An uncertain road: Election time in DR Congo
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), recently characterised by ongoing political unrest and resource-driven civil wars, is approaching its second democratically displayed presidential and parliamentary elections. After many turbulences with regard to the independent national election commission (that shifted names from CEI to CENI) and issues concerning late and irregular registration of voters, the poll … Continue reading
A history of rape and murder
Latest news reported new mass rapes in the area of Walikale, a former stronghold of Nkunda’s CNDP militia in Eastern DR Congo. Some 20 months ago, a lot of hope was expressed after the detention of renegade General Laurent Nkunda by Rwandan military. In the meantime, several joint missions have been carried out by … Continue reading
Failed States Index 2010 – Same same, but different!?
Finally, I take the issuance of this year’s Failed States Index as an opportune occasion to start writing again. To have a short-cut introduction, for different reasons I did not manage to write earlier on this blog. First, I felt somewhat exhausted after all the reporting from my work in Haiti during January, February and … Continue reading
Slow progress and new challenges
For the last ten days things in Hinche have not so much changed. Some time I had the impression that communication and coordination would improve after we had invested so much energy in exactly that domain. But this was maybe a superficial assessment and it did not really last. Even worse, we have some serious … Continue reading
‘Delivering as one’!?
This paradigm is basically used in New York when it comes to the efficiency and cooperation in between different UN bodies (For all Germans: We have a similar notion concerning the splintering of our development agencies, called ‘Entwicklungszusammenarbeit aus einem Guss’). I opted for chosing it as an headline, not to point on the local … Continue reading
Port-au-Prince
On our way back from Dominican Republic to Hinche, where I will be analyzing the local and regional situation in the next couple of days, we had a stopover in Port-au-Prince. As there was enough time left to reach the Plateau Central by day we decided spontaneously to have a look at Port-au-Prince, Petionville and … Continue reading
Unresting agony
After some ten days in Santo Domingo a certain state of mind has emerged. We still do not know which daywe will be allowed to go back to Haiti and even after receiving permission everything will be depending on the situation there. Of course we have to make sure that fuel, water, food and medical … Continue reading
Santo Domingo is quite far
This has been written on 24th of January 2010. After a long journey we arrived in Santo Domingo last Wednesday. In the end this was certainly the right decision, because we could not really preview what was going to happen in Hinche. By now as far as I am informed things remained calm, but I … Continue reading
Small update
The situation in Hinche/Plateau Central remains unforeseeable. We are now facing more and more people coming from the capital and looking for medical assistance, food, water, shelter and so on. We are in contact with Dominican collaborators and will maybe receive trucks with medical ais by tomorrow, but it has still be organized, how they … Continue reading
Update II
This report has been written on Friday, 15th of January 2010, 11pm Since this afternoon things have changed to some extent and we find ourselves here in a new situation. Bit by bit we received more reports and emails from the capital which caused that we realized our own situation differently. Rumours about pillages and … Continue reading
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