Reintegrating ex-combatants in the Great Lakes region

Africa's Great Lakes region has known conflict for a considerable period of time, and this has been met with several initiatives aimed at managing the situation in a sustainable way. One such initiative was the Multi-country Demobilisation and Reintegration Programme (MDRP), led by the World Bank, from 2002 to 2009. The initiative, which looked at selected countries in the Great Lakes, focused on the demobilisation and reintegration of former fighters, with the main objective being to improve the livelihoods of affected communities. Despite the challenges that the MDRP encountered, the programme realised a number of successes and brought to the fore numerous lessons learned. It is these lessons that this monograph has sought to document, with the hope of contributing to the better planning of similar programmes in future. The monograph uses case studies of the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo to illustrate how the MDRP was implemented, while Liberia is included as a control case.