'It's not all about the land': land disputes and conflict in the eastern Congo

Key points • Current interventions in land conflicts are focused on conflict management rather than conflict resolution. • Land conflicts are part of a wider governance problem and need political rather than technical approaches. • Conflicts over land are related to wider conflict dynamics, which are the result of an interplay between struggles for power and resources, identity narratives and territorial claims. • There is a need for better donor coordination and more coherent land governance interventions, which should be integrated into larger state-building efforts

Bringing history back in : past, present, and conflict in Rwanda and the Eastern democratic republic of Congo

AbstractThis article argues that on the borderland between eastern DRC and Rwanda, the past and its representations have been constantly manipulated. The cataclysmic events in both Rwanda and Congo since the 1990s have widened the gap between partial and politicized historical discourse and careful historical analysis. The failure to pay attention to the multiple layers in the production of historical narratives risks reproducing a politicized social present that ‘naturalizes’ differences and antagonisms between different groups by giving them more time-depth. This is a danger both for insiders and outsiders looking in. The answer is to focus on the historical trajectories that shape historical narratives, and to ‘bring history back in’.</jats:p

Urbanizing Kitchanga : spatial trajectories of the politics of refuge in North Kivu, Eastern Congo

This article presents the historical and political trajectory of Kitchanga town in North Kivu, to demonstrate how current processes of urbanization in a context of civil war in Eastern Congo are strongly intertwined with regional politics of refuge. Kitchanga, an urban agglomeration that emerged from the gradual urbanization of IDP and refugee concentrations, has occupied very different positions through different episodes of the wars, ranging from a safe haven of refuge, to a rebel headquarter, to a violent battleground. On the basis of a historical account of Kitchanga’s development, the paper argues for a spatial reading of broader geographies of war, displacement and ethnic mobilization in North Kivu. It shows that these urban agglomerations as ‘places’ and their urbanization as ‘processes’ are crucial to better understand the spatial politics of refuge in North Kivu. The article builds on original empirical data

Une technique de gouvernementalité (post)coloniale? : La commission Congo en Belgique (2020-2022) dans une perspective historique

This contribution considers the 2020-22 Belgian parliamentary commission on its colonial past (for which the authors served as experts) in a historical perspective, alongside two other Belgian parliamentary commissions on Congo: the 1904–5 Belgian Commission of Inquiry about the atrocities of Leopold II’s rubber regime in Congo and the 2000-2002 Belgian Commission of Investigation, which looked into the role of the Belgian state in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. After a brief introduction of the recent commission, we first reflect on the role of commission “experts”, and historians specifically. Second, we investigate to what extent these commissions function as technologies of rule that sustain rather than critique existing balances of power. French Translation: Romain Tiquet.Cette contribution met en perspective la Commission parlementaire belge sur son passé colonial (2020-2022) – et pour laquelle les autrices ont participé en tant qu’« expertes » –, avec d’une part la Commission d’enquête belge de 1904-1905 sur les atrocités du « régime du caoutchouc » de Léopold II au Congo et d’autre part la Commission d’enquête belge de 2000-2002 qui a examiné le rôle de l’État belge dans l’assassinat de Patrice Lumumba. Après une brève présentation de la récente commission, nous réfléchissons tout d’abord au rôle des « expert.es » de la commission, et plus particulièrement des historien.nes. Ensuite, nous cherchons à savoir dans quelle mesure ces commissions fonctionnent comme des technologies de gouvernementalité qui maintiennent, plutôt qu’elles ne critiquent, les équilibres de pouvoir existants. Traduction : Romain Tiquet

AD-linked R47H-TREM2 mutation induces disease-enhancing microglial states via AKT hyperactivation

The hemizygous R47H variant of triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2), a microglia-specific gene in the brain, increases risk for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Using transcriptomic analysis of single nuclei from brain tissues of patients with AD carrying the R47H mutation or the common variant (CV)–TREM2, we found that R47H-associated microglial subpopulations had enhanced inflammatory signatures reminiscent of previously identified disease-associated microglia (DAM) and hyperactivation of AKT, one of the signaling pathways downstream of TREM2. We established a tauopathy mouse model with heterozygous knock-in of the human TREM2 with the R47H mutation or CV and found that R47H induced and exacerbated TAU-mediated spatial memory deficits in female mice. Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of microglia from these mice also revealed transcriptomic changes induced by R47H that had substantial overlaps with R47H microglia in human AD brains, including robust increases in proinflammatory cytokines, activation of AKT signaling, and elevation of a subset of DAM signatures. Pharmacological AKT inhibition with MK-2206 largely reversed the enhanced inflammatory signatures in primary R47H microglia treated with TAU fibrils. In R47H heterozygous tauopathy mice, MK-2206 treatment abolished a tauopathy-dependent microglial subcluster and rescued tauopathy-induced synapse loss. By uncovering disease-enhancing mechanisms of the R47H mutation conserved in human and mouse, our study supports inhibitors of AKT signaling as a microglial modulating strategy to treat AD

The 2021 WHO catalogue of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex mutations associated with drug resistance: a genotypic analysis.

Background: Molecular diagnostics are considered the most promising route to achievement of rapid, universal drug susceptibility testing for Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). We aimed to generate a WHO-endorsed catalogue of mutations to serve as a global standard for interpreting molecular information for drug resistance prediction. Methods: In this systematic analysis, we used a candidate gene approach to identify mutations associated with resistance or consistent with susceptibility for 13 WHO-endorsed antituberculosis drugs. We collected existing worldwide MTBC whole-genome sequencing data and phenotypic data from academic groups and consortia, reference laboratories, public health organisations, and published literature. We categorised phenotypes as follows: methods and critical concentrations currently endorsed by WHO (category 1); critical concentrations previously endorsed by WHO for those methods (category 2); methods or critical concentrations not currently endorsed by WHO (category 3). For each mutation, we used a contingency table of binary phenotypes and presence or absence of the mutation to compute positive predictive value, and we used Fisher's exact tests to generate odds ratios and Benjamini-Hochberg corrected p values. Mutations were graded as associated with resistance if present in at least five isolates, if the odds ratio was more than 1 with a statistically significant corrected p value, and if the lower bound of the 95% CI on the positive predictive value for phenotypic resistance was greater than 25%. A series of expert rules were applied for final confidence grading of each mutation. Findings: We analysed 41 137 MTBC isolates with phenotypic and whole-genome sequencing data from 45 countries. 38 215 MTBC isolates passed quality control steps and were included in the final analysis. 15 667 associations were computed for 13 211 unique mutations linked to one or more drugs. 1149 (7·3%) of 15 667 mutations were classified as associated with phenotypic resistance and 107 (0·7%) were deemed consistent with susceptibility. For rifampicin, isoniazid, ethambutol, fluoroquinolones, and streptomycin, the mutations' pooled sensitivity was more than 80%. Specificity was over 95% for all drugs except ethionamide (91·4%), moxifloxacin (91·6%) and ethambutol (93·3%). Only two resistance mutations were identified for bedaquiline, delamanid, clofazimine, and linezolid as prevalence of phenotypic resistance was low for these drugs. Interpretation: We present the first WHO-endorsed catalogue of molecular targets for MTBC drug susceptibility testing, which is intended to provide a global standard for resistance interpretation. The existence of this catalogue should encourage the implementation of molecular diagnostics by national tuberculosis programmes. Funding: Unitaid, Wellcome Trust, UK Medical Research Council, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Questioning territories and identities in the precolonial (nineteenth-century) Lake Kivu region

AbstractThroughout Africa, contemporary boundaries are deemed ‘artificial’ because they were external impositions breaking apart supposedly homogeneous ethnic units. This article argues that the problem with the colonial borders was not only that they arbitrarily dissected African societies with European interests in mind, but also that they profoundly changed the way in which territoriality and authority functioned in this region, and therefore they affected identity. The presumption that territories could be constructed in which ‘culture’ and ‘political power’ neatly coincided was influenced by European ideas about space and identity, and privileged the perceptions and territorial claims of those ruling the most powerful centres in the nineteenth century. Thus, this article questions assumptions that continue to influence contemporary views of the Lake Kivu region. It shows that local understandings of the relationship between space and identity differed fundamentally from state-centred perspectives, whether in precolonial centralized states or colonial states.</jats:p

Questioning territories and identities in the precolonial (nineteenth-century) Lake Kivu region

AbstractThroughout Africa, contemporary boundaries are deemed ‘artificial’ because they were external impositions breaking apart supposedly homogeneous ethnic units. This article argues that the problem with the colonial borders was not only that they arbitrarily dissected African societies with European interests in mind, but also that they profoundly changed the way in which territoriality and authority functioned in this region, and therefore they affected identity. The presumption that territories could be constructed in which ‘culture’ and ‘political power’ neatly coincided was influenced by European ideas about space and identity, and privileged the perceptions and territorial claims of those ruling the most powerful centres in the nineteenth century. Thus, this article questions assumptions that continue to influence contemporary views of the Lake Kivu region. It shows that local understandings of the relationship between space and identity differed fundamentally from state-centred perspectives, whether in precolonial centralized states or colonial states.</jats:p