Discussion about entry: A Proven Model for Fighting Administrative Corruption in the Congo

Thanks Patrick. To fill in some of the information gaps, the most active CLATs continue to denounce corruption in ports, on waterways, and increasingly in remote terrestrial areas of the "catchment areas" they serve. Most of the early work of the CLATs targetted illegal activities along rivers and principal tributaries paralyzing both rural production and commerce. Now, the corruption that is addressed by CLATs has broadened considerably, and is not only related to illicit rents sought and gained, and physical shakedowns for money. Much of the watchdogging in provinces now involves apparent sexual assaults on women, acts of impunity by people in power in areas where their is no government internal oversight, particularly where the military is concerned. It also is increasingly addressing lack of transparency and collusion in the logging and mining sectors. AS the DRC is one of the workld's most well endowed countries from the perspective of mineral, water and forest resources, CLATs involvement in corruption and conflict in areas where mining and logging occur is of utmost relevance to the short- and medium term development prospects of the DRC.

Some CLATs have succeeded in getting soldiers who have committed rape, or been accused and proven of illegal beatings, thrown in jail and brought before the Congolese military tribunal. Recently CLATs from far eastern Equateur wrote to the presidency complaining of public administrative corruption and collusion with logging companies not respecting either the forest code or their agreements with communities for what constitutes sustainable logging practices in community forests where harvesting agreements had been negotiated.

USAID deserves the credit for this idea.

One of the ironies of development is in honestly saying that, it somehow denigrates that this was not a "bottom up" achievement. For those aware of the history of the DRC over the past 30 years, while there have been many small scale bottom up achievements in rural areas promoted by church groups in particular, along with womens and producer groups, all a function of state negligence obligating the grassroots to operate for its own survival, creating a movement to combat culturally condoned and perpetuated corruption was not one of these achievements. USAID had a good idea, they created what is known as an Annual Program Statement which is a procurement mechanism enabling submittors to be as creative as they wish in response to a problem or issue. The response we crafted was out best effort to address what we perceived to be the most serious constraint to development in the DRC.

On the question of sustainability, as I said in the submission, we are trying now to enable CLATs to obtain the analytical and negotiation skills to sustain activities within the context of decentralized governance opportunities that the new Constitution to the DRC enableas.

For the time being, donors and private investors remain hesitant to invest in the DRC for numerous reasons, corruption and lack of transparency being high up on the list. IRM feels that the groups we have been working with are receiving basic, yet strong skills, to enable them to sustain their activities. At some point however, outside interests will need to invest in them, if watchdogging and progressively, participation in decentralized governance at territorial and sectoral levels is to occur. Will CLATs be perceived by potential external partners as interesting loci to invest in? Who can be sure but if it were me looking at the rural Congolese landscape, I might bet on a good number of these CLATs prior to wagering on other entitites operating on different codes of ethics and action plans.

AS of now, USAID plans to end suport to CLATs on September 30, 2007. A new set of USAID program priorities is emerging. A new competitve bidding process is being formulated. We continue on our own to seek out other potential partners to enable CLATs to surpass the critical threshold at which capacities have been strengthened to the point where CLAT programming can become sustinable. In the case of approximately 50 of the more prominent CLATs, we are not too far away from crossing this threshold.