• World Report 2012: Democratic Republic of Congo
    Jan 22, 2012

     
    The human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remained grave. All sides in the country’s ongoing armed conflicts continued to attack civilians and commit other serious human rights abuses. Military operations against foreign and domestic armed groups in the east and north were on a smaller scale than in previous years. Efforts to integrate armed groups into the national army were hampered by former rebel leaders, such as Bosco Ntaganda, who flouted orders from the army’s central command and pursued their own interests. Ntaganda is facing an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant but remains in charge of military operations in eastern Congo. 

  • World Report 2011: Democratic Republic of Congo
    Jan 24, 2011
    Attacks on civilians and other human rights abuses continued with disturbing frequency in 2010. The Congolese army sustained its military campaigns against foreign and national armed groups in the east and north, and launched a new campaign in the west to quell a local insurgency. As in the past, all sides targeted civilians, who were killed, raped, arbitrarily arrested, pressed into forced labor, and looted. The ongoing violence left nearly 2 million people displaced and a further 145,000 as refugees in neighboring countries.
  • Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
    Jan 20, 2010
    Violence and brutal human rights abuses increased in the Democratic Republic of Congo throughout 2009. Two military campaigns by the Congolese army, in the east and north, resulted in a dramatic increase in violence against civilians by both rebel and government forces. At least 2,500 civilians were slaughtered, over 7,000 women and girls were raped, and more than 1 million people were forced to flee their homes. This pushed the total number of displaced people to over 2 million, the vast majority with limited or no access to humanitarian assistance, often forcing them to return to insecure areas to find food. United Nations peacekeepers supported Congolese army military operations and struggled to give meaning to their mandate to protect civilians.
  • Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)
    Jan 14, 2009
    Violence, impunity, and horrific human rights abuses continue in the Democratic Republic of Congo, two years after historic elections were expected to bring stability.
  • Democratic Republic of Congo
    Jan 30, 2006
    Unconvinced that elections will bring results they favor, some belligerents to the war that officially ended in 2002 have kept their troops from being integrated into the new national army, as stipulated in the final peace accords. In late 2004 and in 2005 troops from the former Congolese Rally for Democracy-Goma (RCD-Goma) refused integration and fought the national army in several clashes in the eastern DRC. Armed groups which remained outside the peace process also fought each other, the national army and the U.N. peacekeeping force known as MONUC. Representatives of one such group, opponents of the Rwandan government known as the Democratic Force for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), announced that they would disarm and return to Rwanda, but only a few hundred did so in 2005.
  • Democratic Republic of Congo
    Jan 30, 2005
    After eighteen months in power, the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains fragile, far from its goals of peace and effective administration of this huge central African nation. Installed after five years of civil war, the uneasy coalition of former belligerents is plagued by mistrust, dissatisfaction among troops not yet fully integrated in a new national army—including an aborted rebellion by some of them, and challenges from armed groups outside the peace process. It also faces continued interference from neighboring countries, in particular Uganda and Rwanda. In eastern Congo, soldiers of the national army and combatants of armed groups continue to target civilians, killing, raping, and otherwise injuring them, carrying out arbitrary arrests and torture, and destroying or pillaging their property. Tens of thousands of persons have fled their homes, several thousand of them across international borders. After the attempted rebellion and a massacre of Congolese refugees in neighboring Burundi, ethnically-based fear and hatred have risen sharply, emotions that are amplified and manipulated by politicians and some civil society leaders.