Church backs ceasefire between DR Congo and Rwanda

The Angolan government brokered a ceasefire agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to end years of fighting by rebel groups along their border.

M23 rebels would cease operations on 4 August, according to the terms of the agreement signed on 30 July.

Bishop Melchisedec Sikuli Paluku of Butembo-Beni, in the conflict-ridden North Kivu region in the north-east of the DR Congo, welcomed the agreement. He that “everyone must sow the seeds of peace within and around them, for the well-being of all Congolese”.

“It’s important to know that all parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo need peace. Not only in the town of Butembo,” he said. “We all want peace without discrimination.”

The United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) also welcomed the ceasefire and signalled its readiness to support its implementation.

“The Mission also expresses its readiness to support the ad hoc verification mechanism mandated to oversee the adherence to the ceasefire, in accordance with its mandate,” said a MONUSCO statement on 30 July.

The US State Department called on the deal’s signatories “to respect human rights, adhere to applicable obligations under international humanitarian law, and hold accountable all actors for human rights” in a statement on 31 July.

Bishops in the DR Congo have consistently criticised the Kinshasa government’s failure to address insecurity in the east of the country, where more than 120 militant groups besides the M23 have been fighting over control of natural resources for decades.

In a statement in April, regional bishops from the Provincial Episcopal Assembly of Bukavu said: “Insecurity has become endemic, with its trail of killings even in the middle of the day, massacres and kidnappings of peaceful citizens in our towns and villages.”

They accused the M23 of “isolating and suffocating large and small towns” to suffocate the economy while the government was impotent. “The Congolese state is dead, and we, the governed, are abandoned to our sad fate,” they said.

Addressing members of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) last month, its president Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo of Kinshasa said the Church was making up for the deficiencies of many states on the continent.

He said “there would be no life, no hope and no future” without the Church in several parts of Africa, and that it was “a champion of human development” in areas such as health and education where the state failed to provide.

“The Church has been involved in the work of being the voice of the voiceless and advocating for the reduction or cancellation of the unjust debt burden of the African people,” he added.

Ambongo used his address during the SECAM meeting on 24-29 July in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, to emphasise the strength of the African Church. Catholics make up 18 per cent of the continent’s population, numbering around 256 million.

“It is in Africa where the Catholic Church is experiencing record growth,” he said, adding that it “has taken root and is now an adult Church: most of the hierarchy in Africa now come from indigenous clergy” with “a growing number of African religious involved in leadership positions” in international missionary societies.

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