APCJ_1528_Win2010_00i_122_4 12/30/10 3:22 PM Page 51 Gaps in the Eastern Congo Peacebuilding Process 51 EMPIRICAL RESULTS: PEACEBUILDING, LOCAL TENSIONS, AND EDUCATION Despite efforts to reestablish state institutions, national unity, and organize elections, DR Congo has yet to overcome its security problem. The primary issues are the inability to address the root causes of the conflict; to integrate grass-root expectations into the peacebuilding process and foster understanding of conflict and peace at the local level; and to implement community-based psycho-social transformation and healing programs. The failure to address these issues is due in part to the prevailing peacebuilding process being based on an old and inappropriate school of thought, the management school, which focuses on the top leadership and macro level while ignoring the majority of the population and micro-level conflict transformation and relationships. The search for lasting peace in DR Congo would appear to require a paradigm shift from the management school to the transformation-oriented approach of peacebuilding, as the latter takes into account the fundamental questions of the root causes of violence and people’s relationships (conflict resolution school), the involvement of society as whole in peace work (complementary approach), and the integration of grass-root needs and understanding of conflict and peace via a critical consciousness process. With respect to the management school of peacebuilding, it was at a time appropriate for the United Nations, European Union, African Union, and other international actors to intervene to mobilize the top leadership involved in the conflict to help restore unity and build legitimate institutions through democratic elections. After having long focused on macro-level settlement and diplomatic and military interventions, however, attention should now be paid at the local, grass-root level.46 A desire for such an undertaking has empirical support in DR Congo based on fieldwork conducted from January through March 2010 among communities in Bukavu town and surrounding rural areas in South Kivu. The research sought, first, to determine whether there are connections among the prevalence of conflict, local tensions (over lands, identity, and resources), and understanding of conflict and peace in eastern Congo, and second, to evaluate the effects of neglecting local problems and understandings of conflict in achieving peace. In the first instance, respondents were asked about their personal understanding of peace. They were also asked their opinion on the root causes of the conflict in the region. This field experiment resulted in a strong positive correlation between local tensions and understanding of conflict and peace in eastern Congo (see Fig. 1). International diplomats and governmental actors involved in peacebuilding in Congo truly believe that diplomatic and military interventions can produce lasting peace. The view that peace is the absence of war or force and that the rule of law is a powerful tool in addressing conflict contrasts with perceptions of the local, eastern Congolese population. Among 306 respondents, 189 (61.4 percent) stated that peace, to them, is respect and promotion of human life. Thus, if a significant percentage of a local population perceives peace as respect and promotion of human life, then it is 46. For further development of this argument, see Pyana Mwamba Symphorien, ‘Beyond pacifism from outside and power-mediation: The challenge of peacebuilding and social reconciliation in DR Congo’, Hekima Review, 41 (2009), 132–43.