The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) was created by the leaders of the Region to bring an end the conflicts in the Great Lakes Region.

In November 2004, the Heads of States of Government of Eleven Core Countries including Zambia met in Dar es Salaam and declared their collective desire to transform the Great Lakes Region into a space of sustainable peace and security for the Member States in what is now commonly referred to as The Arusha Declaration.

The Pact on the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) was signed on 15th December in Nairobi Kenya in 2006 in the quest of the Heads of States to build and strengthen the organisation, in recognition of the conflicts that had engulfed the Region culminating into the Rwanda Genocide of 1994, in which more than 800,000 people were killed in a period of 100 days. The leaders of 11 countries came together to declare that never again would genocide be allowed to happen in the region.

The Pact is a Legal framework that determines how the Member States should relate particularly in selected priority areas of Peace and Security, Democracy and Governance, Economic Development and Regional Integration and Humanitarian and Social Environmental Issues.

FUNCTIONS OF THE DEPARTMENT

The department operates under four thematic clusters:

1. Peace and Security
2. Democracy and Good Governance
3. Economic Development and Regional Integration
4. Humanitarian, Social and Environmental Issues.