Topic: Dealing with Civil and Political Unrest
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo
Delegate Name: Connor Miller
School: Mattawan High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Democratic Republic of the Congo position papers GLIMUN 2014 committees
The Democratic Republic of the Congo acknowledges the complexity in dealing with issues of civil and political unrest. In many of these cases, intervention by the United Nations is limited to whether the UN can determine which of the often many parties involved in a conflict are deemed, for the lack of a better descriptive term, “right,” as opposed to “wrong.”
With over two hundred ethnic groups cohabiting a sovereign territory of 2,345,409 km2 just south of the geographic center of the African continent, the Democratic Republic of the Congo understands issues of political and civil unrest adequately enough to share its solutions on this topic. Starting in 1965, the general Mobutu Sese Seko spearheaded a nationalist force in the D.R.C. with Belgian military aid in a coup d’état to remove the then-prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Mobutu established a single-party state in the Congo, whose name he changed to the Republic of Zaïre. Mobutu was criticized for his public executions of rival political leaders, embezzling as much as US$4-5 million from banks during his presidency, causing mass human displacement and death due to sanitary issues and violence, his extreme nepotistic patronage, and ruling for thirty-one years without free or multi-party elections. His administration saw inflation in the domestic economy to such a degree that mints began printing five million zaïre banknotes. When Mobutu was finally removed from power after the Congolese Civil Wars and replaced with Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the current constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo was established. This issue is the object of numerable international focuses because of the involvement of the United Nations, the United States, the Kingdom of Belgium, and the nine African Union member states involved in the Second Congo War. Specifically, the United States and Belgium, both recognized as freely-elected, democratic states with developed economies and lacking any significant human rights offenses, offered military and economic aid to Mobutu’s regime, due to only to Mobutu’s anti-Communist policies.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo would find it appropriate if the UNGA Special Political and Decolonization Committee were to establish a policy coinciding with “The Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Region” passed on 24 February 2013. The Democratic Republic of the Congo further advocates for UN Peacekeeping missions and economic aid to any countries that request said aid from the international community. The United Nations should only intervene when any party threatens the security of civilians.
