تبحث هذه الورقة في ترتيبات الإدارة الأمنية "متعددة الطبقات" التي تم تطويرها في مقاطعة إيتوري المضطربة في شمال شرق جمهورية الكونغو الديمقراطية، حيث تؤثر أشكال مختلفة من انعدام الأمن على حياة الناس على أساس يومي. ويتناول التقرير بشكل أكثر تحديدًا الحوكمة الأمنية "المتعددة الطبقات" في بونيا، عاصمة إيتوري، التي تواجه مستوى عالٍ من جرائم العنف، وفي إقليم إيرومو. وترى الدراسة أنه في حين أن الدعم الدولي للجهات الأمنية غير الحكومية يمكن أن يساعد في تخفيف انعدام الأمن، إلا أنه لا ينبغي اعتباره "الحلقة المفقودة" في الإدارة الأمنية. يُنظر إلى إشراك الجهات الأمنية المحلية غير الحكومية في إدارة الأمن على أنه طريقة عملية لتحسين الظروف الأمنية، لكن القضايا التي تؤدي إلى انعدام الأمن في شمال شرق الكونغو معقدة للغاية وعميقة الجذور بحيث لا يمكن لمثل هذه الأساليب المحلية "من القاعدة إلى القمة" أن تحل بشكل كبير تغيير الوضع الراهن.

Current scholarly works in International Relations grew increasingly preoccupied over the effectiveness and programmatic failure of international assistance, especially with regard to issues pertaining to the ‘security–development’ nexus and the post-9/11 ‘securitization’ agenda. Complex Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programmes implemented worldwide since the late 1980s became a key component of international post-conflict intervention. With the extension of UN peacebuilding operations, DDR packages, which initially embraced short-term security goals in mere support of negotiated peace settlements, now entail significantly broader development objectives. Located at the interface of security and development approaches, DDR’s third phase, reintegration, has yielded limited outcomes despite growing efforts to implement long-term economic and social recovery activities. Using micro-level data derived from extensive fieldwork conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this article argues that the challenges encountered in implementing reintegration might originate from high politicization of programme outcomes and recurrent neglect of local programme recipients and the socio-economic context in which they evolve.

Contrary to dominant approaches that locate the causes for military entrepreneurialism in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo predominantly in criminal military elites, this article highlights the importance of the Congolese military’s (FARDC) civilian context for understanding military revenue-generation. It analyses how the latter is shaped by structures of domination, signification and legitimisation that drive and are driven by the FARDC’s governance, private protection and security practices. It argues that these practices contribute to bestowing a degree of legitimacy on both the FARDC’s position of power and some of its revenue-generation activities. Furthermore, by emphasising that the FARDC’s regulatory and protection practices are partly the product of popular demands and the routine actions of civilians, the article contends that the causes of military revenue-generation are co-located in the military’s civilian environment. In this manner, it offers a more nuanced conceptualisation of military entrepreneurialism,

The recent wars in the DR Congo have led to a marked upsurge in both elite and popular discourse and violence around belonging and exclusion, expressed through the vernacular of “autochthony.” Dangerously flexible in its politics, nervous and paranoid in its language, unmoored from geographic or ethno-cultural specificity, borrowing energy both from present conflicts and deep-seated mythologies of the past, the idea of autochthony has permitted comparatively localized instances of violence in the DRC to inscribe themselves upward into regional, and even continental logics, with dangerous implications for the future. This article analyzes how the “local”/“stranger” duality of autochthony/allochthony expresses itself in the DRC through rumors, political tracts, and speeches and how it draws energy from imprecise overlaps with other powerful, preexisting identity polarities at particular scales of identity and difference: local, provincial, national, regional. Across each, autochthony operates as a loose qualifier,