Afrika-Seminar: Krig og konflikt i de store søers område

Time: Friday 1 April at 13:30 – 15:30 hours

Venue: “Kornloftet”, Forsvarets Bibliotek, Kastellet 46, 2100 Copenhagen East

The seminar is free, registration required.

The Region around the great lakes of Africa is extreme. It is one of the most beautiful regions on the continent with its green hills and rainforest being the home of the world last mountain gorillas.

Time: Friday 1 April at 13:30 – 15:30 hours

Venue: “Kornloftet”, Forsvarets Bibliotek, Kastellet 46, 2100 Copenhagen East

The seminar is free, registration required.

The Region around the great lakes of Africa is extreme. It is one of the most beautiful regions on the continent with its green hills and rainforest being the home of the world last mountain gorillas.

The region has got some of the most fertile agricultural soil in Africa and has in the case of DR Congo (former Zaire) a vast amount of natural resources.

However, at the same time this region has a history of extreme violence.

The Great Lakes region has within less than twenty years experienced a genocide in Rwanda causing the death of approximately 800.000 people and a continuous war in the DR Congo involving at least eight African states, the world’s largest peacekeeping force of 18.000 soldiers, and a war causing the death of an estimated 4-5 million people, dying of war-related causes.

The conflicts in Rwanda and in the DR Congo are interlinked, and should analytically be seen as being part of the same problem. In the Eastern part of what is today DR Congo large groups of Kinyawanda speaking people have been living in the area since the 17th century, which had created increased ethnic tension in the disintegrating Zairian state since especially the 1980’s.

In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide millions of refugees, including the once responsible for the genocide, fled Rwanda and settled in Eastern DR Congo, a situation that became an important element in the outbreak of war in DR Congo in 1996.

The new regime in Rwanda has, and still is, heavily involved in the conflict in DR Congo, while the Congolese President Laurent Kabila has been unwilling and incapable of addressing Rwanda’s security concerns in the eastern part of his huge country.

SPEAKERS

* Linda Melvern investigative journalist and Honorary Professor, University of Wales
* Dr. Gérard Prunier, Consultant and Senior Researcher at CNRS, Paris

Registration for the seminar before 30 March 2011 to [email protected]

For questions related to the seminar pls. contact:
Dr. Thomas Mandrup, RDDC,
e-mail: [email protected], Tlf.: 22 74 83 90