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[...]authorities in Ghana and South Africa have already begun to consider lifting restrictions.8 Given the dearth of health-care facilities and equipment across Africa, we urge investing heavily in prevention, including lockdowns focused on densely populated areas and shelter-in-place orders for the most vulnerable. Mitigation strategies must be implemented in conjunction with social protection measures, such as price controls, the waving of utility bills and taxes, and targeted cash transfers.9 A concerted international effort is both moral and pragmatic for achieving this goal. APG gratefully acknowledges funding from the National Institutes of Health (UO1-GM087719 and 1R01AI151176–01), the Burnett and Stender families' endowment, the Notsew Orm Sands Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, Grants for Rapid Response Research (2027755).

This volume presents an account of the wars in the African nation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from 1996-2003. This conflict devastated the country and is sometimes referred to as the \"African world war\" because it involved nine African nations and twenty armed groups.

The only way this kind of deal can work is if Rwanda plays a part. This means reformulating the kind of pressure put on Kigali, from asking them to stop providing support to the M23 an outcome that is hard to measure, given the clandestine nature of the backing to becoming an active part of the solution. It would have to allow the Congolese government or the United Nations to deploy troops along its border with M23 territory, as well as arrest key leaders of the mutiny, some of whom are based in Rwanda.

Why do some civil wars persist for decades, while others peter out quickly? I argue that in order to understand this variation we need to examine how the interests and social constituencies of an armed group can shape its trajectory. I compare the trajectories of six armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 2003 and 2013, drawing on several years of qualitative field research. I find that the more fragmented the belligerents are, in terms of their total number and their internal factions, the longer the conflict will last, and that each year that a conflict drags on, the more difficult it becomes to end it. The political culture of the conflict also plays a critical role, as the interests of both the state and armed groups have shifted to see the conflict as an end in itself and to perceive violence as an acceptable and necessary feature of politics. Finally, I develop a theory for how social constituencies shape negotiations between belligerents and the government by providing guarantees, brokering contacts, and presenting commitment problems. These insights help explain why conflict has persisted for twenty years in the Congo and provide insights for conflicts in other weak states.

NATO's 2011 bombing campaign in Libya infused more controversy into an already fiery debate over humanitarian intervention. Given the setting -- an oil-rich country in a strategically important region -- it was easy to write off the campaign as self-interest dressed up as an effort to prevent mass atrocities. Yet, if the wrangling over humanitarian intervention seemed to come to a head with Libya, it has been constantly gaining steam in Africa over the past decade, as leaders and pundits have debated genocide in Darfur and foreign intervention in a dozen other conflicts that have surfaced on the continent. This furor has a philosophical underpinning, one that sometimes takes precedence over -- and even forgets about -- developments on the ground. The debate centers on the \"responsibility to protect\" (R2P) doctrine, a set of principles adopted by the United Nations World Summit in 2005 that shifted the focus of intervention debates from a state's rights to its responsibilities, from the sovereignty of nations to the protection of civilians. The concept was immediately embattled, and nowhere more so than in Africa, where a majority of today's conflicts and outside military interventions take place. Detractors lamented that it was just a throwback to colonialism. Said Ugandan political scientist Mahmood Mamdani: \"The responsibility to protect is a right to punish but without being held accountable -- a clarion call for the recolonization of 'failed' states in Africa.\" Such concerns are real and widespread on the continent. However, critics of humanitarian intervention all too often confuse double standards with sinister intent, and impartiality with inaction. Just because world powers pay more attention to injustices in Africa than elsewhere does not make the transgressions any less real. We should also pay attention to the bigger picture. A vast majority of humanitarian interventions in Africa happen under the aegis of either regional bodies or the UN, have the consent of host countries, and are parts of larger peace processes. This is not to say these military forays are entirely successful -- many are not. However, this is not because of excessive military force or neocolonial aims, but because they fail to address the political roots of conflicts. Adapted from the source document.

Examines the partial success of the 2002 peace agreement ostensibly ending the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, arguing that acquiescence to corruption & abuse in the tenuous political process threatens the country's stability. After describing political developments under Joseph Kabila, attention is given to the peace process' achievement of a regional realignment of relations & the centrality of impunity to the transition, which has undermined justice & gutted public administration. While the 2006 elections seemed successful, the creation of new divisions & risks is noted, highlighting opposition protests including brutal violence in March 2007. In the wake of elections, it is contended that the key characteristic of the Congolese state is its weakness, likely the main obstacle to peace; the leadership must want to change this, & it will require the help of the international community. D. Edelman

It would be easy to label the Democratic Republic of the Congo an irredeemable mess. For almost two decades, the country has been roiled by a series of wars involving neighboring countries and dozens of Congolese militias. This dismal picture is misleading. Congo's problems are complex, but certainly not beyond repair. First, however, it is necessary to diagnose the conflict's root causes and understand its protagonists' interests. Although Western media have often taken shortcuts, focusing in particular on the scourge of sexual violence and conflict minerals, a close reading suggests that it is not local warlords and mining companies that are the key players in this drama but the Congolese and Rwandan governments. Congo's government is not only extremely weak, but it is also beholden to a political logic of patronage that undermines the reform of its own state and encourages the creation of competing armed groups. Meanwhile, the ruling party in Rwanda -- in part due to Congo's weakness and instability, in part due to its own problems -- has backed armed groups in the eastern Kivu region of Congo, an area it considers to be its backyard. Yet conflict in Congo continues not just because of these local protagonists but also due to the failures of the foreign diplomats and activists who have not grappled with the underlying dynamics. This has produced a piecemeal response guided more by the interests of outside powers and those of aid bureaucracies than by a strategy for solving the conflict. Throughout the crisis, donors -- mostly the United States and a handful of European countries -- have supplied over 40 percent of the budgets of Congo and Rwanda, but they have rarely displayed the commensurate political and diplomatic muscle necessary to leverage this aid toward a sustainable solution. Other African governments, meanwhile, have mostly stayed on the sidelines. These diplomatic failings have been particularly striking during the past seven years. Since 2006, when the last serious peace process concluded, donors have adopted a postconflict, or stabilization, strategy, epitomized by a mandate that focuses on supporting a government in Kinshasa that has little manifest will to stabilize its own country. At the same time, the UN peacekeeping mission has been stripped of any role in negotiating between the Congolese government and its enemies. This approach is mistaken. In order to foster a lasting peace, donors must use the billions of dollars in aid money disbursed each year as leverage to induce the governments in Kinshasa and Kigali to stop using armed violence for political gain. Adapted from the source document.