A military solution championed by Rwanda and DR Congo for restive eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has failed and the region risks deteriorating, the International Crisis Group warned Tuesday.
"Two years after the rapprochement between Congolese President Joseph Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart, Paul Kagame, government soldiers are still battling militias for control of land and mines," the Brussels-based organisation said in a new report, referring to DRC's Nord- and Sud-Kivu provinces.
After breaking off relations in 1998, Rwanda and the DRC renewed ties at the start of 2009 when the two countries launched a joint operation in eastern Congo against a militia leader.
But instead of improving, the humanitarian situation in the Kivus has deteriorated and violence has increased in a region plagued by various rebel and militia groups, the ICG said.
"Women and girls, particularly, have suffered the consequences of impunity and of a highly militarised environment in which rape is endemic," it said.
"Without a new strategy, the risk of inter-ethnic clashes, disintegration of the national army and regional destabilisation will become increasingly dangerous," said the ICG's central African director Thierry Vircoulon,
Eastern DRC has been wracked by instability for more than a decade due to the presence of armed groups who routinely carry out widespread looting, the rape of hundreds of women and children and murders.
