Executive Summary

For more than a decade, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has struggled with one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Yet, improbably, that situation has improved markedly over the past few years. Seventy percent of the electorate has voted in the first democratic contest for president in four decades; violence in the east has eased, largely due to the presence of the UN peacekeeping force, MONUC; and humanitarian response has improved even as internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees begin to return home. No longer is the DRC an intractable quagmire: it has arrived at a moment of hope that must be seized.