North Kivu, 10 August 2012 - “I was captured in a town in North Kivu along with 12 other youth. M23 soldiers, armed with AK47s and rocket launchers, tied us up and forced us to follow them on foot all night until we reached the training camp.” Thomas, 20 years old, is one of over 100 cases of forced recruitment documented by human rights officers in the east of the DR Congo since April 2012.

Geneva, 17 July 2012 – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday called for the appeal trial in the case of the murder of Congolese human rights defender Floribert Chebeya Bahizire, and the disappearance of his driver, Fidèle Bazana Edadi, to fully respect international standards of due process. 

Geneva, 19 June 2012 - The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, expressed deep concern Tuesday about the safety of the civilian population living in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as fighting continues between the Congolese army and the M23 movement, which has been conducting a mutiny in North Kivu Province under the leadership of a particularly notorious group of human rights violators.

Uvira, 12 June 2012 - In Uvira, a small town snaking its way between Lake Tanganyika and the towering mountains of the Great Rift Valley in South Kivu, eighteen colonels, lieutenant colonels, majors and a captain appeared before a mobile court of the DRC military justice system. Thirteen of them were found guilty of rebellion in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Kinshasa / Geneva, 16 November 2011 - Some 31 million people have registered to vote in the November presidential poll in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), amid fears by local and international human rights observers of escalation of politically-motivated attacks against civilians and violations of fundamental freedoms.

16 September 2010 - From 30 August to 10 September, 60 journalists and media managers from North and South Kivu province took part in a workshop held respectively in Bukavu and in Goma to reinforce their capacities on media coverage of sexual violence trials. The training was organized by United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (MONUSCO-OHCHR) with the collaboration of the canadian NGO 'Journalists for Human Rights'.The objective is to improve the journalists understanding of the judicial system.

“At 8pm, a man with an AK-47 entered our tukul (house) and ordered us to remain seated. I saw that other men had surrounded the tukul. We were scared and decided to run away. The man inside the tukul shot my brother in the back as he tried to escape. I ran into the bush. I could hear my relatives screaming as they were attacked. The next morning I came out of my hide-out and found the bodies of my relatives. My uncle had been hacked to death and my sister-in-law had been cut into pieces. My aunty was still alive but had been stabbed with a bayonet.”

23 December 2009

Women of the Democratic Republic of Congo are starting to fight back, pressing for justice as a fundamental human right in the face of appalling sexual violence. For years now, rape has been used as a tactic of war in the east of the DRC where prosecutions are difficult to achieve.

MONUSCO - Kinshasa, 13 December 2010 - Several Congolese journalists were awarded prizes for best reporting on human rights issues and sexual violence in a ceremony organized on 10 December 2010 by the Canadian NGO, Journalists for Human Rights (JHR), and the United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO). The ceremony took place on the International Human Rights Day, marking the 62nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights.

Kinshasa, 25 August 2010 - The Canadian NGO Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) and the UN Human Rights office in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have launched a competition to reward the best news reports on human rights. The competition is open to all journalists in print, radio and television working in the DRC.

MONUC/ Kiwanja, April 15, 2010 - The joint office UN Human Rights office (BCNUDH in French acronym) and NGO Centre de recherche sur l’environnement, la démocratie et les droits de l’homme (CREDDHO) recently established a new legal clinic in Kiwanja, North-Kivu. Funded by the Canadian Cooperation for International Development since 2008, this activity is part of the legal and judiciary dimension of the Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence in the North and South Kivu provinces.

MWITWOBE, DR Congo — Five goats and some money used to be the price to forget an act of rape in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but UN staff are telling women they can now go to court.

At Mwitwobe, a village of 5,000 people in Katanga province, about 100 men and women listened attentively to Ashraf Sebbabi, who works for the human rights division of the UN mission in DR Congo (MONUC).

"Rape is a crime. It is important for you to break your silence and denounce it," Sebbabi told the gathering through a Swahili interpreter, who was a member of a delegation alerting people in Katanga to their rights in cases of sexual violence.