Bateau Boboto: How NGOs and international organizations have succeeded in re-establishing a humanitarian corridor along the Congo River

Bateau Boboto, meaning "Boat of Peace" (in French and Lingala), is the name of the initiative that since last summer has managed to open a humanitarian corridor between the capital, Kinshasa, and the localities of the province of Equator in the north of the country controlled by the rebels. This is only one more example of how the co-ordinated collaboration between different actors for development can achieve important results. Bateau Boboto has high value not only in material but also in symbolic terms: it constitutes the first instance in which the government and rebel groups observe and back an operation of this type on the front line of war. Previously, the special FAO report on the food situation in Kinshasa and in the provinces of Bas-Congo and Bandundu highlighted the urgent need to establish a humanitarian corridor between the capital and the rebel-controlled provinces.

Getting down to work, in October 2000, a technical group led by the FAO with representatives from MONUC, OCHA, LDC, UNICEF and international NGOs (MEMISA/Belgium and the Centre for Integrated Development (CID)/ Bwamanda) undertook what at that time appeared to be an impossible mission. Ten months later, the first Bateau Boboto raised its anchor in Kinshasa before the President of the Republic, the President of the Episcopal Conference of the country, representatives of several ministries, a delegation of the Secretary General of the United Nations, members of MONUC, members of the European Commission, members of various international NGOs, as well as diplomats from the USA, Canada, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden and Portugal. It was the first embarkation that re-established the river traffic cut off by war, and it transported 650 tonnes of medicine, fuel, food, school materials and clothes to zones isolated by the conflict. On its return to Kinshasa, it loaded 1000 tonnes of corn bought from the European Union.

Bateau Boboto, the first humanitarian river convoy, the result of an important initiative of multi-lateral solidarity, seeks to become the first step towards re-establishing the traditional channels of commerce between the capital and the provinces. The significance of this is, in the words of the FAO Representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, M. Spijkers, "to move from a war economy to a peace economy." An enterprise that could hardly be undertaken without the co-ordinated effort by the civil society, international co-operation agencies and institutions.