Paper short abstract:

This paper offers entry points through which armed group actors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo can be considered in political settlements, and argues that post-conflict political settlements which do not include such groups are likely to fail to be effective.

Paper long abstract:

Despite more than a decade of democracy-promotion and peacebuilding in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu contain more than 70 armed groups. While reasons for the failure to prevent violence are numerous, emerging research has shown that often peacebuilding interventions in the region tend to focus on narrow technical goals, without appreciating the wider political context within which interventions take place, and the unintended consequences that these interventions themselves can have on conflict dynamics. The political settlements approach - focussing on the formal and informal negotiations, bargains, pacts and agreements made between elite actors - has gained increasing traction in developmental thinking in recent years. Indeed, a growing number of policymakers now subscribe to the idea that inclusive political settlements are required for positive developmental change. Yet, in the eastern DRC many armed groups are not considered to be among the elite actors worth negotiating with when trying to broker political settlements. As a result solutions to dealing with the armed group problem tend to be military rather than political. This paper considers the Congolese armed groups phenomenon through a political settlements lens, to try and understand these actors as both products of a wider political malaise, and as political actors in their own right. In doing so, the paper offers entry points through which armed group actors can be considered in political settlements, and argues that post-conflict political settlements which do not include such groups are likely to fail to be effective.