The role of civil society in conflict resolution in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1998-2006: an appraisal

Abstract: The second Congo war (1998-2003) was a very complex conflict that involved a vast array of actors, interests and issues. After a stalemate was reached on the battlefield as a result of the inability of any of the warring parties to achieve military victory, peace negotiations became the only viable option to end the war. Civil society organisations were directly involved in both the peace process and the subsequent transitional dispensation designed to resolve the conflict, providing some sort of popular legitimacy to these two processes clearly dominated by politico-military forces. The central argument of this article is that while civil society involvement in the peace and transitional processes was instrumental in resolving the conflict behind the second Congo war, it entrenched a legacy of the politicisation of the civil society movement inaugurated in the early 1990s. Indeed, although ground-breaking, the direct involvement of civil society in the management of transitional institutions contributed to weakening its member organisations as many of their leaders either were directly recruited into existing political platforms or simply decided to establish their own political organisations and join active politics