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DR CONGO / LADSOUS
STORYLINE: DR CONGO / LADSOUS
TRT: 3.27
SOURCE: MONUSCO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: FRENCH / ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 11 SEPTEMBER 2012, GOMA, DRCONGO
11 SEPTEMBER 2012, GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
1. Med shot, Under-Secretary-General Hervé Ladsous disembarking from plane and greetings
2. Close shot, MONUSCO SRSG shaking hands
3. Pan right, arrival at MONUSCO HQ in Goma
4. Med shot, meeting with Governor of North Kivu and UN officials
5. Wide shot, banner
6. Various shots, banners
7. VOX-POP (French) male student:
"Our message we have here as the youth is that MONUSCO must protect Congolese civilians and restore peace and security. So we are appealing to MONUSCO that they must do this or leave."
8. VOX-POP (French) male student:
"MONUSCO’s mandate is too big, and they are efficient for nothing. So we ask that they reduce this mandate and only concentrate on the restoration of peace and then after that justice, demobilization, management etc can be left to us the Congolese youth."
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Hervé Ladsous, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations:
"Now clearly it is a very large and complex territory and I was given figures as to the amount of operational task they have done, probably not enough but that was the most and the best they could do.”
10. Various shots, demonstrators clashing with security guards as Ladsou’s convoy leave MONUSCO HQ compound
10 SEPTEMBER 2012, KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBIC OF THE CONGO
11. Wide shot, Ladsous taking seat at MONUSCO-hosted press conference
SOUNDBITE (English) Hervé Ladsous, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations:
“I think the concept needs to be fleshed out, and to be very precise, and this is what I suggested in particular to the Executive Secretary of the Great Lakes Conference, that they have to flesh it out, and by the way we are ready to help, if they find it useful, but I would not think that the Security Council would be in a position to make a determination based just on an idea.”
11 SEPTEMBER 2012, KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBIC OF THE CONGO
12. Wide shot, USG Ladsous, SRSG Meece and Babacar Gaye meeting and greeting President Kabila
13. SOUNDBITE (French) Hervé Ladsous, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations:
“The first objective is clearly to put an end to the enormous suffering of the population, this human tragedy that takes the form of massacres, rapes, mass displacements of people, of refugees. This I think is an essential priority. And beyond that, we must of course also find a way to resolve the root of this crisis and ensure that the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is fully respected.”
10 SEPTEMBER 2012, KINSHASA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBIC OF THE CONGO
14. Med shot, MONUSCO Honor Guard marching
15. Med Shot, Honor Guard standing
16. Various shots, Ladsous and Force Commander Prakesh arriving to be saluted by Honor Guard
The top UN peacekeeping official arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s restive eastern region today (11 September) amid demonstrations from Congolese youth demanding that the UN mission there restore peace and security to the civilian population.
The UN peacekeeping chief, Hervé Ladsous is on a six-day visit to the Great Lakes region and South Africa to discuss the situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), ahead of a high-level meeting on the situation to be convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York on 27 September.
In Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, the demonstrators, most of them students, demanded that UN should not allow a mooted ‘neutral regional force’ to be deployed in the DRC, claiming that the UN mission mandate is already too large to manage its operations.
Ladsous noted that the area in which the UN peacekeeping mission, known by its French acronym MONUSCO, operated was “a very large and complex territory”. He conceded that the operational tasks they had completed were “probably not enough but that was the most and the best they could do”.
The youth, wanting to deliver their messages to the Under-Secretary-General, clashed with security guards outside MONUSCO HQ compound.
At a press conference in DRC’s capital Kinshasa yesterday, Ladsous said the idea of a neutral regional force to address the crisis, put forward by the leaders of the 11-member International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), “needs to be fleshed out”. He said the Security Council, whose approval the Great Lakes Conference would be seeking, could not “make a determination based just on an idea.”
This morning, Ladous also met with the President of the DRC, Joseph Kabila. Speaking in Kinshasa afterwards, he said the first priority was to “put an end to the enormous suffering of the population, this human tragedy that takes the form of massacres, rapes, mass displacements”, and to “find a way to resolve the root of this crisis and ensure that the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is fully respected.”
Eastern DRC – particularly its provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu – has been plagued by violence over the past few months. One of the key actors is the M23, made up of renegade soldiers from the DRC's national army.
The M23 has clashed with national army troops, which have been supported by peacekeepers from the UN Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), and has caused massive displacement of local residents, in addition to raising concerns about the region's stability.
The fighting has uprooted nearly half a million people over the past months, including more than 226,000 people in North Kivu province, 200,000 in South Kivu province, and more than 57,000 who have fled to neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this weekend renewed his condemnation of the M23's activities, and called for an end to the external support reportedly received by the armed groups.
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