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The United States government should step up efforts to protect civilians in central Africa from abuses by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a coalition of 39 human rights and humanitarian organizations said today. The organizations urged the Obama administration to appoint a special envoy for the African Great Lakes region with a mandate extending to LRA-affected areas, to support stronger United Nations peacekeeping and to intensify efforts to arrest three LRA leaders being sought by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
May 24 is the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama's signing into law the bipartisan LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, the most widely supported, Africa-specific legislation in recent US history, which committed the US to help civilians in central Africa threatened by the LRA. The US government published its strategy for action against the LRA in November 2010 and outlined four primary goals: apprehending or removing the group's top leaders, protecting civilians from LRA attacks, encouraging escape and defection from the LRA, and providing humanitarian assistance to affected communities. Since then, the US has primarily focused its strategy on providing enhanced logistical and intelligence support for Ugandan-led military operations against the LRA, which the US had already been supporting since 2008.
"Congress gave the Obama administration an unprecedented mandate to end LRA atrocities and help affected communities recover," said Michael Poffenberger, executive director of Resolve. "The administration has improved some of its efforts, but, by and large, has failed to strengthen civilian protection or apprehend the LRA's top leaders."
The adoption of the US legislation on the LRA gave hope to terrorized communities across central Africa who felt abandoned and forgotten, the organizations said. The governments of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Southern Sudan - countries where the group is currently active - have not shown sufficient capability or resolve to protect civilians adequately from LRA abuses. UN peacekeepers, meanwhile, are too few in numbers and have little capacity or will to protect civilians beyond the borders of their bases.
"Many of us believed that President Obama's commitment to addressing the LRA threat would finally help stop our suffering," said Abbe Benoit Kinalegu of the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in Dungu, Haut Uele, Congo. "Yet one year later, we continue to live in fear as the LRA's attacks have shown no signs of decreasing."
Continued Threat to Civilians and Regional Stability
Since September 2008, the LRA has killed nearly 2,400 civilians and abducted about 3,400 others, according to Human Rights Watch and UN documentation. These atrocities are continuing in northern Democratic Republic of Congo, eastern Central African Republic, and Southern Sudan. In the first four months of 2011, the LRA carried out at least 120 attacks, killing 81 civilians and abducting 193, many of them children. 97 of these attacks were in Congo, representing nearly half the total number of attacks reported in 2010. More than 38,000 Congolese civilians were newly displaced in 2011 due to LRA attacks, adding to the hundreds of thousands in the region who had already fled their homes. LRA attacks are also undermining international investments in peace and stability in Southern Sudan, ahead of its independence in July 2011.
The LRA, which originated in Uganda, has carried out a brutal campaign of killings, rapes, mutilations, and mass abductions of children for 25 years. Three LRA leaders - Joseph Kony, Okot Odhiambo, and Dominic Ongwen - are sought by the ICC under arrest warrants issued in July 2005 for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in northern Uganda. All three remain at large and have been implicated in new atrocities since the arrest warrants were issued.
The LRA spreads more panic and fear with each attack, devastating livelihoods and forcing whole communities to flee. In the past few months, groups of over 20 well-armed LRA combatants, together with dozens of abducted children pressed into LRA service as combatants or porters, have attacked town centers in northern Congo. They have also begun attacking Congolese army bases, diverging from their usual strategy of choosing civilian "soft targets."
Accounts from people abducted by the LRA who recently managed to escape show that the LRA command structure remains intact. Scattered LRA groups are communicating with each other, and the rebels are continuing to abduct and train new fighters.
Need for Expanded Efforts to Implement LRA Strategy
The United States has been by far the most active government outside central Africa in addressing the LRA. But better coordination and more dedicated resources from the United States could produce significant improvements, the organizations said.
Specifically, the organizations called on the United States to appoint a special envoy for the African Great Lakes region, with a mandate extending to the LRA-affected regions of central Africa and reporting directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. If given sufficient resources and experienced staff to coordinate efforts in all countries involved and across different agencies of the government, such an envoy could help ensure that the United States is properly equipped to deal with the LRA's cross-border nature.
The envoy's work should be strengthened through regular engagement among officials across relevant US government agencies at both the working staff level and the more senior Deputies Committee or Principals Committee level. This should include tasking a point person at the Deputies Committee or Principals Committee level.
Senior-level US political engagement is also needed to help manage tensions and encourage cooperation among regional governments and other key actors, the groups said. In addition to helping coordinate regional governments, the US should rally serious political engagement and dedicated resources from European partners, the African Union (AU), and the UN Security Council to address the LRA. In particular, ambitions by the AU to help coordinate and facilitate greater regional and international responses to the crisis have stalled and are in need of new momentum.
"The US should lead robust multilateral efforts to overcome years of stalled attempts to address the LRA's threat to civilian populations," said Poffenberger.
Capable Force Needed to Protect Civilians
There is no international peacekeeping presence in the LRA-affected areas of eastern Central African Republic, and fewer than 1,000 UN peacekeeping troops are deployed to northern Congo's Haut Uele district. There are no peacekeepers at all in the neighboring Bas Uele district, even though some of the worst recent LRA atrocities have occurred there and Kony, the LRA leader, is believed to have been there recently. Even where UN peacekeepers are deployed, they often lack the operational capacity or willingness to protect civilians beyond the limits of their own bases.
The US government should take immediate steps, including using its diplomatic influence with other Security Council members and UN member states, to ensure a more effective peacekeeping presence in the LRA-affected regions, the organizations said.
As part of its protection strategy, the US government has made a commitment to build up communications and road infrastructure in the LRA-affected areas, which will eventually improve communities' ability to report attacks or the presence of LRA groups. However, a lack of funds has limited planned communications projects; some people have gained access to life-saving phone and radio networks, but hundreds of thousands of others remain isolated.
"A '911' call can be a lifesaver, but only if those on the other end of the line can bring help fast," said Anneke Van Woudenberg, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. "More peacekeepers are urgently needed in these areas to effectively protect civilians at risk of LRA attacks."
Congolese armed forces, which are insufficiently equipped and poorly paid, have demonstrated little capacity to protect civilians. Soldiers deployed in small units to remote posts in the Uele districts often have no means of transport or communications with their commanders, and, lacking ammunition, are often forced to flee with the population when the LRA attacks.
Congolese army soldiers have also been responsible for serious abuses against the civilians they are charged with protecting, including killing, rape, torture, and arbitrary arrest. In mid-March 2011, for example, soldiers based in Nambia, Niangara territory, Haut Uele, tortured two children, ages 8 to 10, with burning sticks and melted plastic. The children had been accused of stealing a radio. In recent months, Congolese soldiers repeatedly attacked the nomadic Mbororo herder community, committing numerous rapes and killings, and pillaging cattle while forcing community members deep into the forests or across the borders into the Central African Republic or Southern Sudan.
Congolese and Ugandan authorities should investigate any abuses and hold perpetrators accountable in fair trials, the organizations said. The United States should ensure that it does not support any Congolese or Ugandan army unit responsible for serious human rights abuses.
Greater International Efforts Needed to Apprehend LRA Commanders
Apprehending Kony and other senior LRA commanders remains a critical step toward enhancing broader civilian protection efforts, the organizations said. Experience in other conflict zones illustrates that an operation to apprehend people wanted for serious crimes in violation of international law may require specially trained military or police units supported by expert, actionable intelligence and rapid reaction capabilities, including helicopters. In the case of the LRA, such operations should be carried out in parallel with enhanced efforts to encourage LRA commanders and fighters to defect.
The Uganda People's Defence Force lacks adequate intelligence and rapid reaction capacity. A US proposal to send military advisors to assist Ugandan efforts could help address some of these gaps, but even with additional support, the Ugandan army is unlikely to acquire the needed capabilities in the near future, the groups said. Operations are further hampered by deep-seated mistrust and suspicion between the Ugandan and Congolese armies, nearly sabotaging collaborative efforts to protect civilians and pursue the LRA leadership. There are unconfirmed reports that Congolese authorities have called on the Ugandan army to leave Congolese soil by mid-June.
Authorities in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, and in the LRA-affected regions have consistently played down the LRA threat, leading to public protests and tensions between the authorities and local populations. Similarly, Ugandan authorities have repeatedly stated that the LRA has been defeated, despite the new LRA attacks and the fact that the LRA leadership remains at large.
"Congolese and Ugandan denials and inaction do not change the fact that tens of thousands of civilians in central Africa continue to live in fear of the next LRA attack," said John Bradshaw, executive director of the Enough Project. "One year since the passage of a landmark LRA law, the US, with its regional and international partners, has much more to do to move beyond marginal policy shifts and develop an enhanced apprehension strategy capable of decisively ending the LRA threat."
The following 39 organizations have signed on to this news release:
1. HelpAge International
2. Human Rights Watch
3. Organisation pour la Defense des Droits de l'Enfant Internationale
4. A Thousand Sisters, USA
5. ENOUGH Project, USA
6. Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, USA
7. Invisible Children, USA
8. Resolve, USA
9. Action des Chretiens Activistes des Droits de l'Homme a Shabunda (ACADHOSHA), Democratic Republic of Congo
10. Action des Chretiens pour l'Abolition de la Torture (ACAT) - Nord Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo
11. Action Globale pour la Promotion Sociale et la Paix (AGPSP)
12. Action Humanitaire et de Developpement Integral (AHDI)
13. Africa Justice, Peace, and Development (AJPD)
14. AJDI Doruma, Democratic Republic of Congo
15. Appuis aux femmes Diminue et Enfants Marginalises (AFEDEM), Democratic Republic of Congo
16. Blessed Aid, Democratic Republic of Congo
17. Bureau des Actions de Developpement et des Urgences (BADU), Democratic Republic of Congo
18. Centre des recherches pour l'Environnement, la Democratie et les Droits de L'Homme (CREDDHO)
19. Centre d'Etudes et de Formation Populaire pour les Droits de l'Homme (CEFOP/DH), Democratic Republic of Congo
20. Centre d'Observation des Droits de l'Homme et d'Assistance Sociale (CODHAS), Democratic Republic of Congo
21. Centre pour la Paix et les Droits de l'Homme - Peace and Human Rights Center (CPDH-PHRC), Democratic Republic of Congo
22. Collectif des Organisations des Jeunes Solidaires du Congo (COJESKI), Democratic Republic of Congo
23. CONVERGENCES, Democratic Republic of Congo
24. Defense et Assistance aux Femmes et Enfants Vulnerables en Afrique (DAFEVA), Democratic Republic of Congo
25. Doruma Civil Society, Democratic Republic of Congo
26. Encadrement des Femmes Indigenes et des Menages vulnerables (EFIM), Democratic Republic of Congo
27. Groupe Lotus, Democratic Republic of Congo
28. Human Rights Activists of Niangara Territory, Democratic Republic of Congo
29. Initiative Congolaise pour la Justice et la Paix (ICJP), Democratic Republic of Congo
30. Initiatives Alpha, Democratic Republic of Congo
31. Ligue des Jeunes de Grand Lac (LJGL), Democratic Republic of Congo
32. Observatoire Congolais des Prisons (OCP), Democratic Republic of Congo
33. ReseauProvincial des ONG de Droits Humains au Congo (REPRODHOC), Democratic Republic of Congo
34. Solidarite des Volontaires pour l'Humanite, Democratic Republic of Congo
35. Solidarite Feminine pour la Paix et le Developpement Integral (SOFEPADI), Democratic Republic of Congo
36. UJDL Youth Association of Doruma, Democratic Republic of Congo
37. Union d'Action pour les Initiatives du Developpement (UAID), Democratic Republic of Congo
38. Diocese of Nzara, South Sudan
39. Nzara Comboni Missionary Sisters, South Sudan
"The GOP claims doing so is necessary in the interest of $11 billion in deficit reduction. But at the same time, they have doubled down on tax cuts skewed to the rich and special interests."
The Biden White House late Friday accused Republicans of attempting to "take food out of the mouths of hungry Americans" by imposing new work requirements on recipients of federal nutrition assistance, a public rebuke of the GOP that came as negotiators worked to finalize a debt ceiling agreement.
Additional work requirements appear to be among the final sticking points in the time-sensitive talks, with the GOP insisting on their inclusion in any agreement to raise the debt limit.
In a statement Friday night, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said the GOP's proposed work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are "designed to tie the most vulnerable up in bureaucratic paperwork" and "have shown no benefit for bringing more people into the workforce."
"The GOP claims doing so is necessary in the interest of $11 billion in deficit reduction," said Bates. "But at the same time, they have doubled down on tax cuts skewed to the rich and special interests that would add $3.5 trillion to our debt."
House Republicans have demanded new work requirements for recipients of SNAP, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—many of whom already work.
Asked Friday whether the GOP would be willing to drop its push for work requirements, Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.)—the party's lead negotiator—said, "Hell no."
"Hell no," he repeated. "Not a chance."
The White House has spoken out against new work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid, but it's unclear whether it opposes fresh work mandates for TANF, which replaced the more generous Aid to Families With Dependent Children program under the Clinton welfare reform law that Biden supported as a senator.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, welcomed the White House's statement against SNAP work requirements, which analysts say could strip food aid from millions of people amid a worsening hunger crisis.
"The president is calling out MAGA GOP hypocrisy of refusing to raise the debt ceiling so the economy doesn't crash simply to take food from hungry people," Jayapal tweeted Saturday. "When you count admin[istrative] costs of bureaucratic red tape, this would produce ZERO savings. Isn't and has never been about saving money."
The White House issued its statement amid growing progressive concerns over the concessions the Biden administration has reportedly granted to GOP hostage-takers.
On Friday, watchdogs, Democratic lawmakers, and policy analysts responded with outrage to reports that the Biden White House is leaning toward accepting Republicans' demand for IRS funding cuts—a giveaway to rich tax cheats.
Progressives have also voiced alarm over reports that the emerging debt ceiling deal includes a two-year cap on non-military federal spending, which would result in cuts to key domestic programs.
"Any deal is a disaster since most government departments and agencies are currently severely underfunded," warned Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project.
"We knew this was coming," wrote one policy expert. "But we still treat these burdens like they're unavoidable natural disasters."
With a green light from the federal government, states across the U.S. have thrown hundreds of thousands of low-income people off Medicaid in recent weeks—and many have lost coverage because they failed to navigate bureaucratic mazes, not because they were no longer eligible.
More than a dozen states, including Florida and other Republican-led states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, have begun removing people from Medicaid as part of the "unwinding" of a pandemic-era federal policy that temporarily barred governments from kicking people off the program.
In a bipartisan deal late last year, Congress agreed to cut off the pandemic protections, giving states 12 months to redetermine who is eligible for the healthcare program that covers tens of millions of Americans.
The process differs in each state, but Medicaid enrollees are typically required to complete paperwork verifying their income, address, disability status, and other factors used to determine eligibility for the program.
While some states have undertaken public outreach campaigns to ensure Medicaid recipients understand what they need to do to continue receiving benefits, most enrollees across the country "were not aware that states are now permitted to resume disenrolling people from the Medicaid program," according to new survey data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).
As a result, The New York Timesreported Friday, "many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when Medicaid recipients did not return paperwork to verify their eligibility or could not be located."
"The large number of terminations on procedural grounds suggests that many people may be losing their coverage even though they are still qualified for it," the newspaper added. "Many of those who have been dropped have been children."
Early data released by the state of Florida, for example, shows that more than 205,000 people in the state lost coverage for procedural reasons after April eligibility checks.
"We knew this was coming. But we still treat these burdens like they're unavoidable natural disasters," said Pamela Herd, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University. "We need to be much more explicit about these failures because we're making a choice to allow this."
Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, said she is "very worried about Florida."
"We've heard the call center's overwhelmed, the notices are very confusing in Florida—they're very hard to understand," said Alker.
In a recent letter to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024 presidential candidate, more than 50 advocacy groups demanded a Medicaid redetermination pause, pointing to "reports of Floridians being disenrolled from Medicaid without having received notice" from the state's Department of Children and Families (DCF).
"One of these individuals is a 7-year-old boy in remission from Leukemia who is now unable to access follow-up—and potentially lifesaving—treatments," the groups wrote. "Families with children have been erroneously terminated, and parents are having trouble reaching the DCF call center for help with this process. Additionally, unclear notices and lack of information on how to appeal contribute to more confusion."
"We are deeply concerned about those with serious, acute, and chronic conditions who will continue to lose access to their lifesaving treatments during this time, along with people who risk substantial medical debt, or even bankruptcy, as a result of coverage loss," the groups added.
\u201cWhat if instead we just gave everyone health insurance coverage??!! \nhttps://t.co/hSOQKYU7JY\u201d— Ady Barkan (@Ady Barkan) 1685130002
The Times highlighted the situation in Arkansas, which is led by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders—a supporter of Medicaid work requirements and other attacks on the program. (Work requirements were briefly tried in Arkansas in 2018 and 2019, with disastrous consequences.)
"In Arkansas, more than 1.1 million people—over a third of the state's residents—were on Medicaid at the end of March [2023]," the Times noted Friday. "In April, the first month that states could begin removing people from the program, about 73,000 people lost coverage, including about 27,000 children 17 and under."
An Arkansas law requires the state to complete its Medicaid eligibility reviews in six months instead of 12.
In a Wall Street Journalop-ed earlier this month, Sanders wrote that her state is booting people from Medicaid at "the fastest pace in the nation" and claimed those being removed are "ineligible participants"—ignoring evidence that many being stripped of coverage were technically still eligible.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department has estimated that upwards of 15 million people nationwide could lose Medicaid coverage during the redetermination process.
"This is such an enormous policy failure—profoundly cruel and will contribute to furthering inequities," Dr. CecÃlia Tomori, a public health scholar at Johns Hopkins University, wrote Friday.
While some who lose Medicaid will be able to access insurance through an employer or the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, KFF found that more than four in ten people with Medicaid as their only source of healthcare "say they wouldn't know where to look for other coverage or would be uninsured" if they were removed from the program.
"This is about to happen to a lot of people," warned Larry Levitt, KFF's executive vice president for health policy.
The Times pointed to the case of 54-year-old Arizona resident Debra Miller, who "lost Medicaid coverage in April after her roughly $25,000 annual salary as a Burger King cook left her ineligible."
"Ms. Miller, a single mother with diabetes and hypothyroidism, worked with an insurance counselor at North Country HealthCare, a network of federally funded health clinics, to enroll in a marketplace plan with a roughly $70 monthly premium," the Times reported.
Miller told the newspaper that the new plan is a "struggle" both because of the new monthly payment and because it doesn't include the vision coverage she needs and now may not be able to afford.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated earlier this week that states' Medicaid eligibility checks will likely leave 6.2 million people without any insurance at all.
"The American people deserve to understand why you are supporting even more deficit-busting tax giveaways for giant corporations, while also cheerleading Republican demands to inflict painful, job-killing austerity on everyone else."
The Republican Party's debt-ceiling hostage scheme has benefited from the support of the United States' largest corporate lobbying organization, which has given its stamp of approval to the GOP's push for major federal spending cuts, punitive new work requirements for aid programs, and permitting changes sought by the fossil fuel industry.
While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) office has reportedly not met with representatives of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce during the debt ceiling standoff, a representative of the powerful business group said earlier this week that such a meeting would be pointless given that the Chamber and the GOP are so closely aligned.
Neil Bradley, the Chamber's chief policy officer, toldPolitico earlier this week that a meeting with McCarthy would be a "cheerleading session."
"I see the relationship as respectful, so I'm not worried about wasting his time to come in and say, 'Look how much I agree with you,'" said Bradley, who previously served as McCarthy's deputy chief of staff.
In a letter to the Chamber's chief executive on Friday, a trio of Democratic senators led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slammed Bradley's remarks and demanded to know "how the Chamber justifies supporting the Republican agenda of continued tax cuts for the wealthy, while cheerleading for threats to impose a default and austerity for everyone else."
"Instead of pressing the speaker to drop his radical demands and pass a clean debt limit increase, Bradley noted that the Chamber has pressed the White House to come to a bipartisan agreement with McCarthy," the letter reads. "Indeed, Bradley noted that the Chamber is aligned with House Republicans on their debt ceiling demands, including on spending caps, work requirements, and energy permitting."
Warren, joined by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), accused the Chamber of fully backing the GOP's "shameless hypocrisy" by lobbying for tax breaks that Republicans are expected to include in a tax cut package coming sometime next month.
"The American people deserve to understand why you are supporting even more deficit-busting tax giveaways for giant corporations, while also cheerleading Republican demands to inflict painful, job-killing austerity on everyone else in a pretense of 'fiscal responsibility,'" the senators wrote, demanding to know how much the Chamber has spent on tax-related lobbying this year and what discussions the group has had with Republicans on the House's tax-writing committee.
According to OpenSecrets, the Chamber has spent more than $19 million total on federal lobbying so far this year—the most of any organization. The Chamber says it has met with more than 150 Republican and Democratic lawmakers throughout the debt ceiling fight, which GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) publicly described as a hostage situation.
The Democratic senators' letter came as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that the federal government will run out of money to meet its obligations by June 5 if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling.
The Washington Postreported Friday that White House and GOP negotiators are "closing in on an agreement that would raise the debt ceiling by two years—a key priority of the Biden administration—while also essentially freezing government spending on domestic programs and slightly increasing funding for the military and veterans affairs."
When accounting for inflation, keeping non-military spending flat would mean potentially significant real-term cuts to key aid programs, from nutrition assistance to housing.
The Chamber has openly endorsed the GOP push for spending caps and warned President Joe Biden against using his 14th Amendment authority to unilaterally prevent a default, claiming such a move would be "as economically calamitous as a default."
On Friday, a top Treasury Department official said the White House will not invoke its 14th Amendment authority to continue paying the nation's bills if talks with the GOP collapse.