Because the elections are a national exercise, the government and the international community have to be involved in the process to make sure that people trust it. There's very little trust between Kinshasa and the regions or among political elites. Surveys show that people are very enthusiastic about the prospect of having elections, but they are not quite sure whether the results will be respected.
They're not sure they will take place, because the electoral commission has set the date, but there is a long list of potential reasons the elections will not take place, and the security situation is one of them. Those who benefit from the violence are those who don't want to have elections because the security situation makes it too difficult to have them.
Looking at the process, we see that voter registration has started. The DRC hasn't had a census in over 30 years, so they don't actually know how many people live in the various regions and therefore don't know how many people they should have registered. This was one of the conditions that was talked about in 2016, and they still haven't had a census. Part of this has to do with the opposition's saying, “We can't possibly wait for a census before we have an election; it's going to take too long“, and then the government's saying, “We don't have the resources to do it.”
One way to build confidence is by monitoring how many people are registered, monitoring what's happening, how they vote. There has been a dispute about whether to use electronic devices to do the elections or ballots. As someone who monitored elections in Kenya, I can tell you that electronic devices are not the cure-all for trust in elections, particularly in a context in which people believe that the particular electronic system employed will be used to rig the process.
Also important is sending monitors very early, at the registration process. This is the biggest weakness of electoral monitoring across sub-Saharan Africa—and Latin America, as we've seen recently. People don't get there early enough to make sure that the institutions that are put in place a few months ahead of the elections are transparent and that once a result comes out, people actually trust these institutions.
I think this could be a way in which you regain trust. Once you regain trust, some of the armed groups who are using the political situation to say they don't believe this is a legitimate government may return home to the barracks and lay down their weapons. That would be one way in which you can use the elections as a way to promote peace. These methods would be partial, unless you address a lot of other issues in eastern Congo and the Kasai.