This case study provides a focus on consultation and participation as part of the humanitarian response to a long-term civil and international conflict. However, the recent Nyiragongo volcanic eruption and flash floods in Uvira has also enabled a focus on the humanitarian response to two natural disasters in the context of a long-term civil and international conflict.

The thirty-year reign of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, began with a coup in 1965 and was characterised by severe corruption, a drastic degradation of infrastructure throughout the country, and a general downward spiral of the economy and standard of living of most Zairians. Between April and July of 1994, over a million Hutu refugees fled into eastern Zaire after the genocide in Rwanda, including the extremist Hutu militia, the interahamwe, and members of the former national army (FAR). In 1996, Rwandan troops dismantled the refugee camps in North and South Kivu, and the Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADFL) for the Liberation of Congo, under Laurent Kabila, was established. The following year the AFDL took over Kinshasa and Kabila proclaimed himself president, but serious disagreements between the Rwandans and Kabila spawned further violence.

In August of 1998, rebel forces backed by Uganda and Rwanda launched attacks with the aim of overthrowing President Kabila’s government. Three additional countries sent troops into the fray, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe backing the government. Several inter-ethnic conflicts in the East, factional divisions within the main rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), as well as counter-rebel attacks complicated the situation. By the end of 2000, rebel forces occupied approximately 60% of the northeastern part of the country, and an estimated 1.8 million people had been displaced within the country, a large proportion of them children. A controversial but important mortality study undertaken by International Rescue Committee (IRC) finalised in 2001 calculated that between 1998 and 2001, 2.5 million people died as a result of the war.  In July of 1999, the six countries involved in the war committed to a peace agreement signed in Lusaka, which was followed by the deployment of UN peace-keeping groups – the UN Observer Mission (MONUC) – in DRC. Following the assassination of Laurent Kabila in January of 2001, his son Joseph became president and advanced steps towards peace, supporting the Lusaka Peace Accords. Growing international attention to the situation in Congo helped spur the subsequent Inter-Congolese Dialogue held in Sun City, South Africa. However, the Goma-based RCD did not agree to the leadership structure and did not sign the document. Still now, regular attacks on civilian settlements and between warring factions result into a high level of suffering.

The massive influx of humanitarian aid actors who arrived to help the Rwandan refugees saw the beginning of years of assistance in eastern DRC that continues into the present, ranging from feeding centres to broad-scale health programs and support for livelihoods. The problems that emerged from the presence of hundreds of international organisations working with the refugees in Goma in 1994-95 – including the lack of consistent approaches, inadequate co-ordination, duplication of effort, and conflicting mandates – led to numerous analyses and recognition that important changes needed to be made in the field of humanitarian response. Since 1996, the growing influence and presence of Rwandans and Ugandans in the Kivus accompanied by operations of the Mai-Mai, civil defence forces and the interahamwe, as well as inter-ethnic clashes, have created an atmosphere of extreme insecurity and fear. In rural areas, many people are forced out of their villages by violence, their houses and crops burned and their animals stolen. In urban areas, citizens openly critical of the RCD have been harassed and sometimes arrested and imprisoned.

On the morning of January 17, 2002, Nyiragongo volcano erupted through a series of vents that started high on the volcano. As lower vents closer to Goma opened during the day, higher vents shut off creating considerable confusion as to just what was happening. Several times during the day local radio broadcasts falsely announced the end of the eruption.

About 5:30 PM that evening the final vents opened near the Goma airport quickly covering one third of the runway with lava. By the middle of the night, flows from these vents reached the shore of Lake Kivu, cutting Goma in half. A second lava flow a few kilometres to the northwest, and unrelated to the airport flows, reached the main road connecting Goma and Sake, but failed to cross it. This natural disaster was superimposed on a complex emergency. An estimated 350,000 residents of Goma out of an estimated total population of 450,000 residents self-evacuated. Loss of life was officially estimated at 100 and approximately 12-15,000 dwellings and the main commercial part of the city were destroyed. Couple of days later, two rivers in the Uvira region saw their levels rising quickly and devastating flash floods devastated the human settlement installed on the river banks. The high level of insecurity in the East has greatly discouraged travel, and the appalling condition of residents in some of the remote rural areas is largely unknown to urban residents. The families’ silence also, however, regardless of the needs of their compatriots, reflected disappointment that additional assistance would not be forthcoming.

There are hundreds of local NGOs in the Kivus, many of which were established during the 1994-1996 Rwandan refugee crisis. Others, however, have been in operation for decades. Various churches and church-affiliated organisations also play a very important role in development and humanitarian assistance.

This paper is a first summary of findings and reflections prepared by the DRC Team based on seven weeks of fieldwork conducted between August and September 2002. A preparatory study for the fieldwork was conducted in April by INTRAC. The DRC Team members, two men and two women, represented a interesting and complementary balance of perspectives: a Western-born staff member of a major donor agency with long-term field experience in Africa; a Central-African-born staff member of a western-based NGO, and two Eastern Congolese locals who had worked with local and international NGOs, and had themselves been among the victims of the volcano and wars in the East. The participation of individuals affected by the disasters facilitated access to individuals, organisations, opinions, and feelings that might easily have been overlooked by or inaccessible to an exclusively international team.

 Three sites were selected for the study to cover the largest diversity of situations

• Goma, located on the northern part of Kivu lake. Goma and its surrounding area has been affected by years of civil strife. It received one of the biggest refugee population flows from the 1994 Rwanda crisis and is still dramatically affected by the civil war raging in the Massisi and North Kivu. It was also the centre of the volcanic eruption in early 2002;

• Bukavu, located on the western shore of Lake Kivu. Bukavu and its surrounding area also received large numbers of refugees from the Rwanda crisis and is still affected by population movements resulting from insecurity prevailing in the High Plateaux. Bukavu also received many displaced persons escaping the devastation of the lava flows in Goma.

• Uvira, a town in South Kivu, which, in addition to the regular military operations suffered by the civilian population, experienced a flood not long after the eruption of the volcano.

A number of key documents were consulted for background material. However, the bulk of the material for this study was drawn from interviews with a broad range of respondents. These included local authorities, international aid managers and workers, staff from local NGOs and a wide variety of war, volcano and flood-affected populations from the following categories: displaced, residents, returnees, host population.

Interviews were conducted with individuals, neighbourhood groups, families, and workers in shelters, homes, tents, the open air, offices and restaurants during both scheduled and unscheduled visits. Many areas in the Kivu region outside urban centres and their peripheries were not easily accessible due to security restrictions, thus limiting the access of the research team to the forested areas in the mountains where there is little humanitarian programmes development, due to the same 'access issue'.

The greatest challenge facing the team was reconciling the widely disparate accounts of what happened during the response to the eruption of Nyiragongo. The often cynical, angry, accusatory, and sometimes resigned feedback offered reflected the unease of a population that feels itself subjugated by foreign powers – foremost by the Rwandans and secondarily by humanitarian actors.

This short paper focuses on a limited number of key issues that arose during the DRC study:

• the difficult relations between the international agencies and local NGOs;
• the politicisation and risks of predation of humanitarian assistance and the complex issues related to "who speaks, who controls, who organises";
• the complexity to work in a context of a protracted crisis and its implication on consultation and participation; and,
• the relation between improving participation processes and better linking emergency assistance to rehabilitation and development

It should be mentioned at this stage that, although the mission identified only a limited number of good practices, the difficulties identified and the constraints assessed on participation and consultation are opening very interesting avenues for tools and methodology development.

The operational worlds of the international groups and local organisations remain distressingly separate, contributing to the climate of suspicion and distrust, in Goma especially. A few select NGOs and church-based groups have had long-term working relationships with the same internationals for many years and both sides seem comfortable with these relationships – too comfortable, perhaps, since the cost-benefit analysis of working with only one group seems not to have been examined.

All of the international groups, regardless of their origin or mandate, from donors to PVOs to visiting delegations, are considered by locals to be "ONUsiens," or "UNers". The ONUsiens come with money, expensive automobiles, and outside interests that may or may not reflect the needs of local inhabitants. Locals and even some of those employed by IOs do not for the most part understand—because no one has bothered to explain to them—where assistance funds come from (in many case taxpayers from various countries), and the types of accountability, conditions, and mandates that accompany their donation. There is great confusion surrounding the duties and raison d’etre of MONUC, for example. "What exactly do they DO?" asked a Goma resident. "Why don’t they help us, the victims of the volcano?" When the research team--in response to criticism that not enough had been done for the affected--told a representative of one Goma NGO that an entire fifth of a donor’s entire DRC country budget had been devoted to the volcano response, the respondent, far from being assuaged, was apoplectic. "What in the world do they have to show for that [enormous] amount of money?! A few temporary shelters?! One of the more impressive examples of recent local NGO initiative in the East was a pair of workshops organised and conducted in May and June of 2002 in Bukavu and Goma, respectively, entitled "Disaster Assistance and Rehabilitation: Strengthening Negociation Skills of Local Organisations with Regards to Disaster Assistance Practices". While many IO representatives participated in the workshop in Bukavu, very few did in Goma.

The inhabitants of the Kivus have learned over the years to take very little at face value from people in positions of authority, beginning in the Mobutu years and reaching a peak now. It is widely accepted that the local authorities, considered to be controlled by Rwandans who claim to be in the East for the sole purpose of tracking down the interahamwe, are instead spending the greater part of their time exporting the great mineral riches in the area. The uncertainty of who represents whom, and for what purposes and why has led many Kivu inhabitants to question the nature of organisational and individual legitimacy and authenticity, and encouraged international groups to be suspicious of most – if not all – local motives and actions. Furthermore, over the years, several NGOs have had to shut down entire programs when high levels of corruption and deception were detected among their local staff. This is in issue in both the programmes related to the civil war and in the activities developed in relation to the rapid onset emergencies that affected the area.

If the educated urban residents seem less than appreciative of the humanitarian work undertaken in the East, it stems in part from tremendous frustration and disappointment that the international community does not seem to be committed to bringing an end to the 'foreign occupation" of their region and the violence and economic crisis associated with it.

 Discussions with the affected populations revealed that the predation continues right down the line, to those who are least able to survive the assault. The issue of consultation and participation during the establishment of the lists of beneficiaries is one of the most complex in humanitarian action. For example, many interviewees alleged that the allocation of temporary shelters for Goma residents was fraught with corruption. Some local chiefs, whose collusion with the RCD has greatly weakened their responsibilities toward the neighbourhoods they are supposed to represent, were said to have ‘sold’ the rights to have one’s names on a beneficiary lists for an average of $10. Those households who received a shelter and/or household goods and food were very grateful to the international community for the assistance. They felt bad for those needy households who did not receive a shelter due to the corrupted lists. The inhabitants of some of the new neighbourhoods comprised of temporary shelters complained that because the closest source of water was across the runway of the airport, they were charged by the military guarding the airstrip to cross. The research team also heard reports that some of the local humanitarian aid workers had charged fees for shelter materials that they delivered to beneficiary households.

In the situation observed, two main elements emerged as central to the issues of consultation and participation. The first is that the longer the humanitarian programmes last, the more sophisticated the "cheating strategies" and the more demanding the population. People start to understand very well the strategies, needs and demands from the aid agencies and adjust accordingly. The second is that when people are consulted or if their participation is requested, then the demand focuses less and less on typical humanitarian relief and more and more an quasi-developmental operations.

Based on their experience, some of the IO staff believe that the less they have to explain, the less likely funds or materials will be "diverted" to the less needy or to non-humanitarian pursuits. At least one IO representative explained that his staff is directed to take supplies unannounced to a transit camp on the outskirts of town to minimise the number of non-camp residents who would show up if they knew in advance about a distribution. Unfortunately, those bona fide camp residents who happen to be out of the camp at that time miss their share.

However, diversions seem to occur even more often when transparency is limited, perhaps because there are fewer social checks and balances in such instances and when people do not feel trusted, their loyalty to, and belief in, an organisation or effort tend to be weak.

All of the humanitarian actors in eastern DRC – from the RCD membership to the households affected by the war and/or the volcano have developed particular strategies for survival, some of which are highly predatory and most of which are opportunistic. For decades they had to struggle for life with or despite aid agencies. There is a high degree of resilience at the household level. Local initiatives through local NGO and churches have develop quite sophisticated health activities based on sound cost recovery mechanisms. Yet, many of the local actors are complaining that with the relief mentality of many international agencies and the lack of listening skills/attitude of many expatriates, the lessons learnt and experiences accumulated are not utilised.

The significant capacities and willingness of the local populations to assist one another during the Goma crisis has generally not been recognised, celebrated by – or is not even known to – the internationals. In most instances the later did not even ask what was going on, leading to a strange situation where the aid agencies wanted to restrain people from moving back to Goma after the volcanic eruption. Despite their efforts to keep people in Rwanda, the camps were emptied in a matter of days and the mobilisation of means on one side of the border became irrelevant and costly.

Many were severely burned crossing the still red-hot lava. A group of unidentified young men took the initiative to break up the big chunks of lava to make the passage easier and safer. Similarly in Bukavu, during the first few days after the eruption while the RCD held endless meetings and IOs made plans to respond, inhabitants of Bukavu welcomed the displaced into shelters, cooked meals for them, and organised for drinking water to be sent to Goma. Hundreds of families welcomed the destitute into their homes. Resident business people lent or gave money to those in need and many Goma and Bukavu inhabitants donated cooking equipment and household materials. While international agencies were still wondering what to do, some local actors and beneficiaries were doing some plans for any next eruption.

The same mobilisation of the local actors in the Uvira area was observed after the floods.

Consultation and the voluntary involvement of a population in participative approaches require confidence, in most instances based on person to person relations rather than institutional agreements. The high turnover of international staff and concomitant lack of institutional memory hinders the ability of IOs to be credible and of local actors and beneficiaries to have confidence. It also hinders the capacity for these international staff to recognise the wealth of skills in the region. Furthermore, several IO representatives explained that with their unrelenting reporting and management responsibilities, frequent meetings with authorities and mandatory correspondence and co-ordination with headquarters in Kinshasa or in western countries, they simply did not have time to interact with beneficiaries and local NGOs other than those with whom they were working.

Participation and consultation approaches require skills and experience. In almost all of the interviews with local organisations who had not been chosen to work extensively with IOs the question of 'capacity' and how it is defined was brought up. "Is capacity being an expatriate?" asked a member of a Goma NGO. "If that is the case, that is the end of participation for us." Several Goma inhabitants questioned the professional capacities of several IOs hired by WFP to distribute food during the volcano crisis. "The people brought in to do this job seemed to be young trainees!" said one man. "They actually threw [high protein] biscuits out at the crowd and people rushed to grab them, crushing and even injuring each other. That is not the way assistance should be provided." Several IOs admitted that the food distribution had been problematic, but added that it was very hard to get experienced humanitarian workers to accept assignments in the Kivus because of the difficult, frustrating, insecure and exhausting working conditions.  

Members of a consortium of local NGOs in Bukavu wondered how it happened that once locals were hired by an international organisation and "crossed over" the invisible line to the expatriate side – as if through a looking glass – that they suddenly became ‘capacitated’ and 'trustworthy'. Local respondents described several instances where current or former employees of IOs, who had gained knowledge of the inner workings of the international world, had created their own NGOs and received money for programs, while other groups, lacking such knowledge, received no support.

In fact, there are many members of local NGOs in the Kivus who are well educated, highly trained and extremely competent who could have provided significant assistance during the emergency.

Establishing what are or could be 'good practices' in a situation compounded by a protracted crisis and two sudden-onset disasters is not an easy task. This is even more so when there is a high level of distrust between international and local actors. It is recognised by both international aid actors and affected populations alike that the humanitarian response to the eruption of Nyiragongo was fraught with difficulties and mistakes, many of which could and should have been avoided. With the exception of those individuals employed by international organisations, many Congolese feel that their opinions, skills, and expertise were not well utilised during or after the emergency. Some of the problems stemmed from the fact that many within the local population do not accept the legitimacy of the ruling authorities and feel largely abandoned by the international community to a life of fear, distrust, and impoverishment. Ironically, the long history of humanitarian assistance in eastern DRC, beginning with the flood of refugees in 1994 after the genocide in Rwanda, seems to have contributed to the contested nature of the response to the volcano disaster. As in a growing number of regions around the world that are chronic hosts to disasters, emergency response in eastern DRC has become an enormous and complex business operation wherein outside organisations and local actors both try desperately to assert control over monetary resources, goods, and services.

It is possible that the relationships between local organisations and international aid groups in Goma cannot be repaired in the short term, or even perhaps until a regime accepted by a majority of the eastern Congolese is established, local powers renegotiated, and a minimum level of trust, hope and confidence re-established.

Building better relationships between locals and international organisations will depend on both the ability of each side to recognise that it cannot do the job well without assistance from the other, and the will to create and maintain systems of information-sharing and accountability that can withstand – and in some way compensate for – the high turnover of international staff. Legitimate and competent local NGOs in Goma are requesting that a record be kept on file with humanitarian co-ordinating agencies of their past performance and capacities, so that international groups could better determine with whom they could work most productively. Similarly, it would be helpful to have available to local actors the different mandates of international organisations and evaluations of international performance during crisis response, to improve systems of understanding, accountability and feedback. Every IO should have a staff member among whose duties is public relations and liaison with local organisations.

There are a handful of organisations that are often praised for their long-term partnerships with specialised local NGOs, and in many cases those relationships do reflect a significant degree of participation. But close inspection reveals that in some instances, while international partners assumed good practices and accountability on the part of their local partner, project participants and evaluators noted a disturbing level of complacency and/or corruption. A possible remedy for this situation would be to implement projects with a strong social control mechanism linked to participatory monitoring and evaluation by the beneficiaries themselves.