There is a hot market for coffins on thetreets of Goma - a Congolese city on the shore of Lake Kivu and a stone's throw away from the Rwandese border. Coffins can be bought in different colours and sizes (the baby-sized ones are selling particularly well in this malaria-ridden city) and are testimony to the fact that people are dying in the Kivu provinces in DR Congo. In fact, IRC estimated the excess death toll (an obscure way of measuring how many people would not have died wasn't it for the war in the region) to be at 4.6 million in the five eastern-most regions between 1998 and 2007 (IRC 2007). Armed conflict has escalated in East Congo since the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the fall of Mobutu in 1996. With collapsed diplomatic relations between national leaders, illegal mineral trade and the armed militias such as the FDLR making the prospect of short-term peace look dim, civilians are worst-hit victims of this tragic war. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this crisis is the widespread use of sexual violence by armed groups, which has resulted in at hundreds of thousands of women becoming rape survivors.

At the same time, the coffin market is a symbol of how busy the churches must be in this country. Where people die at such a dreadful pace, people are getting used to the funeral ritual. In the Kivu provinces, Catholic and Protestant churches are omnipresent, and they can be found in villages where neither the frail and corrupt Congolese state nor the weakly developed civil society organisations have much of a presence. Churches run health centres and schools, and by so doing they are performing many of the functions which the Western mind would assume to be the task of the state or civil society.

The role of the churches is indeed an interesting one, and one which is the subject of the ongoing research project at NIBR (in collaboration with Centre for Intercultural Communication (SIK) in Stavanger). Through fieldwork in DR Congo in 2009 and 2010 we are examining the role churches play in peace-building processes in the region. Interestingly, some of the most proactive voices in calling for peace and reconciliation in East Congo have come from the churches, and several regional summits between religious and political leaders have been held during the last decade. Some observers have asked whether there is hope to be found in the willingness of church leaders from DR Congo to talk to their peers in Rwanda, Burundi and other countries in the region when the dialogue between military and political leaders have broken down (van Leeuwen 2008)?

Potentially, the churches' presence from the village level, via provincial and national secretariats, to cross-border regional forums could give them a unique opportunity to encourage reintegration and reconciliation across several geographical scales. Given these ambitious aims, the objective of the research project is to examine whether these churches are able to exert any actual influence through their peace initiatives. Of particular interest to us is the role of women in these peace activities. As women are the main victims in the conflict, they must be an integral part of its solution - an insight which has been recognised by the United Nations' Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820. While the church leaders have been outspoken critics against sexual violence in the region, their willingness to deal with this difficult issue must also be manifested in their village activities on the ground. Protestant and Catholic churches in the Kivus inhibit some contradictions with respect to women, as they are patriarchical structures which at the same time have managed to generate some success stories of women leadership and mobilisation.

The research project Religious civil society networks in the Great Lakes region as partners in peace-building processes and in the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security takes place amidst this contradiction of empowerment and suppression. Berit Aasen (NIBR) is the project manager, with David Jordhus-Lier (NIBR) and Ellen Vea Rosnes (SIK) being the principal researchers. It is funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affair's Section for Peace and Reconciliation with 1.18 million over the course of 2009 and 2010.

References

IRC (2007). Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: An ongoing crisis, International Rescue Committee: 1-26.

van Leeuwen, M. (2008). "Imagining the Great Lakes Region: discourses and practices of civil society approaches for peacebuilding in Rwanda, Burundi and DR Congo." Journal of Modern African Studies 46(3): 393-426.