National Day to Honour Victims of Crimes against Humanity (OP-ED)

A call for action

This year, April 23 marks an important first in Canada. In recognition of our country’s historic leadership in peace, international cooperation, and ending violence in conflict, former Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s birthday has been recognized by Parliament as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Mass Atrocities. It is our hope that this day will also serve as a reminder that Canada’s leadership on these issues must not remain in the past. We hope this day will mobilize the Canadian Will to Intervene to make the prevention of mass atrocities a vital national interest. Canada has ceded its position of leadership in fighting crimes against humanity. As a country, we now rank 57th in contributions to UN peace keeping missions. Nowhere is this absence more acute than in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a place where we have repeatedly been asked to send peacekeepers. The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been one of the bloodiest conflicts since the end of the Second World War. From the time when the fighting broke out ten years ago, some 3-5 million people have been killed. Over 1.4 million people are currently displaced. Human rights violations are rampant. In one province alone, every day more than forty women are raped by militias. Sexual violence has become a weapon of war to disrupt communities and displace populations. The flow of conflict minerals into our markets fuels and exacerbates the violence. Canada has a unique history in the DRC. In 1960, under the leadership of John Diefenbaker, Canada sent 421 troops to support UN’s peacekeeping mission tasked with ensuring the withdrawal of Belgian forces and assisting the new Congolese government in maintaining law and order. That mission ended in 1964, but decades of political strife and regional violence took more victims in the Congo. The current conflict in the Congo is, in part, a spill-over of the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, where the international community, including Canada, sent too few reinforcements as 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. Following the end of the genocide, some 2 million ethnic Hutus fled Rwanda, fearing retaliation. Among the fleeing refugees were militants and genocidaires responsible for the Rwandan massacre. These militants have since formed the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and are one of the main perpetrators of the fighting and the violence against civilians that continues to this day. Our failure to end impunity against sexual violence has made it the weapon of choice for the militias. Our insatiable appetite for Congolese minerals has financially sustained the atrocities. We have the responsibility to intervene. The MONUC, current UN peacekeeping force in the Congo, has not succeeded in halting the atrocities. In the decade since its inception, MONUC has grown to the largest peacekeeping mission in the UN’s history. Despite its size, MONUC is still woefully under-resourced for the enormous task of dismantling rebel groups and protecting communities from violence. MONUC’s resources are further stretched as the conflict has outgrown its initial geographic limits. Neighbouring Uganda’s notoriously brutal Lord’s Resistance Army has set up bases in the north-east region of the Congo. Just recently the evidence of yet another massacre was discovered by Human Rights Watch. In 2003 and later in 2008, Canada was asked by the UN to join the peacekeeping mission in the Congo. Our expertise, professionalism, logistic and strategic capabilities, as well as linguistic proficiencies would have advanced the cause of peace. Canada’s contribution to peace in the Congo will require a multi-faceted approach to support the peacekeeping mission, to end violence against women and involve them in peace building, and to stem the trade of conflict minerals that sustain these atrocities. Pearson contended that “we need action not only to end the fighting but to make the peace”. Canadian action for peace in the Congo is long overdue. LGen the Hon. Roméo A. Dallaire, (Ret’d), Senator Co-founder of the All-Party Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Other Crimes against Humanity Paul Dewar, MP Chair of the All-Party Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Other Crimes against Humanity