Conflict in the Congo Seminar Series

Project Africa
presents

Africa's World War: Conflict in the Congo Seminar Series

DRC Flag

The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has claimed over 5.4 million lives and despite it formally ending in 2003 Doctors Without Borders include it in their most recent Top 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian stories. This four part seminar series attempts to unpack various aspects of the conflict to help GPIA students better understand the origins and prospects for peace in this grossly underreported war. The seminars will cover topics such as the legacy left by a brutal colonial occupation, the humanitarian consequences of the conflict particulary from the point of view of Congolese women and girls, the place Congo's resources play in the globalized marketplace and finally how geopolitical interests fit into the prospect of peacemaking and peacekeeping.

Events

  • Conflict in the Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death Documentary Screening
    • 20 Feb 2008 - 7:00pm, 66 West 12th Street. Room 404

    The Belgium government has denouced this documentary as a "tendentious diatribe" for depicting King Leopold II - still a heroic figure in Belgium - as the moral forebear of Adolf Hitler, responsible for the death of 10 million people in his rapacious exploitation of the Congo. This film describes how Leopold turned the Congo into his private colony between 1885 and 1908. Under his control, the Congo became a gulag labor camp of shocking brutality. In fact, it is agreed today that the first Human Rights movement was spurred by what happened in the Congo.




  • Conflict in the Congo: Human Rights and Protection
    • 5 Mar 2008 - 7:00pm, 66 West 12th Street. Room 619

    “Atrocities in Congo's volatile province of South Kivu extend ‘far beyond rape’ and include sexual slavery, forced incest and cannibalism”

    - Washington Post July 31st 2007

    We are fortunate to have two guest speakers for this seminar: Michelle Brown from Refugees International and Erin Kenny from the United Nations Population Fund.

    Ms Brown will discuss the humanitarian situation, focusing on internal displacement and reintegration of displaced people into their communities, as well as the overall humanitarian response .

    In 2003, UNFPA was tasked with overseeing country-wide coordination for all Gender-Based Violence (GBV) issues in the DRC. This has provided the agency with both tremendous challenges and opportunities, and lessons from this experience are just now emerging. Ms Kenny recently returned from a month-long mission to the DRC, where she focused her attention on strengthening UNFPA's capacity to effectively prevent and respond to GBV, and to better coordinate systems of response. She will be discussing findings from this mission, as well as some of the defining aspects of the nature of sexual violence in the conflict-impacted regions of this country.

  • Conflict in the Congo: Lumo Documentary Screening
    • 7 Mar 2008 - 7:00pm, 66 W 12th St, Room 404

    Lumo bannerLumo is a feature-length documentary about a young Congolese woman on an uncertain path to recovery at a unique hospital for rape survivors.

    “This film is so provocative and so brave and such an important film. It lets us understand what a powerful tool film is for social change . . . [It has] so moved me.”
    -Barbara Kopple, Director "Harlan County U.S.A.," two-time Academy Award-winner

    We are extremely delighted to have the Director/Producer of Lumo join us for this event. Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt will introduce his documentatry and take questions afterwards.

  • Conflict in the Congo: Resource Exploitation in the Technology Age
    • 26 Mar 2008 - 7:00pm, 66 West 12th Street. Room 619

    "The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a textbook case for those who wish to understand complex notions like the pillage of a country’s wealth, the intolerable loss of a State’s sovereignty, or the concept of odious debt."
    -     Eric Toussaint and Damien Miller, ZNet, July 16 2007

    The Democratic Republic of the Congo has an incredible amount of natural wealth (including diamonds, gold, coltan, uranium, copper, tin, silver, cobalt, niobium, timber, manganese, and petroleum) yet the average income is $100 per year and 80 percent of the population live on less than 30 cents per day.

    Guest speaker Maurice Carney from Friends of the Congo, who recently appeared on DemocracyNow, will lead our seminar on the economics of the Congolese conflict, particularly highlighting the link with global corporations.

    Moderated by Professor Erin McCandless.

  • Conflict in the Congo: Prospects for Peace
    • 9 Apr 2008 - 7:00pm, Leadership Center Room. 802, 80 5th Ave, 8th Floor

    We are privelged to have Duke University's Professor Stephen Smith lead our seminar. Over the past seventeen years, the Congo has been in permanent turmoil, a highly personalized regime was replaced by a dynasty, the country’s economy is still in the hands of politically well-connected “oligarchs”, and national reconciliation and peace – at least in the east - remain elusive. So, is it slow-motion transition we are witnessing, or something else? To put the DRC’s trajectory into perspective, this seminar will draw on concepts such as “competitive authoritarianism” and “hybrid regimes” to explain the paradox of a transition to more of the same..

    Professor Janet Roitman will moderate this seminar.