The Democratic Republic of Congo with tension continuing to rise between Rwanda, the East African community as well as the Biden administration have taken a step further in their diplomatic effort to try and put an end to this conflict. On November 24 of this year, Defense Forces chiefs from the East African Community and Southern African Development Community met to discuss what the next step were for the Nairobi Process which is focusing on restoring peace within the DR congo. This meeting was due to SDAC troops recently being allowed to deploy in eastern DR Congo where many civilians live and are being forced out of their homes by armed troops. There has been many casualties in this war and the civilian total is starting to pile up because of these actions so the Biden administration has dispatched the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, to Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo to try and come to an agreement.
This Article is very important because these 2 countries have a long history of conflict dating back to the 90s and now it seems that progress is being made. The enhanced diplomatic efforts seem like they can work and truly make a difference in this conflict, but if they don’t and the fighting continues the civilian casualties will get out of hand. It’s a very delicate issue and if done right then tensions between the 2 countries will drop and could potentially fix all of the issues and we could start to see rebuilding n these areas that have been demolished because of this war. In times of war and peril its good to see diplomatic efforts to try and resolve this conflict and stop innocent lives from being lost.
This connects to our class because when we talk about democratic and authoritarian governments we talk about how democratic governments are more diplomatic and focus on what they can do to avoid war. It relates to Democratic Peace Theory in that democratic countries are stepping into this conflict to avoid further war. Rwanda technically operates as a democracy but in reality they have had a history of election tampering and assassinations.