Core area: Promoting peace and participation Strengthening resilience, fostering dialogue and reconciliation, preventing new conflicts

The DR Congo is facing enormous political, social and economic challenges. This is especially apparent in the eastern provinces, such as North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri. Recurring violent conflicts have not only claimed countless lives in these provinces; they are also still causing the displacement of millions of people, most of them women and children. Public institutions are often too weak and not present enough or too riddled with corruption to fulfil their basic tasks – such as ensuring security, enforcing the laws of the country or delivering functioning infrastructure for education, health and water supply. Women and children are particularly affected, often facing extensive sexual and gender-based violence with scarcely any mechanisms in place to protect them. Sexual and gender-based violence are routinely deployed as weapons in the conflict regions – by a range of different players and with devastating consequences for the civilian population. This is one focus of German development cooperation measures, which seek to support activities aimed at preventing sexual violence and addressing the issue of sexual violence, supporting active civil society on the ground, and also raising awareness and working with state structures so that they will fulfil their duty to protect and end the situation of impunity.

At the same time, poverty, unemployment and the unequal distribution of power all serve to exacerbate the precarious situation. The abundance of raw materials brings little or no benefit for vast swathes of the population; instead the commodities sector is closely associated with mismanagement, illicit financial flows and economies of violence. The severe repercussions for the local population are not just economic but also social and political. This situation weakens trust in state structures over the long term and endangers social cohesion.