Syria, the DRC and the 'Responsibility to Protect' - the U.S. Double Standard
BY KAMBALE MUSAVULI, 11 NOVEMBER 2013 OPINION
The Obama administration is concerned with the prevention of mass atrocities mainly when it is in alignment with US interests. However in the case of the deadliest conflict in the world where US allies are the aggressors, R2P is rarely if ever mentioned or invoked. Earlier this year, President Obama asked how one might weigh the “tens of thousands who've been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?” But as tragic and devastating as the Congo conflict is, Congolese are not asking for the United States - or the international community - to militarily intervene. The United Nations (U.N.) says the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the world's deadliest since World War II. Millions have perished since 1996 as a direct and indirect result. Half of those lost lives have been children under the age of five, and combatants have raped hundreds of thousands of women, often as part of a deliberate strategy.
The Congo catastrophe, however, has gone largely unnoticed by the world's media, and global leaders have placed the crisis on the back burner. This neglect is astonishing in an era of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). After all, R2P was the US's rallying cry in Libya and again now in Syria. And yet, the US has not made similar calls in the far more deadly and tragic Congo conflict in the heart of Africa. Addressing the Congo conflict, moreover, does not require the mobilization of militaries worldwide; to save lives and advance peace in the DRC and its surrounding region, a bevy of diplomatic tools are at the disposal of world leaders.
Since 1997, the U.N. and Congolese civil society have documented the conflict's dynamics and offered a range of prescriptions, starting with the 1997 Garreton report to the 2010 U.N. Mapping Exercise Report. This seminal, 550-page report described 617 alleged violent incidents in the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003, but the Obama administration was virtually silent. The State Department did not respond to questions from the Associated Press and Susan Rice, one of the most fervent R2P advocates, refused interview requests on the issue.
In 2005, then Senator Obama introduced and sponsored S. 2125, The Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security and Democracy Promotion Act (PL 109-456), signed into law by former President George Bush in December 2006. The former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and the current US Secretary of State, John Kerry, were co-sponsors. Section 105 of the law states that “The Secretary of State is authorized to withhold assistance made available under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 USC. 2151 et seq.), other than humanitarian, peacekeeping, and counter terrorism assistance, for a foreign country if the Secretary determines that the government of the foreign country is taking actions to destabilize the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
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