Grantee Profile: Solidarité pour la Promotion Sociale et la Paix (SOPROP)

Escaping marauding militias has become a daily exercise for people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Regional warlords have taken up residence in Congo’s lush, dense, and massive forests along the far eastern border of this vast country. Thus, despite the January 23 arrest of renegade general Laurent Nkunda, who is believed responsible for countless atrocities, several other rebel factions remain at-large. The FDLR, which counts alleged perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide among its members, and Joseph Kony’s so-called Lords Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel force known for abducting children that has been at-large for more than twenty years, both operate in the area.

Civilians have been left in the crossfire since the conflict began fifteen years ago.  Almost every armed group—rebel militias, government, foreign forces—that have passed through Congo’s borders, cities and villages stand guilty of raping, looting and killing civilians. In 2008 alone, more than one million people were displaced by the fighting.

In the photo above, SOPROP staff visit an internally-displaced persons (IDP) camp in Mugunga, in eastern DRC’s North Kivu province. Camps like these are highly unstable places: education is often nonexistent, as is security, proper hygiene, and access to food. Since the war began, more than 5.4 million people have been killed by murder, massacre, preventable disease, and other consequences of violence and displacement. SOPROP visits the IDP camps to document the conditions, facilitate resources, and press the government to protect its citizens.

With government largely absent from the lives of millions of Congo’s citizens, local organizations have bravely risen to the challenge of speaking up for those whom the powerful want to silence. Operating in Congo’s North Kivu province, which borders Rwanda and Burundi, SOPROP (Solidarité pour la Promotion Sociale et la Paix / Solidarity for Social Promotion and Peace), a Fund grantee, has emerged as one of the area’s leading human rights organizations challenging impunity for violence in this war-torn area and providing treatment to victims of human rights abuses. 

SOPROP and other human rights groups in the area have documented abuses against civilians by both rebel forces and Congo’s military and police. They also regularly denounce the rampant corruption within the military and justice systems that starts in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital and filters down to the local level.  Needless to say, when bribes and extortion are the cost of doing business with corrupt government officials, judges, and soldiers, Congo’s poorest citizens suffer the most.

In this photo, local women in Goma stage a protest asking for peace in November 2008. The conflict in eastern Congo has been marked by horrific sexual violence against women and girls. Over the last ten years, hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped. 

A key part of SOPROP’s work includes promoting legal reforms to foster the rule of the law. Thanks to SOPROP’s documentation and advocacy, reports of torture by police and other government officials are down dramatically in Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu. SOPROP educates newly-elected officials on their job responsibilities, national laws, and conflict resolution methods. SOPROP also pushes national and regional justice mechanisms to bring perpetrators to account.

SOPROP spends a considerable amount of time and resources responding to the crisis of violence against women. SOPROP investigates and records incidents of sexual violence and torture, runs several medical centers, and works with women to form local women’s rights organizations. For survivors of sexual violence, SOPROP provides medical, psychological, and legal support, and also runs vocational training centers and micro-credit programs that promote economic self-sufficiency. In 2008, the Fund assisted SOPROP in obtaining funding from MIVA (an organization that provides vehicles to non-profit organizations) to purchase an ambulance to provide medical support to sexual assault survivors in isolated rural areas. “We work directly with survivors of sexual violence or torture.  Meeting their needs is sometimes overwhelming,” says Didier Kamundu Batundi, SOPROP’s director. “But, at the same time, we push hard to create a culture of justice and accountability – one that respects the rights of ordinary citizens – to change the status quo.”

Operating in one of the most dangerous places on earth, SOPROP activists display tremendous courage and singular determination to expose human rights violations committed by brutal militia forces and hold them accountable.  The Fund will continue to support them as they lead the effort to end a culture of impunity for violence in eastern Congo.

June 2009