Scaling up the Kivu Reintegration Centre. Goma, Nord Kivu January 21st
The director of the UN’s demobilisation operations, or Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation Rehabilitation and Reintegration (DDRRR) in Eastern Congo, arrives late for our meeting which takes place in a porta-cabin office on an Indian Military base. He is a large man with a wheeze in his voice from years of smoking and is wearing a grubby cream suit, a Panama hat and round, steel rimmed, John Lennon type glasses. Perspiring and coughing, he looks so perfectly the role of the expatriate left to rot in the tropics that I imagine him as a character out of the 1973 movie Papillion, with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, set in a penal colony in 1920s French Guiana. But he is someone whom I know to have an ex-Belgian security force background and he has been in Congo for a very long time. I expect there is nothing that could shock or surprise him and I am sure he has secrets and tales to tell.
His division also handles the sharper end of demobilisation, targeting the genocidal Rwandan interahamwe, or FDLR, who remain active in North Kivu and are slowly being squeezed economically—displaced from the mines they formerly controlled—and pushed into the more remote jungle areas of the province, but are still trouble enough. Those who come in from the bush are given an amnesty and repatriated back to Rwanda. One of their most senior commanders has recently surrendered in this way and I ask if the man concerned, Lieutenant-Colonel Bizimana, is still here, probably being held somewhere on this base. He feigns incomprehension at mention of this, and then mutters: “you are very well informed”.
But his manner is kindly and helpful and he hears me out about why I am here. He is shocked to find that the Kivu Reintegration Centre (KRC) is already undertaking training and assistance for the demobilised, saying that all UN demobilisation and reintegration programmes have been stalled and won’t get going again for six months. He seems incredulous about KRC, saying he’s never heard of them, repeating the name as though he’s just discovered something new and exotic, before mentioning that they could be a potential implementing agency for the UN’s reintegration programme, as there are thousands of soldiers who have demobilised—surrendering a gun is the minimum requirement to be indentified as such—but are still waiting to receive some kind of assistance. He promises to put me in touch with the programme officer. For a donor, finding an effective local partner is like finding a gold mine.
The way the international aid business typically works is that large donor organisations like the UN, or those of western governments, rarely manage or implement their own projects. They set the objectives and the projects and then find other agencies to execute them, providing monitoring and follow up. It is infinitely quicker and more flexible and the UN and other donors could not possibly function without them. It is also preferable to find local partners as executing agencies; they tend to be closer to actual community needs and are much less expensive than international ones, with their expatriate salaries and high overheads, and because this fits the objectives of local “empowerment” and “capacity building”. But local NGOs, with their weak administrative systems and financial management, also generally lack the capacity to fully satisfy the reporting, monitoring and audit requirements of international donors. And when they begin receiving large international funding and scaling up they can experience “growth problems” that end in tears. The new money expands capabilities but also leads to new problems and temptations. Many a local NGO has floundered in this way in the attempts to “scale-up” with new office equipment, vehicles and salaries.
When I was 26 years old and had just completed a graduate degree in development at an unnamed British University I ended up in Mozambique and was handed a consulting contract by an international donor (the British government) to “evaluate” the programmes of a local NGO. It was the most misleading job terms of reference I’ve ever had. I was not evaluating a local NGO, I was conducting a forensic audit to find out where the donor’s money had gone, spending two months tracking the movement of 27,000 sacks of maize—food meant for returning refugees—through warehouses all over southern Mozambique. My local partners did not want me there digging around. I received death threats.
The local partner, the Christian Council of Mozambique (CCM), was an organisation that had gone from a budget of $,5000 a year to $5m a year in a short time. In the midst of Mozambique’s civil war, the donor money kept coming and CCM ran programmes providing food and shelter to the war affected and was regarded as one of the country’s strongest and most effective local NGOs. When it all started coming apart, who was to blame, the local NGO or the donor?
The Kivu Reintegration Centre right now is a beautiful organisation. It is effective, it is local and it is low cost, though it is struggling to cope with the demands made upon it. To help in the way I’ve been asked must strengthen and expand what it does well, and avoid problems that will lead to trouble later. KRC does not need shiny new offices and a Toyota Land Cruiser 4×4 or big staff salaries. But it does wish to expand its activities in ways that are quite modest, but very real and could deliver substantially greater impact, quantitatively and qualitatively with the addition of relatively little external assistance.
Ferdinand and Dominique say that their vision for the centre is to benefit a larger number of the demobilised and contribute to a change in perception on the part of the community toward these unruly street youths, who are regarded as thieves and bandits and are at risk of returning to the bush to take arms, either joining one of the armed groups or becoming one of the large number of small bandit groups that now plague the province. By the same token it would mean a change in self-perception by the street youths themselves, having them see themselves as valued and constructive individuals in their own right.
They’d like to be able to increase their student numbers, estimating that they are meeting less than 10% of the demand, as they have to turn away so many. Doing something to motivate their staff, who are volunteers with other jobs and responsibilities, is another priority, which could best be achieved by having more resources to work with at the centre and by at least paying transportation costs ($2/day) and a basic stipend. Eventually, they also wish to expand their operations to include the small towns in the rural districts of the province, where there is (very) little reintegration assistance or any other activity going on. With as little as $500/month most of this could be done: improving the curriculum with text books and a basic library, adding staff training and professional development, more computers, a printer and an internet connection.
Ferdinand is very clear that the computers are a big draw for the students and that for the demobilised, moving from the gun to the computer is an important symbolic and practical step. I couldn’t agree more. If all it would take to prevent a young man from returning to war is to teach them how to use a computer and set them up with their own Facebook account, then let’s get moving. All this would make the Centre a more desirable place to be for staff and students; and I bet I can do it with less than $10,000. And oh yes, uniforms for the football team.
Donor funding, if it comes, will probably be 6 months or more. I will start now with my own in the meantime. If anyone reading this believes it is a worthy cause, and would like to help, then your donation is gratefully accepted and will definitely have an impact.