<p>In 1994, extremist Hutu rebels crossed into the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo), then named Zaire, after committing genocide in their native Rwanda. Their violent presence destabilized the region and led to two wars in the Congo between 1996 to 2003 and continued violence that still plagues parts of the east, while instability remains widespread. For more than a decade, the conflict has seen civilians trapped in the middle and specifically, women and girls have found themselves under brutal attack as fighting factions employ sexual violence as a weapon in their battles. </p> <p>The widespread, systematic and vicious sexual violence against women and girls in the Congo is being perpetrated to serve a political purpose beyond individual objectives. Sexual violence has become an effective weapon used by the fighting forces as they compete for economic and political power through the control over land, resources, and the people that occupy the territory they seek. All women find themselves under attack, especially in the conflict-ridden east. All groups, including rebel forces and state agents such as the military and police, utilize sexual violence as a tool of destruction and terror against both the females they attack and the communities ripped apart by the stigma that accompanies the womens rapes. </p> <p>An examination of the specific reasons the groups commit strategic and systematic sexual assaults against women and girls, and of the contributing political and societal factors that create a climate where the abuse can occur without recourse, help to provide an understanding as to why sexual violence is being used as a political tool in the Congo. In addition, the ongoing political struggles, especially surrounding control over land, are rooted in a century of shifting political policies by divisive, oppressive and kleptocratic leadership that worked for themselves and left little for the population. It is this history that has led to an almost inevitable conflict that sees the destruction of women and girls through rape and other violent assaults on their being.</p>

<p>In 1994, extremist Hutu rebels crossed into the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo), then named Zaire, after committing genocide in their native Rwanda. Their violent presence destabilized the region and led to two wars in the Congo between 1996 to 2003 and continued violence that still plagues parts of the east, while instability remains widespread. For more than a decade, the conflict has seen civilians trapped in the middle and specifically, women and girls have found themselves under brutal attack as fighting factions employ sexual violence as a weapon in their battles. </p> <p>The widespread, systematic and vicious sexual violence against women and girls in the Congo is being perpetrated to serve a political purpose beyond individual objectives. Sexual violence has become an effective weapon used by the fighting forces as they compete for economic and political power through the control over land, resources, and the people that occupy the territory they seek. All women find themselves under attack, especially in the conflict-ridden east. All groups, including rebel forces and state agents such as the military and police, utilize sexual violence as a tool of destruction and terror against both the females they attack and the communities ripped apart by the stigma that accompanies the womens rapes. </p> <p>An examination of the specific reasons the groups commit strategic and systematic sexual assaults against women and girls, and of the contributing political and societal factors that create a climate where the abuse can occur without recourse, help to provide an understanding as to why sexual violence is being used as a political tool in the Congo. In addition, the ongoing political struggles, especially surrounding control over land, are rooted in a century of shifting political policies by divisive, oppressive and kleptocratic leadership that worked for themselves and left little for the population. It is this history that has led to an almost inevitable conflict that sees the destruction of women and girls through rape and other violent assaults on their being.</p>

Recent years have seen an increasing emphasis on local ownership in UN peacebuilding. Advocates of local ownership assert that it boosts the legitimacy and sustainability of UN peacebuilding by helping to preserve the principles of self- determination and non-imposition of externally-conceived solutions onto post-conflict countries in an activity that can contravene them. However, while the UN perceives local ownership as enabling it to act in accordance with these principles, it also perceives local ownership to imperil the achievement of its operational goals, thus bringing its normative and operational objectives into conflict. This thesis evaluates the UN’s discourse, understandings, and operationalizations of local ownership in peacebuilding. Drawing on examples from the UN peace operation in DR Congo, it shows that despite the UN’s regular invocation of local ownership discourse, it operationalizes ownership in restrictive and selective ways that are intended to protect the achievement of operational goals but that consequently limit self-determination and increase external imposition on the host country. This gap between the rhetoric and reality of ownership suggests that the UN uses local ownership primarily as a discursive tool for legitimation, one intended to reconcile the organization’s normative and operational imperatives. However, because its actions do not match its rhetoric, the UN’s attempts to generate legitimacy through discourse appear to fall flat, particularly in the eyes of local actors. Moreover, because of contradictions in the ways that the UN operationalizes local ownership, it not only deepens the curtailment of self-determination and the degree of external imposition, it also undercuts its ability to realize the very operational goals it is trying to protect. Ultimately, because it is a contradictory and contested concept, local ownership fails to eliminate or ‘fix’ the trade-offs the UN faces in peacebuilding, suggesting that the UN must instead accept them and incorporate them into its goals and expectations.