APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 56 56 AFRICA PEACE AND CONFLICT JOURNAL shady contracts. Protection of local workers’ rights and the environment by the mining and logging companies should also be an important element of this reform process. These huge, demanding, and critical tasks cannot be left solely to politicians or the government. DR Congo civil society has a role to play in governance and institutional reform, but it must also sensitize and mobilize the grassroots and suggest effective ways of dealing with the country’s problems. To do so, it must assert and ensure its independence from state authority, because part of its duty is to critically examine government actions and create a critical mass of involvement among the citizenry. At the same time, the support of the international community is greatly needed in terms of financial investment and technical assistance. The cancellation of DR Congo’s external debt in 2010 and the $8.5 billion agreement between the DR Congo and China involving mineral resources and development assistance are good examples of how the international community can help with large, well-targeted investment as part of the process of building new social infrastructures and addressing human needs. The government could also be assisted in tackling the county’s problems through improved diplomatic relations with neighboring countries, ensuring financial and technical support for mining law reform and implementation, and preventing individuals, countries, and multinationals from pillaging Congo resources. Justice and Reconciliation Commission A regional, or national three-year-long healing program should be developed to help sustain peace and democracy and promote social reconciliation. It would involve a commission with more authority than the parameters of the previous, failed truth and reconciliation commission (Commission Verité et Reconciliation, 2004–2006) and the Goma conference (January 2008) and its subsequent unfruitful Amani (peace) action program (2009).59 The proposed commission should follow along the lines of the 1990s Congolese Sovereign National Conference, but be de-politicized and de-centralized. The success of any reconciliation and national healing model depends on the extent to which it includes and consults with all the major stakeholders at every level of society. The commission should first create space for Congolese local populations (as opposed to politicians) to discuss what has happened, address past traumatic experiences, and resurrect a common humanity. The second aim of the commission should be justice. The central questions are What and who needs reconciliation and healing? While perpetrators and victims and survivors will have different answers, reconciliation and healing should address the most obvious human rights abuses and the root causes of the conflict, focusing on land rights, property rights, and civil and political rights. Related to this issue is whether reconciliation and healing based on restorative justice—conditional amnesty versus blanket amnesty—is the best way to address 59. The Goma conference was organized to address the root causes of the persistence of violence in the east. The Amani program was then supposed to start the healing process and rebuild destroyed areas. Instead, the process appears to have been political theatre and a distraction. Most of the Amani program objectives were not achieved.