Etudes de l'Ifri - Ituri : Resurgence of Conflict and Failure of Peacebuilding Policy Etudes de l'Ifri, June 2021
In the far northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the province of Ituri experienced a decade of relative peace between 2007 and 2017 and is nowadays victim of the resurgence of its historic inter-communal conflict between the Hema and the Lendu.
For three years, this conflict, a mixture of brigandage, cycles of attacks on villages, reprisals and warlike practices with a witchcraft nature, has been spreading despite the interventions of the army, the efforts of political inclusiveness and the negotiations initiated during summer 2020. The resilience of certain armed groups and the return of the historic intercommunal conflict highlight the inadequacies and gaps in the peacebuilding policy carried out after 2007, which failed to root out the causes of conflictuality. Facing the lack of progress on the governance front, Ituri remains trapped in the vicious circle of conflict, like in North and South Kivu.
This content is available in French : "Ituri : Résurgence du conflit et échec de la consolidation politique de la paix" [1]