Agreements keep being signed over eastern Congo, but for the women of Ituri and North Kivu, nothing has changed, Congolese human rights defender Julienne Lusenge said on The Africa Desk Live on September 5.
"The villages continue to be destroyed. Women continue to be raped," Lusenge said, speaking in French through an interpreter. Until there is a ceasefire and the principles already signed are implemented, she said, people living through the war will not believe peace is coming.
The episode, the 16th in MORE's 54 Conversations series, came weeks after talks in Switzerland produced a roadmap between the Congolese government and the AFC/M23 rebel coalition under the Doha framework. Disagreements remain over sanctions, detainees, and the timeline for political reform, while Ituri, the same province where fighting continues, is also living through an Ebola outbreak.
A war about minerals
Lusenge began her work in 1998 as a journalist in eastern Congo, broadcasting health and human rights information by radio to villages with no other source. She co-founded SOFEPADI, a women's solidarity organization for peace and development founded by 24 women in Bunia in 2000, and leads the Fund for Congolese Women, which makes grants to women's organizations across the country. For the record, the program noted on air that she also serves as deputy coordinator of the National Follow-Up Mechanism for the Addis Ababa Framework Agreement, an appointment from the Congolese presidency, which she confirmed.
She was blunt about what keeps the fighting going. The war is a war over minerals, she said, and those who profit from illegal mining have no interest in ending it. The belligerents sign agreements to be trusted, she said, and then fail to honor them.
The toll on civilians, she said, has not improved over the past decade. She described children still being recruited, massacres, and sexual violence at alarming levels, with health centers so short of medicine that women who are raped cannot get protection against HIV, hepatitis, or unwanted pregnancy. Girls, she said, are being forced into prostitution to find food.
Not only victims
Lusenge rejected the idea that Congolese women come to peace talks looking for jobs. Politicians come for positions, she said. Women come because they are the ones who carry the dead, hold communities together during the war and rebuild afterward.
Her message to Americans was direct. She asked them not to see Congolese people only as victims asking for help, because they can feed themselves when there is no war. She urged them to press the companies behind their smartphones, laptops and electric cars, saying the blood of Congolese women and children is on that material.
She also addressed Congo's neighbors, naming Rwandan President Paul Kagame and saying he is not working to protect his own people. The program has said the right of reply is open to any government named on air.
Hour 1 was planned with a second guest, who could not join because of a conflicting appearance on Congolese national television. Audio problems forced the hour onto a WhatsApp group call, and host Semantics King Jr. apologized to viewers for the difficulties. Salif Cissé, an Ivorian friend of the host, interpreted as a volunteer from Greece.
The Minnesota hour
The second hour, recorded in advance, turned to Minnesota and Kilo Kisongo, founder and executive director of Voice in the Wilderness, a Twin Cities organization serving newly arrived Congolese families. Kisongo was born in Fizi, in South Kivu. His family fled to Tanzania when war broke out in 1996, returned in 1997, and fled again when the second war began in 1998. He never went back.
After volunteering in refugee resettlement with Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services around 2009 and 2010, he saw that Congolese families had almost no representation in the state and were struggling after resettlement support ended. That is where the name came from, he said: new arrivals felt lost, with nowhere to knock for help.
Standard resettlement support lasts 90 days. For an educated person, Kisongo said, that may stretch to a year before they are settled. For a single mother who never went to school, or an elderly person, it can take up to five years. His organization's answer is to leave the desk, accept walk-ins without appointments, and go into the community.
A school built on Uber money
Kisongo also owns Lutala International Academy, a school in eastern Congo. He bought the land with his first paychecks after graduating, then funded construction by driving for Uber and Lyft for hours after work. By his estimate, he has put no less than $300,000 into the project, and it is not yet finished.
He was candid about the mistakes. A fixer in Kinshasa took money to register the school and disappeared before the opening ceremony, so the school still operates on local documents. Another contractor vanished with $1,000 meant for classroom desks. Now contractors build on site and are paid only when the work is done.
Diaspora Africans share some of the blame for money that goes missing, he said, when they send large sums to people they have not seen in years without doing their homework first.
Asked what the world misses about his country, Kisongo said the Congo has far more to offer than conflict. "Congo is a heaven, but currently living in hell," he said, and he asked Minnesota's leaders and the United States government to put their weight behind the peace effort.
Lusenge closed her hour by asking the program to return to the Ebola outbreak and the women fighting it. On the September 19 broadcast, King said the program is working with her team to bring her back.
The Africa Desk Live airs every Saturday from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM Central on Facebook, YouTube and X, and at moremediaempowerment.org/live. Full episodes are available on MORE's YouTube channel.