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RAPAPORT... United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called upon the Security Council to authorize the deployment of a special force within the current peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to address imminent threats to peace and security. “The security situation remains fragile – and demands urgent actions,” Ban said. The proposed forces, referred to as the Intervention Brigade, would conduct, with or without the Congolese national army, offensive operations against all armed groups that threaten peace in the diamond- and mineral-rich eastern part of the DRC. The forces would be tasked with containing and disarming all groups and their deployment would be established within the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in DRC (MONUSCO) for one year. The UN would serve as a guarantor of the agreement, together with the African Union, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the International Conference on the Great Lakes region (ICGLR). “This enforcement capacity, which was initially called for by the regional actors, seeks to address the imminent threats to stability and will provide the most appropriate response to the active conflict environment in which MONUSCO has been operating for several years,” said Ban. The UN counted nearly a million people who were displaced in the province of North Kivu during the clashes between the fighters from the rebel M23 group and the Congolese national army (FARDC) late last year, bringing the total number of internally displaced persons in eastern DRC to 2.6 million. While the fighting has stopped, insecurity prevails and is growing in other areas of the DRC. “Perhaps some would dismiss the recent unrest in the eastern DRC as yet another cycle of violence in a long-plagued region of the world, but we have it within our hands to break that cycle and shape something different,” Ban said.
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