Maxime Prévôt, Belgium’s Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, is engaging with countries like Burundi and DRC as part of Belgium’s broader diplomatic efforts to strengthen ties in Central Africa. Uganda was added on the list for opportunistic reasons.
While Burundi Congo faces significant economic challenges, including shortages of essential goods and a lack of foreign exchange, and Kinshasa “sinking” under heavy rains and its provinces lacking basic infrastructures, Belgium recognizes the importance of regional stability and cooperation through military agenda.
Is it in the interest of the citizens of Burundi and DR Congo?
Definitely not. Honestly, for many people in Burundi and DRC, basic human needs like food, clean water, medicine, and shelter often come before broader concepts like political peace or diplomacy.
In situations where poverty is extreme and public services are broken, daily survival becomes the first and most urgent priority. Many families struggle to eat even once a day. Clinics are under-equipped, and many people die from treatable diseases. If there is peace, but no food, no medicine, no jobs, no education it still feels like a hopeless situation.
No empathy about this serious case of human rights abuse was even mentioned during the meeting between the Belgian minister and the Burundi leaders.
In a nutshell, Belgium diplomacy is seen here as a desperate move for Maxime Prevot to restore his “authority”. He was the chief of the campaign for sanctions against Rwanda. He got the sanctions but not the expected results by losing the hand on the Great Lakes situation.
The USA and Qatar diplomacy stole the show and smartly came on board with a more intelligent approach than Belgium’s one (and EU by extension).
We know in the great lakes region broad culture that a man with “ikimwaro” (ashamed and confused) could become dangerous for himself and for others such as Burundi and DRC people. His current visit agenda is a military option: Belgian forces cooperation, FARDC reform and FDB army presence in Eastern Congo are his principal motivations.
This remake of Colonel Logiest adventures in Rwanda in 1959, with the terrible consequences which followed, should not be tolerated today by the International community.
Luckily there are other diplomatic interventions which focus on peacebuilding in the Great Lakes region and the local populations who were misguided by Belgium in the 50/60’s are no longer the same fools Maxime Prevot thinks they still are.
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