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Need to Protect Civilians

Both MONUC and FARDC forces have a responsibility to protect civilians in areas where they have effective control. They must act in accordance with the requirements of international human rights and humanitarian law. The presence of MONUC troops helps to deter some violence against civilians, but this is not a sufficient guarantee to protect against abuses. Apparently neither MONUC nor FARDC have plans in place to protect civilian populations in Walungu, either from possible abuses by their own troops or from reprisal attacks by combatants of Rwandan armed groups.⁵⁴

FDLR combatants have said they will resist the new operations by FARDC and MONUC and at least one of their leaders, Commandant Bonheur, has already threatened retaliation against civilians if MONUC and FARDC use force against his combatants.⁵⁵ A local administrator reported that after a previous FARDC military operation against Rwandan combatants in Lemera in mid-April 2004, the Rwandan combatants retaliated by killing at least twelve civilians.⁵⁶

The kinds of attacks at Budodo in late August and September 2004, described above, happened again after the start of the FARDC and MONUC disarmament operation. Although FARDC soldiers were based in Budodo from early November on, they were unable to protect civilians from these attacks. Rwandan armed combatants killed one man, Lumamira Antoine, and several days later, on November 16, they abducted the director of a primary school and his wife.⁵⁷ Local sources reported that when FARDC soldiers participating in the disarmament operation encountered Rwandan armed combatants, they simply checked their papers and let them pass. Residents of the area remain too afraid to sleep in their homes, preferring instead to find shelter in the forest. In one as yet unresolved case, FARDC soldiers opened fire not on combatants, but on two girls hiding in the forest, killing one of them.⁵⁸

A substantial number of the combatants in these Rwandan armed groups are children under age eighteen, raising an additional concern about using force to disarm them.⁵⁹ MONUC and FARDC soldiers could be engaging in combat against child soldiers and have given minimal consideration to measures that will be necessary to protect these minors from harm during armed conflict.

The FARDC and MONUC have undertaken to disarm the Rwandan armed groups in part to end their abuses against local Congolese populations. In carrying out these disarmament operations they must take adequate measures to protect civilians so that the very populations whom they intend to help do not suffer further loss from their efforts.