Severine Autesserre: To solve mass violence, look to locals

I want to speak about a forgotten conflict.

It's a conflict that rarely hits the headlines.

It happens right here, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Now, most people outside of Africa don't know much about the war in Congo,

so let me give you a couple of key facts.

The Congolese conflict is the deadliest conflict since World War II.

It has caused almost four million deaths.

It has destabilized most of Central Africa for the past 18 years.

It is the largest ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world.

That's why I first went to Congo in 2001.

I was a young humanitarian aid worker, and I met this woman who was my age.

She was called Isabelle.

Local militias had attacked Isabelle's village.

They had killed many men, raped many women.

They had looted everything.

And then they wanted to take Isabelle,

but her husband stepped in,

and he said, "No, please don't take Isabelle.

Take me instead."

So he had gone to the forest with the militias,

and Isabelle had never seen him again.

Well, it's because of people like Isabelle and her husband

that I have devoted my career to studying this war

that we know so little about.

Although there is one story about Congo that you may have heard.

It's a story about minerals and rape.

Policy statements and media reports

both usually focus on a primary cause of violence in Congo --

the illegal exploitation and trafficking of natural resources --

and on a main consequence --

sexual abuse of women and girls as a weapon of war.

So, not that these two issues aren't important and tragic. They are.

But today I want to tell you a different story.

I want to tell you a story that emphasizes a core cause

of the ongoing conflict.

Violence in Congo is in large part driven by local bottom-up conflicts

that international peace efforts have failed to help address.

The story starts from the fact that not only is Congo notable

for being the world's worst ongoing humanitarian crisis,

but it is also home to some of the largest

international peacebuilding efforts in the world.

Congo hosts the largest

and most expensive United Nations peacekeeping mission in the world.

It was also the site of the first European-led peacekeeping mission,

and for its first cases ever,

the International Criminal Court chose to prosecute Congolese warlords.

In 2006, when Congo held the first free national elections in its history,

many observers thought that an end to violence in the region had finally come.

The international community lauded the successful organization of these elections

as finally an example of successful international intervention

in a failed state.

But the eastern provinces

have continued to face massive population displacements

and horrific human rights violations.

Shortly before I went back there last summer,

there was a horrible massacre in the province of South Kivu.

Thirty-three people were killed.

They were mostly women and children,

and many of them were hacked to death.

During the past eight years,

fighting in the eastern provinces has regularly reignited

full-scale civil and international war.

So basically, every time we feel that we are on the brink of peace,

the conflict explodes again.

Why?

Why have the massive international efforts

failed to help Congo achieve lasting peace and security?

Well, my answer to this question revolves around two central observations.

First, one of the main reasons for the continuation of violence in Congo

is fundamentally local --

and when I say local,

I really mean at the level of the individual, the family,

the clan, the municipality, the community, the district,

sometimes the ethnic group.

For instance, you remember the story of Isabelle that I told you.

Well, the reason why militias had attacked Isabelle's village

was because they wanted to take the land

that the villagers needed to cultivate food and to survive.

The second central observation is that international peace efforts

have failed to help address local conflicts

because of the presence of a dominant peacebuilding culture.

So what I mean is that

Western and African diplomats,

United Nations peacekeepers, donors,

the staff of most nongovernmental organizations

that work with the resolution of conflict,

they all share a specific way of seeing the world.

And I was one of these people, and I shared this culture,

so I know all too well how powerful it is.

Throughout the world, and throughout conflict zones,

this common culture shapes the intervener's understanding

of the causes of violence

as something that is primarily located in the national and international spheres.

It shapes our understanding of the path toward peace

as something again that requires top-down intervention

to address national and international tensions.

And it shapes our understanding of the roles of foreign actors

as engaging in national and international peace processes.

Even more importantly, this common culture

enables international peacebuilders to ignore the micro-level tensions

that often jeopardize the macro-level settlements.

So for instance, in Congo,

because of how they are socialized and trained,

United Nations officials, donors, diplomats,

the staff of most nongovernmental organizations,

they interpret continued fighting and massacres as a top-down problem.

To them, the violence they see

is the consequence of tensions between President Kabila

and various national opponents,

and tensions between Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

In addition, these international peacebuilders view local conflicts

as simply the result of national and international tensions,

insufficient state authority,

and what they call the Congolese people's so-called inherent penchant for violence.

The dominant culture also constructs intervention

at the national and international levels

as the only natural and legitimate task for United Nations staffers and diplomats.

And it elevates the organization of general elections,

which is now a sort of cure-all,

as the most crucial state reconstruction mechanism

over more effective state-building approaches.

And that happens not only in Congo but also in many other conflict zones.

But let's dig deeper,

into the other main sources of violence.

In Congo, continuing violence

is motivated not only by the national and international causes

but also by longstanding bottom-up agendas

whose main instigators are villagers, traditional chiefs,

community chiefs or ethnic leaders.

Many conflicts revolve around political, social and economic stakes

that are distinctively local.

For instance, there is a lot of competition

at the village or district level

over who can be chief of village or chief of territory

according to traditional law,

and who can control the distribution of land

and the exploitation of local mining sites.

This competition often results in localized fighting,

for instance in one village or territory,

and quite frequently, it escalates into generalized fighting,

so across a whole province,

and even at times into neighboring countries.

Take the conflict between Congolese of Rwandan descent

and the so-called indigenous communities of the Kivus.

This conflict started in the 1930s during Belgian colonization,

when both communities competed over access to land and to local power.

Then, in 1960, after Congolese independence,

it escalated because each camp tried to align with national politicians,

but still to advance their local agendas.

And then, at the time of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,

these local actors allied with Congolese and Rwandan armed groups,

but still to advance their local agendas in the provinces of the Kivus.

And since then, these local disputes over land and local power

have fueled violence,

and they have regularly jeopardized

the national and international settlements.

So we can wonder why in these circumstances

the international peacebuilders have failed to help implement

local peacebuilding programs.

And the answer is that international interveners

deem the resolution of grassroots conflict

an unimportant, unfamiliar, and illegitimate task.

The very idea of becoming involved at the local level clashes fundamentally

with existing cultural norms,

and it threatens key organizational interests.

For instance, the very identity of the United Nations

as this macro-level diplomatic organization

would be upended if it were to refocus on local conflicts.

And the result is that neither the internal resistance

to the dominant ways of working

nor the external shocks

have managed to convince international actors that they should reevaluate

their understanding of violence and intervention.

And so far, there have been only very few exceptions.

There have been exceptions, but only very few exceptions,

to this broad pattern.

So to wrap up, the story I just told you

is a story about how a dominant peacebuilding culture

shapes the intervener's understanding of what the causes of violence are,

how peace is made,

and what interventions should accomplish.

These understandings enable international peacebuilders

to ignore the micro-level foundations

that are so necessary for sustainable peace.

The resulting inattention to local conflicts

leads to inadequate peacebuilding in the short term

and potential war resumption in the long term.

And what's fascinating is that this analysis

helps us to better understand many cases of lasting conflict

and international intervention failures, in Africa and elsewhere.

Local conflicts fuel violence in most war and post-war environments,

from Afghanistan to Sudan to Timor-Leste,

and in the rare cases where there have been comprehensive,

bottom-up peacebuilding initiatives,

these attempts have been successful at making peace sustainable.

One of the best examples is the contrast

between the relatively peaceful situation in Somaliland,

which benefited from sustained grassroots peacebuilding initiatives,

and the violence prevalent in the rest of Somalia,

where peacebuilding has been mostly top-down.

And there are several other cases

in which local, grassroots conflict resolution

has made a crucial difference.

So if we want international peacebuilding to work,

in addition to any top-down intervention,

conflicts must be resolved from the bottom up.

And again, it's not that national and international tensions don't matter.

They do.

And it's not that national and international peacebuilding

isn't necessary.

It is.

Instead, it is that both macro-level and micro-level peacebuilding are needed

to make peace sustainable,

and local nongovernmental organizations,

local authorities and civil society representatives

should be the main actors in the bottom-up process.

So of course, there are obstacles.

Local actors often lack the funding

and sometimes the logistical means and the technical capacity

to implement effective, local peacebuilding programs.

So international actors should expand their funding and support

for local conflict resolution.

As for Congo, what can be done?

After two decades of conflict and the deaths of millions,

it's clear that we need to change our approach.

Based on my field research,

I believe that international and Congolese actors

should pay more attention to the resolution of land conflict

and the promotion of inter-community reconciliation.

So for instance, in the province of the Kivus,

the Life and Peace Institute and its Congolese partners

have set up inter-community forums

to discuss the specifics of local conflicts over land,

and these forums have found solutions to help manage the violence.

That's the kind of program that is sorely needed

throughout eastern Congo.

It's with programs like this

that we can help people like Isabelle and her husband.

So these will not be magic wands,

but because they take into account deeply rooted causes of the violence,

they could definitely be game-changers.

Thank you.

(Applause)