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Canadian Churches urge support
for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo
July 4, 2003
Right Honourable Jean Chrétien
House of Commons
Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
The Right Honourable Jean Chrétien,
We, speaking together as the member churches of the Canadian Council
of Churches, KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives and
Project Ploughshares, write to urge intensified efforts by Canada
and the international community to provide protection to the vulnerable
people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), especially the
people of Bunia in the Ituri District, and to provide effective
support for the current transitional government of the DRC. The
chaos of Bunia is only the latest event in a series of tragedies
that has been possible due to the woefully inadequate engagement
by the international community, including Canada, in the face of
ongoing injustices such as:
- the death of some 3.3 million Congolese since 1998, according
to the estimates of the International Rescue Committee in April
2003;
- illegal occupation of Congolese territory by neighbouring countries,
especially Uganda and Rwanda since 1998;
- illegal extraction of the DRC’s natural resources by
occupying countries; and
- large scale human rights violations committed by all the parties
to the conflict including massacres of civilians, the use of rape
as a weapon of war, and cannibalism as a means of sowing terror.
Along with much of the rest of the world, many of us have paid
insufficient attention to the extraordinary humanitarian crisis
that has emerged in the DRC. The current situation is itself a product
of decades of conflict, which the world has both exploited and ignored.
Canadian churches and church agencies have been, and continue to
be, present in the DRC. We continue our humanitarian and peacebuilding
work in cooperation with partners in the region. But the severity
of the crisis, as well as the imperatives of human security and
our common humanity with the people of Africa, point to the need
for urgent and effective responses in support of the people of the
DRC.
Despite the many resolutions of the United Nations Security Council,
it took until September of 2002 for Rwanda to leave the DRC, and
Uganda left only in April of this year. Recent reports from some
partners in South Kivu indicate that Rwandan troops are active in
the country once again. Unfortunately, the troops of the UN Observer
Mission (MONUC) have been unable to prevent the massacres of civilians,
whether in Kisangani in 2002 or this year in Bunia. We therefore
urge you to continue to work with your colleagues in the G8 to implement
the Africa Action Plan adopted at Kananaskis, which promised "to
make conflict prevention and resolution [in Africa] a top priority…”
We appreciate your support for this priority and urge you to continue
to work with your colleagues in the G8 to make it a reality.
The primary focus of the Interim Emergency Multinational Force
(IEMF), directed by France and joined by Canada, under the mandate
of the United Nations Security Council should be protection of the
vulnerable. The report of the International Commission on Intervention
and State Sovereignty has rightly noted that when governments are
incapable or unwilling to protect their own citizens, it is the
responsibility of the international community to come to the aid
of those who are in grave peril. Such a situation has clearly existed
in the DRC for some time, and so the international community must
now act effectively to protect the vulnerable and control the violence
through an effective international policing force, and to begin
to create the conditions for the long-term work of building peace
and restoring relationships between the peoples of Bunia and the
region. We pray that the IEMF will be effective and thus allow the
Ituri Pacification Commission, which was established on April 13,
to begin its work. The Commission’s efforts to restore peace
in the regions of conflict will in turn create better conditions
for the Congolese peace process as a whole. We urge you to remain
committed to the peace process for the entire DRC and we are very
pleased with the participation of Canada in the International Monitoring
Committee.
Finally, we must mention the activities of Canadian companies who
continue to operate in the region, some of them in Ituri District
itself. The last report of the United Nations Group of Experts cited
8 Canadian companies that were in violation of the Organisation
for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) guiding principles
for transnational corporations. The government of Canada should
verifiably reassure the Congolese people that these companies fully
abide by basic principles of corporate social responsibility and
that their activities are not prolonging or, indeed, exacerbating
the conflict by providing resources and legitimacy to militias and
armed forces.
In summary, we recommend that the Canadian government:
- encourage sustained and increased funding through CIDA and
other agencies for peacebuilding activities in those areas of
the country where active fighting is not occurring; and
- significantly increase support for the work of the International
Monitoring Committee on the peace accords;
- strongly support a further increase in human resources for MONUC
for the purposes of protecting civilians;
- encourage increased international support for the protection
efforts of the Interim Emergency Multinational Force;
- call Canadian companies to account, ensuring that they abide
by codes of conduct for corporate responsibility that include
effective compliance, verification, and monitoring initiatives
so that Canadian companies in no way prolong the conflict in the
DRC.
The challenges of Africa are immense, and nowhere more so than
in the DRC. All peoples are created in the image of God with a vocation
of service to one another and creation – this is the source
of human dignity and consequently human rights. We may not, therefore,
neglect any corner of creation. When conflict and poverty prevents
people from exercising their rights and vocation, we are called
to build peace and restore right relationships. Building a more
peaceful world, where human rights and dignity are respected, is
honourable work.
Be assured that our prayers are with you, and may your efforts
be blessed,
Prof. Richard Schneider
President
Canadian Council of Churches
Jane Orion Smith
Chair
KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives
Moira Hutchinson
Board Chair
Project Ploughshares
CC: The Honourable Bill Graham, Minister of Foreign Affairs
The Honourable John J. McCallum, Minister of National Defence
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