wfn.org | WCC - The church and the stranger

["Sheila Mesa" <smm@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches
Press Feature, Feat-01-14
For Immediate Use
18 September 2001

The church and the stranger: uprooted people in the Democratic
Republic of Congo

Raymond Bitemo

When fighting broke out between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and
Burundi in 1994, about a million refugees fled into what is now
called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (RDC). In 1996,
widespread fighting in the RDC between rebels and government
forces caused further refugee displacement. The devastating civil
conflict in the RDC was renewed in 1998 and fighting continues
sporadically, exacerbating the severe problem of uprooted people
- refugees and internally displaced - in the region.  

In addition to its efforts to address the root cause of this
problem - civil war - the Church of Christ in the Congo (ECC)
held an extensive consultation in Kinshasa, 5-16 August, followed
by a meeting of its executive committee, to educate its leaders
and members on the issue of uprooted people and develop practical
responses.  

This article by Raymond Bitemo is the first in a series of three
articles on uprooted people in the DRC, and part of a longer
series on refugees and internally displaced persons.  Bitemo,
from Congo-Brazzaville, was forced to flee his home but now again
lives in Congo-Brazzaville. The ECC is a member of the World
Council of Churches (WCC).  
--------

The Democratic Republic of the Congo's (RDC) three-year-old war
and the problem of uprooted people are the main topics of
conversation among Kinshasa's six million inhabitants, most of
whom are providing a home for relatives from the occupied
provinces.  Almost three million people have died in the war.  In
its 11 August news bulletin, for example, RDC national radio
reported that thousands of Angolans, fleeing the fighting that
recently broke out between the army and rebel forces in the north
of their country, had arrived in the province of Bas-Congo.  And
a local administrator with the World Food Programme says that
"People requesting aid are arriving every day in the offices of
the humanitarian agencies."  Such reports indicate something of
the scale of the problem of uprootedness in this country of
around 60 million inhabitants.   

No-one seems to know exactly how many uprooted people are living
in the RDC today.  The United Nations Office for the Coordination
of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) cites some 1,500,000 refugees, but
does not include internally displaced people in this figure.  The
Church of Christ in the Congo (ECC) mentions a figure of
2,500,000 displaced people and refugees.  The RDC minister of
planning and reconstruction, Denis Kalume Numbi, says his
department is coping with 6,400,000 internally displaced people
and refugees from Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic,
Congo-Brazzaville, Liberia, Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan.  The
refugees, known as "Nzenza" by the locals in Bas-Congo, "Mopaya"
in Equator and "Mukimbizi" in the eastern provinces, are not only
people from the neighbouring countries.  There are also thousands
of Congolese driven out by the war and living in
Congo-Brazzaville and Central Africa.   

The problem of the uprooted in the RDC is a textbook case to
which the government, humanitarian agencies and churches have
been unable to find an adequate response.  

At government level, the minister of social affairs, Jeanne
Ebamba Boboto, acknowledges that her department has been
powerless to cope with the situation.  "Sad to say, most of the
uprooted people in our country are living in extremely poor
conditions.  Whole families have been living for more than two
years on sites that were set up here and there.  They are in a
deplorable situation; others are wandering the streets of towns
and cities up and down the country because they have lost their
homes," she says.   

Knocking at the door of the church 

"This tragedy speaks to all our consciences.  Society at large
and the church in particular must think about how they can rise
to this challenge," said ECC national president Mgr Marini Bodho
at the opening of a consultation on "The Church and the stranger:
the ECC and the care of uprooted people in the RDC" held in
Kinshasa from 5 to 16 August 2001.  

The decision to bring together people from various social
sectors in the RDC and experts from abroad to discuss this theme
resulted from the ECC's realization that it has a duty to care
for uprooted people but is ill-equipped for such work.   

Synod delegates from the occupied provinces in the east were
determined to make the journey to the consultation to tell of
their experiences.  A pastor from Bukavu in South Kivu, for
example, reported that his province is "the worst affected in the
country, with nearly 500,000 refugees and war displaced; many of
them come knocking at the church's door every day asking for
help.  As soon as the ECC national office informed us that a
consultation on refugees was being held, we decided to take the
risk of getting here."  The South Kivu group flew to Kinshasa via
Kigali and Nairobi, and had good reasons to fear for their lives
on their return.  

Other reports from the regions told of the break-up of a country
and the massive humanitarian tragedy endured by those uprooted by
the war.  The provinces occupied by rebel forces are the scene of
robbery, rape, pillaging, live burials.  People are wandering
about in the bush, all farming has come to a halt, the economic,
social, educational and health infrastructures have been
destroyed, and the recruitment of child soldiers continues.  The
reception zones for refugees from the neighbouring countries and
internally displaced people are in provinces under government
control, but structures are inadequate and there is a crying lack
of basic goods.  

The consultation also heard from local and foreign academics,
government ministers and members of parliament, church leaders
and representatives of humanitarian agencies and western
embassies.  Presentations considered uprootedness from
historical, theological, legal, political, humanitarian,
diplomatic and economic angles.  Poverty, injustice, xenophobia
and globalization were identified as being the main causes of the
war and the consequent uprooting of the RDC population.  But,
said Congolese professor Roger Kibasomba from de Wits University
in Johannesburg, South Africa, "we must also ask ourselves about
our own share of responsibility in allowing a situation to
develop that is now being exploited by outside economic
interests."  

Pointing to two plants - one standing upright, its roots firmly
anchored in soil that nourished it and enabled it to grow, the
other with its roots torn up, doomed to die from lack of
nourishment - "What does this image mean for us as the church?"
asked Rev. Shirley DeWolf from Zimbabwe, regional coordinator of
the church's ministry with uprooted people in Southern Africa and
a member of the WCC's Commission of the Churches on International
Affairs (CCIA).   

Affirming that "as the church, we are called to help all people
who are uprooted," All Africa Conference of Churches' (AACC)
Committee on Refugees and Emergencies president Rev. S. Tilewa
Johnson, bishop of Gambia, encouraged the ECC to develop a
support programme that would ensure that "uprooted people
themselves are involved in identifying the real needs".  But "How
is one to identify who should receive support in a country where
food security no longer exists and where almost the entire
population, including the church, is living in a state of want
because of economic collapse and war?" asked Caritas deputy
director Bruno Miteyo.  

The consultation made a number of recommendations as to how the
ECC Ministry for Refugees and Emergencies (MERU) might equip
itself to meet these many challenges over the next decade.  The
recommendations referred to the need for internal restructuring,
the need to map out a work programme, to raise awareness in order
to mobilize national resources, to build an effective information
network in order to strengthen its capacity to handle
emergencies, and to cooperate with the government, humanitarian
agencies and churches in Europe, the USA and Canada.  The
consultation also asked the WCC and the AACC to help convene a
conference of church leaders from the Great Lakes region
countries to examine the question of uprooted people, and propose
alternative solutions to the political decision-makers.  

For further information, please contact Karin Achtelstetter,
Media Relations Officer, Tel:  (+41.22) 791.61.53  Mobile:  (+41)
79.284.52.12

**********
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of churches,
now 342, in more than 100 countries in all continents from
virtually all Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is
not a member church but works cooperatively with the WCC. The
highest governing body is the assembly, which meets approximately
every seven years. The WCC was formally inaugurated in 1948 in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Its staff is headed by general
secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.

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