Indictment On The African Union Over Inaction In The Democratic Republic Of Congo-DRC

The Peace and Security Council of the African Union came to existence in 2004, and with a manifested mandate to address the looming threats to international peace and security on the African soil. The African Union (AU) succeeded the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 2002.

The architects of the AU Peace and Security Council believed the scourge of conflicts in Africa constitutes a major impediment to the socio-economic development and sustainable environmental of the Continent. Hence the Peace and Security Council was established to add impetus to the continent’s mechanism on conflict prevention, peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building. And second, to address the scourge of conflicts in Africa and to ensure that Africa, through the African Union, plays pivotal role in bringing about peace, security and stability on the Continent and the world.

The ideal of establishing the Peace and Security Council was in tandem with prevailing reality. However, one wonders what it takes for the African Union through its specialised department to take action against some of its members-states, who have placed themselves above the AU Charter, international law and humanitarian law to launch full-scale and overt military aggression on the sovereignty of an independent Democratic Republic of Congo, threatening stability in the wider African continent and across the world. It appears members-states of the African Union do not really believe in the purpose of the Peace and Security Council.

In 2001, the idea of the Responsibility to Protect, also known as the R2P was mooted out and becomes an international norm that seeks to ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, heinous war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The idea came as a response to the failure of the international community to prevent if not halt the ethnic cleansing and genocide campaign that were carried in Rwanda and the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

The R2P provides that each country has the responsibility to protect its own population against genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This is a responsibility that entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means. This document remains an internationally accepted norm which every members-states of the United Nations is entitled to act upon. In carrying out this responsibility, the international community is expected to encourage and give necessary assistance to help states exercise this demanding responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, undoubtedly played vital role in establishing the AU Peace and Security Council and supporting the goals set out by the R2P. The DRC is also on record to have provided huge humanitarian support to victims of the NRM war in Uganda and the 1994 Rwanda genocide, to mention a few cases of the DRC’s humanitarian gesture to humanity.

To say that today, members-states of the African Union have a serious problem in their backyard, is the obvious. The Democratic Republic of Congo is under attack and is at war following Rwanda and Uganda full-scale invasion and proxy aggression of its sovereignty. As this proxy war rages on, so we have documented a pattern of crimes unleashed by the M23 terrorist group and the Rwandan and Ugandan forces of aggression in the DRC, including unlawful attacks, wilful killings of civilians, torture, extrajudicial executions and merciless rape of natural resources.

Every day in the Eastern DRC for instance, over a million Congolese are denied their most basic human rights and face a risk of crimes against humanity and extermination. The DRC is not just a member of the African Union, but a key player in international peace, security, humanitarian relief and development. The response to the current invasion and aggression of the DRC is a test of the degree to which members-states of the African Union take seriously their commitment to regional cooperation on protecting human rights and their global pledge to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes.

Much as we, in the New African Charter International (NACI) and the Sahel Solidarity Campaign Network (SaS-CaN) are concerned, members-states of the AU and the broader international community are failing in their commitment to protect Africans in the DRC. For many years now, the AU and the international community have turned a blind eye to the scale of the human rights violations and heinous war crimes being committed against the Congolese people. There have also been reports of disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks by Rwandan and Ugandan forces of aggression, and the M23 terrorist group, leaving thousands of people homeless in Eastern DRC. In towns like Goma, Kivu and their surroundings, evidence and testimony of unlawful killings, including apparent extrajudicial executions abounds. There are reports also that convoys of civilians fleeing with their children were being fired upon, and women raped and children conscripted into the war.

From the outset, this proxy criminal war has been an internationalized clinical execution, involving also foreign powers, including Belgium, France, the United States, and multinational companies joining the stashing away of rich minerals and natural resources at the tears and sorrows of the ordinary Congolese people. From the onset, the fighting has destabilized the entire Eastern DRC and the strategic African continent, whiles the AU remains epileptic and unable to ease the apocalyptic situation.

To the New African Charter International (NACI) and the Sahel Solidarity Campaign Network (SaS-CaN), the Rwanda and Ugandan proxy criminal war of aggression and merciless rape of resources in the DRC have shattered peace and stability in Africa and posed serious threat to global security. The United Nations, foreign diplomats, professional journalists and credible international humanitarian organizations around the world have confirmed war crimes and acts amounting to genocide being unleashed on a daily basis in Eastern DRC. Rwandan and Ugandan leaders are being used as cheap pawns by foreign powers to launched criminal military attacks on the DRC, to capture and control mining sites through coercion, subversion, aggression and annexation. These foreign forces of aggression in the DRC employ conventional, cyber and hybrid means, including disinformation, misinformation, distraction and misrepresentation against SADEC (South African Development Community) peace keepers on the ground.

Unless proven to the contrary, Rwandan and Ugandan leaders’ wretched policy against another sovereign member-state like the DRC, without any legal, just or moral justification has resulted today into a catastrophic human rights crisis on Africans in the DRC. Their ill-fated policy is killing human rights of other African brothers and sisters across the continent, creating a humanitarian crisis in the horn of Africa and threatening the very existence of Africans in the DRC.

The New African Charter International (NACI) and the Sahel Solidarity Campaign Network (SaS-CaN) emphatically oppose this unprovoked act of proxy criminal war and aggression; that the war against the DRC is imperialist-driven, colonial-driven, based on lies, deception, misinformation, disinformation and distraction. The ongoing US bombing campaign in Somalia is part of a grand international conspiracy to divert the terror and genocide campaign in the DRC, while the merciless looting of the mineral resources continue.

We support the DRC and extend our unflinching solidarity with our brothers and sisters in this hour of pain, suffering, misery and unchecked barbarity that no longer accepted to give expression in any civilised society. But in the DRC, when it comes to the merciless rape of minerals and rich natural resources, crimes such as ethnic cleansing, heinous crime, war crime, looting and crime against humanity are committed with impunity and at the silence of the AU.

The inaction of the African Union is not only failing to protect the DRC’s population against the brutal invasion and aggression of Rwandan and Ugandan forces of extinction, it makes a mockery of the AU’s principles of conflict prevention, peace-keeping, peace-making and peace-building.

The widespread culture of impunity for state and non-state actors who unleashed terror on the DRC is fuelling a cycle of anti-African cleansing in the world’s mineral rich-based country of Africa. The world is witnessing the systematic killing of innocent Africans in the DRC, in exchange for control of the abundant mineral wealth in the Eastern part of the country. With little international attention and a failure to hold the leaders of Rwanda, Uganda and the terrorist M23 group accountable for the safety and protection of the African population, the African Union stands indicted for its complicit in the violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the DRC, with total impunity.

While the AU sit by watching the brutal arrests, detentions and deportation of Africans in the United States, it continues to ignore grave consequences of the proxy criminal war against the DRC. The silence of the African Union has encouraged the continuation of this criminal proxy war campaign in the DRC, with its attendant heavy price on the population of that country. We want to remind the AU again, that Africans across the continent and the diasporas condemn the suffering and misery on Africans in the DRC and call for an end to the merciless looting of mineral resources in that region.

The AU therefore should not only condemn, but must be seen taking action against Rwanda and Uganda for their crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in neighbouring DRC. The AU must also see that Rwanda and Uganda end their subversive activities that bent on destabilising the DRC and the whole of Africa.

Concluding, we call on the AU and its partners immediately, to:

1. Exclude Uganda and Rwanda from all its meetings and activities until they leave the DRC.
2. Create an AU sanctions framework, and encourage AU members-States to impose arms embargo and targeted sanctions to force Rwandan and Ugandan forces of aggression and thievery out of the DRC.
3. Designate the M23 as a terrorist group and cooperate with UN Member-States to impose a global arms embargo on Kigali and Kampala.
4. Create prompt, impartial and transparent investigations and holding those responsible accountable, to end the culture of impunity. And,
5. Refer the DRC situation to the International Criminal Court or a Special Court in the model of Sierra Leone, through the United Nations Security Council.

Africa must live!

Signed:
Alimamy Bakarr Sankoh
President and co-founder
The New African Charter International (NACI)

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