmas massacres were essentially LRA reprisal attacks in response to that operation. In those attacks, 150 Congolese civilians were killed by the LRA on Christmas Day alone and, according to Human Rights Watch, more than 620 people, 160 of whom were children, were killed throughout the operation. Charles Arop, who commanded operations at the time of the Christmas massacre, has subsequently surrendered, and a senior commander, Bok Abudema, known to be second-in-command to Joseph Kony, was reportedly killed by Ugandan forces in the Central African Republic last week. Despite these developments, LRA attacks continue across the region, posing an increasingly destabilising threat. As has been mentioned, the MONUC mandate specifically calls on regional Governments to co-ordinate efforts to tackle the LRA, strongly encouraging information sharing and requesting the UN Secretary-General to encourage more joined-up initiatives across UN missions in the region to combat the rebels. May I ask the Minister what conversations Her Majesty’s Government have had with colleagues in regional Governments to encourage a more joined-up regional approach? Are they willing to make stronger representations at Security Council level to support further regional planning and co-ordination to bring stability to the DRC, Sudan and the region? Porous borders between the DRC, neighbouring Sudan and other countries, combined with a weak state security sector, allow the LRA to roam and attack civilians freely across these countries. Have Her Majesty’s Government made any further representations to Ban Ki-Moon about the creation of a regional political office that would focus specifically on the LRA? While the LRA requires a targeted military strategy to apprehend its top leaders, there also needs to be increased sensitisation at ground level, allowing members of the LRA, or those who have been captured by it—whether abducted children, women sex slaves or fighters—to return home in safety and security. What further steps are Her Majesty’s Government taking with the Government of the DRC and other regional Governments to develop not only military but also political and social welfare approaches? Furthermore, what steps have the British Government taken to ensure aid relief for victims, for the rescue and rehabilitation of abductees and for the reconstruction of devastated communities? In conclusion, I offer two examples of the human reality behind the statistics—the reality of the brutality inflicted by the LRA on its victims. I have talked to many children who have escaped following abduction by the LRA. They have described the horrendous programmes of brutalisation and dehumanisation to which they have been subjected. One girl told me how one day at dawn she was forced to kill another child with a panga and to drink his blood. She said, "I still have nightmares when I remember that terrible dawn when I had to kill my friend, but what could I do? It was him or me". A teenage boy described the fate of his friend who had tried to escape but had been recaptured by LRA soldiers. They staked him out on the ground and the boy to whom I was talking and his friends were forced to cut their friend into pieces. The LRA had also killed the father of this teenager, after he had escaped successfully, as a punishment, so he goes around carrying the burden of guilt for the death of his father. Such unmitigated evil must be recognised and contained, not only for the political danger that it poses to the DRC and Sudan in these difficult days but to bring to justice those who have perpetrated some of the most horrendous crimes against humanity in our contemporary world.