Joseph Kabila

A Norwegian Diplomat, Now a UN Envoy, Praised a Notorious Israeli Businessman Accused of Corruption

February 16, 2021

A controversial letter written in 2019 by a Norwegian diplomat who is now a leading United Nations envoy in the Middle East, vouching for an Israeli billionaire’s role in the release of a Norwegian-British citizen sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was recently published by The Norwegian Business Daily (Dagens …

Africa, Human Rights, Secretary-General, Security Council, UN Diplomats

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P5 MONITOR

The Congo: Tiptoeing Toward a New War?

July 9, 2018

by Enrico Carisch

If President Joseph Kabila’s continued violations of his country’s constitutional term limits were not enough of a warning, the first paragraph of the latest report by United Nations experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo sets the record straight, saying: “Armed actors continuously used the delay in the electoral process to promote acts …

Africa, Human Rights, P5 Monitor, Security Council

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TOPIC: WOMEN

Deconstructing Power: The Global Prevalence of Gender Violence

May 19, 2018

by Ladan Osman

In scriptures, poetry, constitutions and leaders’ pledges to protect all members of the state, women are often listed with children or others rendered “vulnerable” by circumstance. The woman citizen is imagined as less adult. Is it possible that vocabularies that consider women as objects make a quiet argument that the assault on our person …

Africa, Gender-Based Violence, Women

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WORLDVIEWS

The Elephant in the Room: Congo’s Vicious, Illegal Fighters

February 11, 2018

by Enrico Carisch

An open, informal meeting scheduled for Feb. 12 at the United Nations is meant to unite Security Council members in their efforts to rein in the recalcitrant Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, to allow the long-overdue presidential elections to go ahead this year. It is feared that Kabila’s refusal to carry out the vote, slated …

Africa, Security Council, WORLDVIEWS

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UN Puts on Big To-Do, Amid Tight Security, for Signing of New Climate Agreement

April 22, 2016

by Dulcie Leimbach

The United Nations threw a large and lavish party at its headquarters in New York on Earth Day, the opening day of the signing ceremony for the world’s new climate agreement. About 170 heads of state and government representatives came to inscribe their names, in alphabetical order by country, in the General Assembly Hall, …

Climate and Environment, Secretary-General

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A Rerun of History in Eastern Congo Threatens Kinshasa Again

November 26, 2012

by Barbara Crossette

Less than two decades ago, this is what happened to a huge African country once known as Zaire: Rebels backed by Rwanda’s recently installed, ethnic Tutsi-led government moved out of their strongholds in the eastern flank of the country and advanced toward the Zairian national capital, Kinshasa, and overthrew the central government. To Rwandan …

Africa, Child Soldiers, ICC

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Congo Miners See Hope While Rebels Sow Unrest

October 17, 2012

by Dulcie Leimbach

Important progress in controlling the mining of tin, tantalum and tungsten in the troubled eastern region of Democratic Republic of Congo has been achieved, says a report from the Enough Project, a Washington nonprofit group focused on Africa. Yet renewed fighting that began in the spring between regional militias and Congolese national troops, who …

Africa, Child Soldiers, ICC, Peace and Security

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Congo Elections, Hardly a ‘Hinge Moment’

November 26, 2011

by Roger Nokes

One of Africa’s largest, poorest and most violent countries will have its second election – presidential and parliamentary – on Nov. 28, after overcoming a dictatorship, a coup and two brutal civil wars. The Democratic Republic of Congo, independent since 1960 from Belgium, remains a glaring paradox, however, with enormous mineral wealth plumbed alongside …