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19 Security & Hum. Rts 45 (2008)
Human Security from Below, a Case Study from the Ituri District, Democratic Republic of Congo

handle is hein.journals/helsnk19 and id is 51 raw text is: Human security from below, a case study from the Ituri district, Democratic Republic of Congo Joost van Puijenbroek Introduction The district of Ituri is characterized by the existence of many different ethnic groups, enormous natural wealth and a great number of conflicts (partly as a result of this). Since the last conflict broke out in 2003, a relative stability has been restored, but the security situation is still fragile. The army and police are currently the main Human Rights abusers and there are still residual militia groups which are active. Distrust between the population and the state security agencies is profound. The capacity of the police to assure security is both qualitatively and quantitatively far below what is needed. In this light, several bottom-up approaches to human security can be identified, each with the goal of assuring a certain level of security in the communities and creating an interface between the population and authorities and security agents. These approaches will be discussed in this article. Geographic, social and historic background The Ituri district2 is situated in the North East of the Democratic Republic of Congo, bordering Uganda and, in the extreme northern part, Sudan. The district has a surface of 65,658 square kilometers which is about twice the land surface of the Netherlands. In total the district has around 4 million inhabitants who are very unevenly spread over the district. The district is composed of five territories: Aru, Mahagi, Djugu, Irumu and Mambasa. Population density in Mahagi, Djugu and Irumu varies from 100 to sometimes even 500 inhabitants per square kilometer. Mambasa is half the surface of Ituri, but is extremely sparsely populated and consists mostly of tropical forest. The capital of the district is the city of Bunia. All ethnic family groups (bantou, Sudanese, pygmee, nilotic) are present in Ituri. The Lugbara and Kakwa in Am are Sudanese, the Alur (Mahagi) and the Hema (Irumu and Djugu) nilotic, while the Lendu and others are bantou. In Mambasa the majority of the population are pygmee. During the past hundred years, cycles of conflict occurred between the Hema and Lendu in the territories of Irumu and Djugu. The socio-political organization of these groups differs profoundly. Joost van Puijenbroek is programme leader for IKV Pax Christi the Great Lakes Region. In his work he especially focuses on the Ituri region where he manages a community-based peace building programme with a significant security aspect. The present article is based on the experiences from that programme over the past few years. 2 With the new constitution the district of Ituri is to become a province. As local elections have not yet taken place and the provincial assembly is not yet in place, here we still use the term district.

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