Essentialising the ‘local’ as a counter-productive approach

As discussed in chapter four, local violent conflicts in the aftermath of 1990s in the eastern DR Congo have largely been portrayed as intercommunity conflicts. Congolese and international NGOs have since then been using the concept of ‘local communities’ to refer to ethnic groups, but also as the most appropriate target of peacebuilding programs.

In many places in eastern DR Congo, both peacebuilding and humanitarian organisations have set up local committees whose members are chosen within ethnic communities as a guarantee for success of the project. In the case of Masisi, the assumption was that once the projects were successfully established, these ‘local communities’ (example of CITC) would be able to address the causes of violence among themselves. During the past decade, the common label in many international organisations’ discourse emphasizing the involvement of the ‘local communities’

has, at the same time, increased the idea that the causes of conflict are ethnically driven.

Now, the problem here is that ‘local communities’ continue to be seen by peacebuilding organizations as homogeneous ethnic groups fighting each other over land and power. At least in Masisi, I have noticed that using the label ‘local community’ has impeded the separation between the ‘real’ actors and the stakes around which violence is organised. Thus, ethnicizing both

‘communities’ and the conflict is simply missing the target. Furthermore, individuals who control land, for example, or mining in Rubaya are not necessarily mono-ethnically organized as such. As I show in this chapter, while some ‘string pullers’ in Masisi are landowners, one cannot say that they are solely Hutu, Hunde or Tutsi. Furthermore, some landowners are not even native or living in Masisi. This is the case of Serufuli, who is a native of Nyanzale village located in Rutshuru Territory, but politically and economically Masisi has become his stronghold. Again, ASP and LPI

165 have fallen into this trap of constructing ‘local communities’ as the target of the conflict transformation project instead of considering the specific categories or groups involved in the conflict (such as pastoralists and farmers, traditional chiefs, etc.) which are also, like ‘string pullers’, not homogeneous groups in terms of interest.

When I visited the CITC set up by ASP in Kilolirwe (in Bashali) in October 2014, I realized that the members of this committee are the representatives of ethnic groups, at ASP’s request. But when I engaged in discussion about CITC work with the committee members, in form of a group discussion, there was no clear correlation between the so-called local communities and the ‘real actors’ I mentioned above. This example shows that in the creation of CITC and many other similar local structures implemented by peacebuilding organizations in Masisi, there is a risk going on of

‘de-politicizing’ the key drivers of conflict (such as land and power) by presenting these issues as locally rooted and controlled by the so-called ‘local communities’. As I previously discussed in chapter four, the construction of the ‘local community’ as a scale for conflict resolution projects relies on the assumption that communities can easily accommodate international programs that promise to deliver peace and development, but not necessarily at a scale which other levels/scales could systematically get connected to. This choice of the ‘local community’ had not only led NGO programs to construct and to categorize the ‘beneficiaries’ groups (which are ethnic groups in this case); also, NGOs deliberately pushed Congolese local associations to be partners through which they can legitimize their strategy of the ‘local’ construction. An expert who owns a development and conflict management cooperative I met in Goma and discussed the issue of ‘local communities’ as beneficiaries, said:

contrary to what international NGOs do, we have rather gathered peasants in several villages to create cooperatives in different socioeconomic sectors (agriculture, small-scale livestock activities, etc.) based on their need. However, we have noticed on the ground that international NGOs are failing because they do not care about what the peasants need. Even Congolese organizations which use money from international programs do it for financial purpose, not for whom they call beneficiaries. (Interview Goma II.02.16)

166 In Masisi the ethnic character of local committees set up by NGOs had somehow become an asset for international organisations, seen as a reliable bridge to reach local communities (beneficiaries) and ensure the sustainability of the projects’ outcomes. Through the case study of Bashali, I found out that the design of the ‘local’ as a scale of intervention seems to provide a strong justification of international NGOs’ work, especially in the context of ‘absent or weak’ state security institutions, as a strategy for building their legitimacy on the local level. Not only have international NGOs been providing emergency basic social services to the population at highly visible locations in many places in Masisi, they have also often behaved like State Substitutes because of the direct link they have with donors and diplomatic corps in Kinshasa, often avoiding Congolese officials controlling their budget and projects on the ground, as this informant put it:

donors prefer to cooperate directly with international NGOs rather than with the state institutions, which reinforces the image that NGOs replace the state in the areas where they intervene. This has increased the expectations of the beneficiaries in the intervention zones, often beyond the responses of the implanted projects. The problem is that NGOs very rarely communicate the limits of their mandates or of the projects implemented. Even when they leave the project area, no one knows why’ (Interview- Goma II.02.16)

Example of International NGOs visibility

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Example of Government visibility

This sort of hegemonic image printed in the mind of peasants by the presence of international programs was strongly expressed by the Association of Masisi Youth (Coordination Territoriale de la Jeunesse Inter-communautaire de Masisi-JICOM) in its letter of 15^th February 2016 to the national and provincial authorities to express discontent about the presence of NGOs in Masisi.

One can read in the letter the following: ‘some organizations, by staying for a long period in Masisi, have become like state institutions. They think they have a monopoly of intervention in whatever they want but, in reality, they are doing nothing so far’. This letter signed by more than 450 persons clearly expressed their anger at external intervention, which, in the eyes of the population of Masisi, does not produce any change in people’s life. In the same letter one can read that ‘these NGOs profit from the situation of turbulence in Masisi to abuse millions of us dollars in behalf of local communities, but in reality, this money exacerbates the misery of the population’.

Prior to this letter, in 2009, the same movement organized a demonstration in Masisi which resulted in the suspension of international NGOs’ activities in Masisi.

168 Image 6: Youth of Masisi contesting International interventions

(Photo Reuters, August 2016)

To address these tensions between the Masisi youth association and NGOs, the Governor of the province of North Kivu created the ‘Cellule Provincial d’Appui a la Pacification’ (CPAP), a body in charge of coordinating international organizations’ work on the provincial level. Alongside the creation of CPAP, Edits n° 001/2010 of 18^th May 2010 and n° 01/037/CAB/GP-NK/2010 were issued by the Governor as general guidelines applying to NGO coordination, and a ministerial Arrêté n°002/CAB/MIN/MPPBCP/NK2014 of 27^th January 2014 providing the guidelines for implementation of the above Edit n° 001/2010. It seems that these guidelines have not been implemented yet because a recent letter of 5^th April 2017 was addressed to the national and provincial authorities by the same youth association, calling for a round-table during which all NGOs working in Masisi should report on their projects and the impact achieved in the presence of state authorities and customary chiefs of Masisi. Moreover, this discontent is not only expressed by the youth. This form of ‘hegemonic’ behaviour by NGOs has also hampered the role and the visibility of the state authorities in Masisi who believe that international NGOs compete with the state. One of the local government officials met in Sake claimed that:

169 NGOs neglect us as state authorities…they only come to talk to us when they are

looking for some administrative documents to launch their projects. Afterwards, they never come back, often we do not even know who benefited from their projects and what were the results’ (Interview Masisi, IV.10.14-)

It remains unclear whether there is any political manipulation by state authorities behind the youth (JICOM) demonstrations against NGOs. However, both sides seem to complain of the same fact.

On the one hand, NGOs’ ineffectiveness in dealing with local problems in spite of a large amount of funds, and their insubordination to the state authority on the other. This lack of coordination and of a common understanding on the priorities NGO programs should focus on can be explained at two levels.

The first is the fact that international NGOs have a strong capacity to lobby, both with different embassies in Kinshasa (which sometimes provide financial support to NGOs) and with institutional donors. These two levels of connection put international NGOs in a convenient and privileged position over state authorities. However, on the provincial level, this conflict of authority preoccupies the provincial government of North Kivu. As example, on 29^th November 2015, the provincial Minister of Planning (under whom international NGOs are supposed to be coordinated) gave an interview to Radio Okapi stating that ‘in North Kivu, 20% (22 out of 102) of NGOs function legally’ and was calling for all NGOs to submit their projects and activities in detail. According to the Minister, ‘this strategy will allow the provincial ministry to keep control of the activities implemented by NGOs whose projects rarely address the needs of the population’.

This warning by the Minister about NGOs was at the request of the provincial parliamentarians who, a few weeks back, reported that international NGOs impose their programs on the population without involving state authorities to discuss the priorities.

In addition to this conflict of roles and lack of coordination between the government institutions and international NGOs, so far neither side has shown an effective strategy to address the causes of violent conflict. In this competition, ‘string pullers’ remain the only category of actor that challenge both the state authorities and peacebuilding organisations in Masisi, by controlling scales, beyond the constructed ‘local’. If addressing the violence around the triangle land, identity and power necessitates the participation or the involvement of ‘string pullers’, the case of Masisi has shown that a more elaborated and new approach is needed and would require a long-term

170 approach instead of a short and temporary action that depend on the unpredictable donors’ funding.

The above example of local opposition to international NGOs by both the youth of Masisi and government authorities provides a way to problematize the approach of essentializing the ‘local’

as a given scale where ‘communities’ are perceived as passive consumers of projects.