Evaluation of the Closing Event held in DRC

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Evaluation of the Closing Event of the Third International Action of the World March of Women in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo

This document is the result of an evaluation carried out by the WMW International Committee and the International Secretariat between November and December 2010. The evaluation is supplemented by documents sent prior to the Closing Event: the debate text “The World March of Women and the Closing Event of the 3rd International Action in the DRC” and the “Women for Peace Manifesto”; as well as the relevant parts of reports from the International Committee meetings in Bukavu (prior to, from 9th -12th October, and after the Event, on the 18th October), which related to mobilization, program, communication, and evaluation; and the Newsletter “The March In Action” No.7. This evaluation is organized in six parts:
-    A first look at our achievements;
-    Challenges in organizing a large-scale event in a country in conflict;
-    The relationship between local, national, and international dynamics;
-    The relationship between movements, political parties, governments, the United Nations, and large international NGOs;
-    Logistical lessons and challenges;
-    Follow-up. 
 
A first look at our achievements

The Closing Event of the Third International Action took place in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, from the 13th to 17th October, and consisted of a series of activities: panels on the WMW’s four Action Areas; a solidarity visit to Mwenga with the inauguration of a memorial; a day of exchanging experiences between the WMW from different regions of the world and Congolese women; a food sovereignty and artistic fair; tree planting; and a Women’s March for Peace.
The WMW international delegation was made up of 144 women from 40 countries from the 5 regions of the world. Along with delegations organized by allied movements, we were more than 220 women from 41 countries, the majority from African countries. The largest delegations were from Burundi and Kenya, followed by the European delegation, made up of 10 countries. The Congolese Diaspora was present in the Belgian, French, and English delegations. The delegation from the Americas was the smallest, made up of 5 countries, while Asia was represented by an IC member from Pakistan, and the Arab World by a Palestinian sister.
The mobilizing of such a large number of international delegates for an action in a country that is considered to ‘post-conflict’ is the first achievement of the Closing Event. The trip to Bukavu was very expensive for the WMW’s National Coordinating Bodies / Participating Groups, and it was due to a lack of financial resources that we ‘lost’ a number of delegates who were registered to participate, such as from Bangladesh and India. The stories of violence and risks in the DRC with which we are bombarded all the time by the commercial media and even by people from the humanitarian agencies contributed to creating a sense of insecurity. Some sisters and interpreters preferred not to go, but many others overcame their fear and travelled to Bukavu to show their solidarity with the DRC women, to listen to their stories, and to share their experiences.
The fact that the international delegations were well organized is another achievement. This facilitated the work of the IS. We think particularly of the Kenyan and Burundian caravans, whose mobilization and participation are other important achievements, especially the sisters from Kenya who traveled by bus for more than two days each way. As part of their preparation, they organized a large process of information-sharing, fundraising and lobbying that supported grassroots women, many of them indigenous women, in the achievement of personal goals – seemingly simple, but of huge importance to them – such as receiving identity documents necessary for requesting a passport.
Solidarity with women who live in conflict areas was also felt / demonstrated in the simultaneous actions organized by 10 WMW National Coordinating Bodies (NCBs), in dates close to the dates of the Bukavu Event. In some countries, actions took place in more than one city.
The Closing Event of the WMW 3rd International Action was also a huge mobilization success in the DRC. There, our sisters spoke of  “engoument” – the World March of Women ‘fever’ – which all women wanted to feel a part of. The numbers say it all: on the 9th September, the last day for national registration, there were already 995 women registered, representing all 11 DRC provinces. Remembering that at the beginning of Event preparations we imagined an event for 500 people...
Finally, all 3.000 registration cards that were printed were used, and so we estimate that 3.000 people, the majority of whom were women, participated in the panels and other activities that took place in the Ateneo Ibanda (13th – 16th October). This includes 250 registered journalists, a combination of national press and international correspondents. We also estimate that 1.000 people participated in the visit to Mwenga, as well as around 2.000 local people who joined the visitors. Furthermore, an estimated 20.000 women (and men), from diverse political currents and social sectors, participated in the Women’s March for Peace on the 17th October, which concluded the Closing Event of the 3rd International Action.
Another visible achievement is the large participation of Congolese women in the various debates that took place. During the panels, many women denounced their horrendous experiences, as well as naming the perpetrators of violence against women and the interests behind this violence. During the day reserved for the exchanging of experiences (16th October), women from different ethnicities spoke in their local languages. This shows us that the women felt that they were in a safe space which gave them the confidence to express themselves or even to disagree with us.
The panels were also opportunities to present the vision of WMW with regard to our Action Areas, combining our analyses and experiences. Furthermore, they were moments to repeat over and over that the March is a permanent movement and that our strength comes from the self-organization of grassroots women. The fact that, during both the panels and the sharing of experiences on the 16th, many Congolese women repeated our analyses and connected them to their own concrete experiences, permits us to confirm another of the Closing Event’s achievements: the WMW became a much better known as a movement. A strong affirmation of the understanding of WMW as a movement is the fact that DRC women no longer accept being considered victims, but rather seek to affirm themselves ever more as protagonists in the struggle against the causes of violence.
Another achievement of the Event was the support we received from allied movements and organizations, such as CADTM (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt), the Belgian Peace and Solidarity Caravan, CECI (Center for International Studies and Cooperation in Canada), ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) and WILPF (Women's International League for Peace and Freedom), all of which had their own delegations who joined our activities. Their presence was important to us, not only because of their participation and political contributions, but also for the trust that they demonstrated in our organizational capacity.
In relation to the DRC government, the women from the country believe that they are now in a better position to present their demands and to negotiate. For example, in preparation of our visit to Mwenga, the organization “Regroupement des femmes Rega de Mwenga” held a meeting on the 13th September 2010 to present the DRC Prime Minister with a series of demands related to the massacre of women who were buried alive there. Our Event permitted the dissemination of the demand for a special international tribunal to address these crimes (which were committed prior to 2002 by perpetrators who, because of signed peace agreements, it is not possible to bring to trial). The visit to Mwenga with a stop in Kasika on the way, in addition to being very well attended, received good coverage from national and international press, which helped to bring these events back to public attention and to support the demand for justice, in addition to denouncing current insecurity in the area.
Finally, the Event resulted in permanent benefits for the cities of Bukavu and Mwenga. Some examples: several streets in Bukavu and the access road to the Ateneo Ibanda were leveled and paved; the Ateneo Ibanda, a primary and secondary school with 7.325 students, was painted, the bathrooms were renovated and new ones were built; the access road to Mwenga and the streets in the community were leveled; construction began on two multi-functional centers for women, one in Bukavu and another in Mwenga.
All of these achievements give us the courage to reflect on our weaknesses and the challenges that we faced in the DRC. This Event demanded a large dose of audacity but at the same time, it expressed our level of maturity as an international feminist movement and the accumulation of our 12 years of collective history.

Challenges in organizing a large-scale event in a country in conflict

The current global context is marked by growing militarization and repression of social and political activism. In April 2010, paramilitaries attacked an international caravan that was taking humanitarian aid to the Autonomous Community of Triqui in Mexico, murdering a widely respected activist for indigenous women’s rights, Bety Cariño, and the Finnish activist Tyri Jaakola. At the end of May 2010, the Israeli government attacked the Freedom Flotilla, in which more than 700 activists participated, resulting in the deaths of 10 of them. These events heightened the atmosphere of fear around our Event.
The WMW’s experience in organizing activities in countries in conflict is restricted to some NCBs, some activists, or in the participation in counter-summits organized by the anti-globalization movement, when the territory surrounding official conferences is militarized. However, these experiences are fragmented and are not consolidated within our movement. For us at the IS, it was important to have been part of the organization of the Gathering of Women and Peoples of the Americas against Militarization in Colombia in August 2010. Safety is also a huge and complicated issue in Colombia and the narratives about risk provoke more fear. During this Gathering we learnt from the experiences of our sisters from the Women Against War and for Peace social movement in relation to how we should act in context of open conflict.
Security was the first and permanent challenge that we faced. DRC is presented as a post-conflict country, but we all know about the continued presence of armed groups in the country’s rural areas and about the brutal violence suffered by local people. Therefore we had to be careful about where we could go, or not go, and how to get there. In this context, it is difficult to define the limit between caution and paranoia. Some European governments sent letters to national delegates stating that they would not be responsible for their safety in the country and in the South Kivu region. Furthermore, Congolese airlines are blacklisted in security rankings, and an accident in which several people died took place in the country at the end of August.
In a similar to Colombia, there are real risks and there are fears that are hyped up by stories, like those that affirm that traveling to Congo is only for the courageous who love adventure, or for those who are irresponsible. Additionally, it is normal when someone who is afraid and nervous demands more attention and care. In stressful situations, we are inclined to have greater difficulty in understanding and processing information. Trusting the information shared by our DRC sisters and transmitting that trust to the international delegates was a daily political task. For the IS, it was important to be able to constantly fall back on the unanimous decision taken at the VII International Meeting as well as very our very close contact with the DRC sisters and with the International Committee, especially in Africa.
The safety of international delegates was one of the items on the agenda at the meeting that was held between WMW members in the DRC, the IS, and the IC with the DRC Minister for Gender, Family and Children in April 2010. At that time, the Minister confirmed the government’s commitment, guaranteed by a decision taken at an inter-ministerial meeting. MONUSCO also sought out the DRC women to address this issue, especially in relation to the visit to Mwenga on the 16th October. We decided that our dialogue would be with the DRC government, and that the decision of whether or not to request MONUSCO’s support would be up to them. Security during the visit to Mwenga was carried out by the Congolese army and police and by MONUSCO. However, from our point of view, the women who walked for several days from their homes in order to line the road from Bukavu to Mwenga were also there for our safety.
Security is a permanent issue in the DRC. A few weeks before the Bukavu activities started, a key WMW activist in Kinshasa was unfortunately and coincidentally standing near a man who threw a rock at the presidential party passing by in the streets. Many people who were in the surrounding area were arrested and remained in jail for almost a week. The man who threw the rock died in jail. During the time she spent in prison, the safety of our sister was our biggest worry and we decided to urge several governments and the recently created agency UN Women to demand that the DRC government release her. This situation placed us in a position of negotiating with government representatives over and above the negotiations in relation to the Bukavu Event, and explains the reading of Michele Bachelet’s message at the opening ceremony.
We perceived many other ways in which the conflict manifests itself in daily life and its impacts on the organization of our activity. One visible aspect was the precariousness of the communication and transport infrastructures. However, there are more subtle forms of social relations that made us more dependent on our DRC sisters, or even on the government “protocol” for getting around the country.

The relationship between local, national, and international dynamics

One of the WMW’s characteristics is to allow and encourage a large of autonomy for National Coordinating Bodies, always in reference to the general parameters agreed to at the International Meetings. During international activities, our first goal is to strengthen organizational processes nationally and in the region. This means that the different international activities that the WMW organizes, or participates in, reflect different themes, methodologies, expressions, and political cultures. In each activity, there is necessarily a lengthy process of building agreements between the proposals and expectations of the international delegates and the proposals and expectations of the national and regional delegates.
In the past, the existence of a National Coordinating Body and its capacity for network and national engagement has been an important criteria for defining where to hold an international activity. This criteria ceased to be a priority when we decided to hold regional and international activities in countries in conflict. Even so, at the meeting of African delegates at the VII International Meeting when the proposal to hold the Closing Event of the 3rd International Action in Bukavu was approved, it was done so on the basis of a commitment from the three DRC delegates present at the Meeting to take action to create an NCB. At that time, and as it remained throughout the entire preparation of the Closing Event, there was no NCB in the DRC, but rather four key organizations: CAFED (Goma), COFAS (Bukavu), CONAFED (Kinshasa) and COCAFEM-GL (Coalition of organizations from DRC, Rwanda and Burundi).  In 2009, we attempted to start the process of constructing an NCB, but the costs of organizing a national gathering were very high and the DRC sisters were not able to raise the necessary funds, nor were we able to help them from the IS.
As an intermediary solution, it was decided that the work for preparation of the Closing would be divided among the 3 DRC organizations (CAFED, COFAS y CONAFED); they shared the responsibility for contacting the other national provinces and work towards a national gathering of different DRC groups to be held at the same time as the Closing Event. The sisters from the 3 organizations carried out intensive national mobilization, which was reflected in the representation of all national provinces at the Closing Event. A national meeting to formally convene the DRC NCB finally took place in Bukavu, after the Closing Event, on the 18th October, with the participation of 7 of the 11 provinces. However, the lack of a DRC NCB during the preparatory process weakened our position in relation to the national government (see details in the next section).
We could have compensated for the inexistence of an NCB through extensive international accompaniment. But we also faced financial limitations to this end. We established intense electronic communication and bi-monthly conference calls with our DRC sisters, but we were only able to be physically present in the country on two occasions.
We held a first preparatory workshop in Bukavu, in October 2009, with representatives of the four organizations (CAFED, COFAS, CONAFED, COCAFEM-GL) and three international participants (Miriam Nobre, Nana Aicha Cissé, Awa Ouedraogo). At this workshop, we made progress in defining the political objectives and proposals for activities. For example, at the time that the workshop took place, the withdrawal of MONUC was not being publicly debated, and one of the proposed objectives for the Event at the workshop was the MONUC’s progressive and concerted withdrawal. It was some months later that the DRC government would present a demand for the MONUC’s withdrawal, which was converted into MONUSCO in June 2010. It was also at this workshop that we agreed on the visit to Mwenga and the demand for a memorial, which would mean the re-remembering the tragic episode of the women who were buried alive, while the perpetrator of the crime continues to be a part of the Congolese army and benefits from the peace agreements that prevent any trials taking place regarding crimes prior to 2002. This workshop was also important for the creation of a way of working together collectively. In her evaluation, a sister from COFAS said that she thought we would come to tell them what they should do, and she was surprised that they would have to think through so much and work so much.
In October 2009, we also met with our sisters from CAFOB in Bujumbura, Burundi, thereby establishing direct contact with them, which favored the presence of a delegation of 36 women from that country (the largest international WMW delegation). We did not go to Rwanda and we always had difficulties in achieving a direct and regular communication with the women from Pro-femme, the WMW’s reference organization in the country, which may have complicated the Rwandan presence in Bukavu.
In April 2010, we visited the DRC a second time, this time staying in Kinshasa, where Miriam Nobre and Nana Aicha Cissé met with the Gender Minister and local groups of women. The government’s logistical support and issues of security were the focus of this second visit.
Throughout the preparation of the Event, we perceived a huge interest from, and potential for the involvement of, groups from all over the country in the WMW. However, it was easier to incorporate DRC groups that already had some experience building relationships with international networks, as was the case of the women’s groups that participate in CADTM.
The Bukavu – Kinshasa dynamic was also a source of difficulties in organizing the Event. It is common in most countries that organizations based in the capital speak in the name of the country. Our decision to hold the Closing Event in Bukavu and not in Kinshasa created many challenges in relation to political relationships, infrastructure and logistics, but it also encouraged us to search for creative, more long-term solutions for the building of provincial <> capital relationships.
The multiple difficulties faced at the national level with regard to logistical preparations for the Event also had an impact on its political contents. While the panels were important moments to share the contents of our Action Areas, we didn’t manage to explore, along with our Congolese sisters, all of the potential for debating and sharing local/national experiences in different countries. One of the strongest points of the panels was the talk given by our Haitian sister Carole Jacob, with whose content DRC women strongly identified, particularly due to her critical analysis of the presence of the UNSMH (United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti).
Through a close look at women’s situations in South Kivu and Mwenga, our proposal was to establish connections with the experiences of women in other parts of the world and identify common points in the systems of oppression. However we did not manage to highlight this as the overall ‘idea’ of the Event, rather it ended up being more restricted to our expression of solidarity. One expression of this was the fact that some women from other countries, instead of speaking of their own similar experiences or relating them to those of the DRC women, used the moments for debate to offer to host the next WMW international action.
On the other hand, each one of the WMW delegates worked very hard in support of the 3rd International action in their own countries and probably arrived at the Closing Event with her own expectations, such as, for example, that this would be a moment to deepen debate around the Action’s political contents, our ways of demonstrating, etc. But the organizational reality of the WMW in the DRC, as well as of the current context of the women’s movement in the country, meant that the Event felt much more like the beginning (it was the first time that many women were in contact with our Action Areas and with the meaning of WMW as a permanent movement). This difference between expectations and reality generated frustrations that were processed in different ways by the WMW delegates. Our evaluation is that we should have better prepared the international delegation with regards to the national dynamics and political culture in DRC, to what they should expect, etc.

The relationship between movements, political parties, governments, the United Nations, and large international NGOs

One of the points of tension present from the beginning of the organization of the Event was the relationship between women’s groups and organizations taking the initiative in organizing the WMW in the DRC, and the women from the political parties, especially the public figures in these parties. The women from the parties were saying that if the March belongs to all women, then they want to be a part of it.
Within the March, we had already debated the issue of political parties at more than one International Meeting (the 3rd in Montreal in 2001, the 6th in Lima in 2006), and we came to the conclusion that it is not possible to have one common rule for all countries that excludes organizations of women from political parties. Everyone who wants to build the WMW as a permanent (feminist and anti-capitalist) movement is welcome, however it is important to be careful when women from political parties attempt to instrumentalize the March’s actions or to promote their party’s interests without a willingness to work through consensus-building. But it is not always the case that women affiliated to political parties act in this way, and each country – based on its experience and political culture – defines the participation of political parties (as participating groups, guests, without direct participation from the party, among other options).
In the DRC, this issue masked a harsher reality: the relationship between national and regional governments. When the national government decided to contribute to the Event, and especially from the moment when the First Lady decided – in September 2010 – to come to the opening ceremony, the “women of Kinshasa” began interfering in all issues (from the panel contents to the composition of the commissions). This took place without the WMW reference organizations having the necessary unity between them with regards to how to handle the problem.
The official inauguration ceremony (on the 13th) was emblematic of the situation. After the ceremony, everyone, including those who are part of government, was in agreement: the WMW was a guest at the opening of its own event. The authorities’ presence at our opening ceremony had already been discussed at the IC Cape Town meeting, with the presence of a representative from Bukavu. At that time, the IC members came to understand the concern of the DRC sisters that it would not be possible to inaugurate an activity of such relevance in the local political and cultural context without the presence of the authorities. But in the final stages of preparation, we were not strategic enough and we (virtually) turned over the coordination / organization of the opening ceremony to the government protocol, and therefore the Opening Ceremony was carried out according to governmental praxis and tradition. The question is: what ability did we have to do it differently?
At the Mwenga ceremony, some progress was made with regard to this issue: three women from the March spoke – from Mwenga, Bukavu, and an international representative – while three authorities also spoke, from the local, regional, and national levels. This improvement was negotiated at the last moment and the March’s position had the support of the Gender Minister.
In summary, the balance of forces between us as a movement and the DRC government was very precarious. Some factors made us more fragile: the lack of unity among our DRC organizations in relation to the government, the absence of prior experiences in which movements held a position of autonomy in relation to the government in the country, and the difficult political calculation of how far we could go without compromising the conditions for action of our sisters who would stay behind.
Regarding the DRC women, all of them assessed that there was progress regarding the relationship with the government and that this had been positive because it opens more possibilities to put forth their demands. We will have to check at a later time, what position they find themselves in during negotiations.
Our dependence on the government’s support to resolve the simplest things, like welcoming people at the airport or ensuring that each delegate arrived on time for their return flight was another of our weaknesses. Also the fact that we, as a movement, did not contribute financial resources for local infrastructure. With the exception of 4.000 Euros used for the local secretariat in Bukavu, all of the funds we raised from the IS were used to ensure the presence of a small international delegation and of interpreters.
This brings us to another issue: the relationship with international NGOs and even the fact that many don’t understand the difference between an international movement and a large international NGO. Our name, World March of Women, evokes a supposed access to large amounts of financial resources, and so government officials asked whether it made sense to provide funds for this Event when NGOs manage budgets that are often as large as those of local governments.
We are still working on a financial report that will bring together information about the funds raised in a decentralized way (IS, COFAS, CONAFED, CAFED, NCBs). However, overall, we can already conclude that we had difficulties in mobilizing resources from international NGOs for the Event. The majority of NGOs have an office in the DRC, many of them in Bukavu. If they contributed something to the Event, it was to guarantee the participation of their counterparts, rather than for the functioning and organization of the Event itself.
The relationship with the UN institutions (UNDP, MONUSCO) was completely managed by the Bukavu local committee, or by the national government. They supported us with part of the logistical structure, in air transport for national participants and in the transport and security to and from Mwenga. We did not allow the reading of MONUSCO’s public statement during our activities. But it is difficult to say that they weren’t visible, because they are very visible on a daily basis for the people of South Kivu. The reality is that it is very common for our DRC sisters to use MONUSCO planes to get around the country, which means a loss of autonomy for the movement, more dependence and the possibility to having to stay much longer in a place than was expected (because the flights do not have fixed dates / times), but that doesn’t prevent the women from criticizing MONUSCO’s actions. Respecting a decision made by the IC, the international delegation did not use the United Nations’ planes or the helicopters.
It is important that we continue to reflect on governments’ attempts to highjack our Event, because other countries’ governments show strong interest in the DRC, and the issue of violence against women is part of their permanent agendas.
Here are some examples: Just after our Closing Event, in the 1st week of November, the new US ambassador’s wife accompanied Eve Ensler – from the American NGO V-Day – in her visit to the Bukavu women's organizations that are supported by this NGO. At the end of October the Brazilian government gave U$1 million - via the UNDP High Commissioner's Office - in support of activities to strengthen justice and compensation mechanisms for sexual violence victims in the DRC. Bilateral commerce between Brazil and the DRC increased 20 fold between 2002 and 2009, rising from U$ 2.84 million to U$ 58.56 million.

Logistical lessons and challenges

During the preparation of the Closing Event, the IS permanent team consisted of 3 women working full time and one woman working part-time. In September, we hired two women for 45 days as temporary workers, one to create and update the international registration database and the other to research and produce materials, and to update the web site of the 3rd International Action.
During this preparation period, our life as a permanent movement continued. In May and June we were finalizing the evaluation of our strategic plan and the negotiations with partners for financial support for the next three years. In June, July and August, International Secretariat staff were involved in the preparation of the Colombian regional action, and also participated in regional editions of the World Social Forum.
In summary, we worked as a small and over-worked team. Our assessment is that we should have had more team meetings and shared more information. Alessandra from the IS was able to arrive in DRC on 19th September 2010, but it would have been better to have arrived sooner and have traveled more often to Bukavu to work with the local team on practical matters such as the registration database, visas, the organization of the work to be done and the office, among other issues.
In Bukavu, with the minimal resources that we sent from the IS, it was possible to pay part of the COFAS team’s salary, but it was not possible to hire additional staff. They worked with a large number of volunteers organized in several work committees. At first, there was a misunderstanding with regard to the fact that all work would be voluntary, which created an expectation for payment from those who got involved in the organization of the event. It would have been better to combine this voluntary work with some sort of paid work, especially for the coordinators of the registration and logistics commissions, who worked intensively over a long period, but it wasn’t easy to debate this issue and establish criteria for those who should get paid and those who would only receive financial help with transport and meals for the days of the Event.
Precarious communication infrastructure affected all of the work conducted in Bukavu by our sisters there and by the IS team. The electricity cuts, the overloaded telephone lines, the calls that couldn’t be completed, the slow and intermittent internet connection and the computer viruses: all of these are daily issues for our DRC sisters which we were able to experience first-hand when we arrived in Bukavu, as well as understanding that in order to maintain a constant flow of information, we had to be patient and persistent.
The division of responsibilities between the local, national and international was also not ideal. Our agreement was that all local logistics (the place, interpreting equipment, the reception of delegates) was the responsibility of the DRC WMW reference groups. On one hand, this produced good results, for example the decision to carry out the panels and the fair at the Ateneo Ibanda. The space was very suitable, the provincial government was able to install wireless internet and the structural improvements remain for the use of the Institute’s students. All the improvements were completed in a very short time, but this demanded a large political effort on the part of the Bukavu sisters. The provincial government changed hands in June 2010, which delayed the preparations further due to having to re-start the negotiations for support of our Event.
The lack of equipment for simultaneous interpretation was also a big problem. We recognize that giving the responsibility of finding equipment with cabins to the Bukavu sisters was a mistake. The lack of cabins prevented us from organizing the panels in five languages as had been planned (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Swahili), and it forced the volunteer interpreters to work intensively in far from ideal conditions. Added to this, we ‘lost’ three interpreters at a last minute (one who, for security reasons, was not able to come; the other two lost their connecting flights because of the strike in France).
At first, we were worried about guaranteeing housing and food for the international delegates as our responsibility as the IS and for the national delegates as the responsibility of the DRC WMW reference organizations. As we believed that the number of accommodations available in the city was insufficient, we suggested limiting the number of delegates coming from outside Bukavu. But the local committee organized a list of hotels and hostels in Bukavu, which helped us to understand that lodging wouldn’t be a huge problem. The international and national participants, mostly, were responsible for raising funds to cover their costs of accommodation or organizing it in a solidarity way (in house of family or friends).
For logistical and security reasons, we tried to lodge the WMW delegation in the same center, but in the end – because of availability of space and the number of delegates – we had to divide the delegation between two centers: AMANI and CAP. We tried to mix the delegates from different continents in the two centers, but the separation made it difficult for everyone to integrate and especially those who were lodged at the CAP felt isolated because they weren’t with the IS and the IC.
Attending to the demands of many more women than expected was a big challenge for the DRC sisters. To respond in part to this demand, the national government organized a free lunch at the Ateneo Ibanda at the last minute. The problem is that we had organized for the delegates to buy their food from local women’s groups so that they could benefit directly from these financial contributions. Although they did sell food and snacks, they ended up selling much smaller quantities than expected.
The food sovereignty fair and exhibition of products and crafts functioned better, the vendors were happy with the sales and the delegates took advantage of the fair as a space for exchange and relaxation.

Follow-Up

We identified the organization of information related to the event as an immediate follow-up task. We put together a first ‘clipping’, listing all the press coverage – printed material, radio, and television – and we are selecting and archiving photos and images (many of which are beautiful). We have to decide how to manage all of this information. We need to critically analyze the press coverage. It is curious how some WMW militants that were not in Bukavu and have followed the action only through the commercial/mainstream media  believed that our action had been recovered by the government, but  do not question the quality of the information  or the media coverage. We believe that a critical analysis of the coverage of the Bukavu Closing Event could stimulate a strategic debate about communication as a policy rather than a tool and how to put this into practice in the coming months. We still need to write our own history and our own evaluation. Finally, there is a large amount of work to be done in organizing all of this information and making it available on the www.mmm2010.info web site, which now becomes a virtual space for our International Action’s archives.
We know that many NCBs are organizing evaluation and reporting activities. We need to gather the contents of these debates and to consolidate analyses and evaluations of the International Action as a whole. Please therefore send us your NCB assessments.
We are also responsible for supporting the newly created DRC NCB. We plan to maintain close contact through conference calls, as well as to strengthen the connections between the DRC sisters and sisters from the region. More specifically, we need to follow up on contacts with the sisters from Burundi and Kenya, in addition to re-establishing connections with Rwanda (which might entail thinking about how the WMW is organized in the country).
Through permanent contact with our DRC sisters we can follow up on the infrastructure improvements that we achieved through the Closing Event: the improvements in the structural conditions at the Ibanda Ateneo, the promise of building a memorial and a multifunctional house for women in Mwenga and the continuity of the construction and operation of the multifunctional house in Bukavu. We also need to closely follow up on the impacts of the UNDP policy of building multifunctional houses for women in agreement with DRC government.
Along with the DRC sisters, we need to continue to improve the way we function as an alert network. During the panels, women denounced serious violence perpetrated with the participation, or omission of protection, of the Congolese army and MONUSCO. We hope that nothing more serious will come of this, but it is important for us to organize ourselves in advance in order to ensure the security of our sisters. It's possible that we would need to support them with activities in our countries, as well as showing our support through the strengthening of the WMW in the DRC. During the preparation of the event in Bukavu, resistance was manifested – sometimes very strongly – from certain politicians and even by a few sectors of civil society, in relation to the idea of the WMW as a movement, and to the self-organization of women.
We have to think about more concrete actions to put a stop to the kidnapping of women in the region’s rural areas. On the 30th October, 4 women and a young woman from Mwenga were kidnapped and held as sexual slaves during 7 days until the community paid a ransom fee in money and goods like food, a cell phone and matches. The DRC army took action but was not able to free the women.
Finally, during the preparation for the DRC Event, we suggested to NCBs that they could research information about the interests that their governments and national businesses have in activities in the DRC. We believe that this is another important follow up action: the monitoring and pressuring of our governments so that – either through their own initiatives or as part of multilateral institutions – they base their actions on the principles of respect for the DRC people’s sovereignty, and denounce initiatives that go against this.