DR Congo: Human Rights Report to be Launched Today

By Henry Neondo

Kinshasa, DRC--The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) will today publish the report of the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 1993 and 2003.

The mapping exercise and its resulting report are unprecedented in scope, covering ten years and the entire territory of the DRC.

According to the advanced Press Statement from OHCHR, the report describes a total of more than 600 incidents in the DRC between 1993 and 2003 in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed, injured and victimized in other ways, including large numbers of women and children.

Over 1,280 witnesses were interviewed to corroborate or invalidate alleged violations, including previously undocumented incidents, and more than 1,500 documents were collected and analysed during the two years it took to research and produce the report.

The overarching objective of the DRC Mapping Exercise is “to formulate a series of options aimed at assisting the Government of the DRC in identifying appropriate transitional justice mechanisms to deal with the legacy of these violations, in terms of truth, justice, reparation and reform,”  said the statement.