Goma Residents Protest UN Weapons Policy
I noted yesterday the oddity of the weapons-exclusion zone that the United Nations peacekeeping force has imposed on the city of Goma in eastern Congo. The zone covers Goma and its immediate surroundings but doesn’t appear to reach the areas where a key rebel group has the bulk of its forces. Some Goma residents have ...
I noted yesterday the oddity of the weapons-exclusion zone that the United Nations peacekeeping force has imposed on the city of Goma in eastern Congo. The zone covers Goma and its immediate surroundings but doesn't appear to reach the areas where a key rebel group has the bulk of its forces. Some Goma residents have the same concern (h/t the invaluable Laura Seay):
I noted yesterday the oddity of the weapons-exclusion zone that the United Nations peacekeeping force has imposed on the city of Goma in eastern Congo. The zone covers Goma and its immediate surroundings but doesn’t appear to reach the areas where a key rebel group has the bulk of its forces. Some Goma residents have the same concern (h/t the invaluable Laura Seay):
Protesters are angry that a new UN security zone will not take in the regions under the control of the rebel M23 movement, which briefly controlled Goma in November. And on July 14, when fighting resumed between the Congolese army and the M23, the rebels’ shelling hit the city.
N’senga’s Fight for Change (Lucha) youth movement issued a statement demanding “the immediate extension of the security zone… in order to secure thousands of other civilians who are in zones under the occupation of the M23 and other armed groups.”
On Thursday UN peacekeepers began patrolling a new security zone in the Goma-Sake region, which has about a million residents, and includes dozens of roving militias….
But protesters claimed that security zone was not enough.
“It is absurd to claim to protect the civilian population ‘in densely populated Goma and Sake’ without protecting the sources of food supplies which are currently in the regions plagued by armed groups” in Nord Kivu province, the Lucha statement said.
The group also accused the M23 rebels in recent weeks of looting, kidnapping and other attacks on civilians.
On Thursday, the commander of the UN force, Brazilian general Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz said that the parameters of the security zone were not fixed.
“This is only a first step. Each zone has its own particular conditions. We are going to adapt to the situation on the ground,” he said.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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