On Jan. 27, 2025, Goma, the capital of North Kivu in the eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fell into the hands of M23 rebels who are supported by the Rwandan army. The offensive is certainly related to the presence of immense mineral resources in the region, including cobalt, gold, diamonds and copper. Many of the one million inhabitants of Goma have fled the fighting to make their way to makeshift camps. Marie Hatem, a professor of global health at the University of Montréal, was in the region when the fighting broke out. She offers a poignant account of what she and her colleagues, both westerners and Congolese, witnessed during those days of terror.
I left Montréal on Jan. 17, 2025, for an assignment that was scheduled to end on March 8. The trip was divided between Congo and Burundi, a neighbouring state. I have travelled throughout sub-Saharan Africa during my career to help improve practices of reproductive health personnel.
My career path led me to the Panzi Foundation (PF) to meet its founder, Denis Mukwege, the Congolese professor and 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
In 2019, the University of Montréal awarded Mukwege an honorary doctorate and signed an agreement of collaboration and support to work with him. In 2020, the professor entrusted me with managing the foundation’s research centre, The International Center for Advanced Research and Training (ICART).
Two years later, a development project called “Tumaini (hope in Swahili) Health and Rights of Women, Adolescent Girls and Children” — presented by the University and the foundation, and led by the International Health Unit and the Hygeia Observatory — got funding from Global Affairs Canada for a period of six years.
This was the context in which our mission to South Kivu and Burundi began. We went to the foundation and the Panzi General Reference Hospital (HGRP) to set up the planned activities of the Tumaini project, of which I am the scientific director. I was accompanied by two colleagues from Montréal: the project co-ordinator and a doctor who specializes in building hospitals in countries that lack resources.
A mission that got off on the wrong foot
As soon as we arrived at the Panzi Foundation on the morning of Jan. 20, I was told that the situation in North Kivu was delicate because of the presence of the M23, a group of rebels supported by Rwanda. Armed clashes had spread and there were fears the capital city of Goma would fall.
Several of our colleagues at the foundation — a lawyer, a doctor and nurses — had families in Goma and were worried about them. We were doing our best to get on with our business of planning and organizing human resources training activities in the institutions that were participating in the Tumaini project (doctors, nurses, midwives, social workers, psychologists, managers). We were also analyzing the needs of health service beneficiaries, particularly women survivors of sexual violence, who are very numerous in this war-torn region.
But there was anxiety in the air. It was suggested that I should not have come. Still, I hoped to stay until the end of my mission on March 8. Experiencing the war in Lebanon had taught me that life must go on.
Every day, we waited for the Panzi Foundation’s security unit’s report on the progress of the militias to decide whether we should leave the region or carry on our activities. We felt still safe since the attacks were targeting Goma and the province of North Kivu. We were in the south, in Bukavu: the two cities are at either end of Lake Kivu, a three-hour trip by river shuttle.
Communications with families and colleagues in Goma became more difficult every day, particularly as hostilities escalated during the siege of the city. News reports talked of deaths, injuries, rapes and tens of thousands of displaced persons heading for the Rwandan border. Those who stayed behind lacked resources: water, electricity, internet connections, food products, etc. The gunfire and shells exploding from all sides were sowing death, destruction and desolation.
The privilege of being western
On Jan. 27, a week after our arrival, we woke up to the news that Goma had fallen. There were large demonstrations in nearby Bukavu. We stayed holed up in the hotel and wondered it we should leave the country.
On Wednesday morning, we made our decision to leave before it was too late. Our whole team left, including our French colleagues. To do so, we had to cross the Congolese and then Rwandan borders on foot, travel to Kigali by taxi (a seven- to eight-hour drive), spend the night in Kigali and take a return flight the following evening, a Thursday. I arrived home in Montréal on Friday evening, via Kenya and then Amsterdam, after a long layover and two delays.
Our Congolese colleagues returned home to a chaotic situation. As Canadian citizens, our safety was a given. But not for them.
The most difficult moment was when we parted at the Congolese border. We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. For me, it was like telling them: “We are leaving you behind to your fate.” The feeling that I abandoned my colleagues haunted me the whole way home and still does.
Why is there a war in this region?
The reasons for this conflict are well known: regional interference, illegal exploitation of Congo’s natural resources against a historical backdrop of ethnicity and colonization.
In 2013, after the Congolese army drove out the M23 fighters, the international community set up a legal and diplomatic framework to deal with this ongoing crisis: the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework Agreement in the DRC and the Region was signed in Addis Ababa, under the aegis of the United Nations and the African Union.
A resolution that was passed the same year at the UN Security Council strengthened this framework by developing a more proactive approach to addressing the root causes of the conflict. But more than a decade after the signing of the framework agreement, its implementation remains stalled and the region is sinking into chronic instability.
À lire aussi : Une centaine de groupes armés sème le chaos au Congo
Keeping in touch with colleagues
How could I leave colleagues who had become close friends in such a situation of insecurity and uncertainty and go about my business in Montréal as if nothing had happened?
I got back in touch with my colleagues from the Mukwege International Chair, my network at the Hygeia Observatory, the scientific committees of ICART and the Tumaini Project. We decided to form a collective of Professionals for Peace in the Great Lakes Region of Africa — scientists from different disciplines, universities and nations, citizens committed to peace and working closely with organizations in the eastern DRC — to advocate for peace and an end to hostilities in the eastern DRC. This is what we are doing:
1) A petition to protect the Panzi General Reference Hospital and its staff who are threatened by attackers based on the story of the Lemera hospital massacre in 1996 ;
2) A call to action inviting decision makers to take action to stop the hostilities and implement the Addis Ababa Agreement;
3) A letter to the citizens of the world to encourage their decision-makers to play a role and make a difference ;
4) The planning of a series of conference debates to inform the public and get them to think about the situation of the Great Lakes and possible ways to achieve lasting peace there.
Finally, I have decided to send my colleagues in Bukavu daily WhatsApp messages at the beginning and end of each day encouraging them to carry on, not give up, keep their faith and their hope and continue to fight. Some are separated from their families between Goma, Bukavu and Bujumbura.
Others have to hide because of threats of with assassination. Still others have had to move on a long journey that leads them to camps for displaced persons or to neighbouring countries where they undergo endless interrogations.
We are in this together.
The Tumaini project in which Marie Hatem is involved in South Kivu is funded by Global Affairs Canada. However, those in charge recommend against traveling there if the situation becomes unstable. Travel there at your own risk.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
