The Human Rights Council must act to end impunity in the DRC

03/06/2013
Press release

Since 2008 and the discontinuing of the Independent Expert’s mandate, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been neglected by the Human Rights Council as a situation which should be addressed by the Security Council only with the unique aim to achieve peace and stability in the region.

According to representatives of Congolese civil society which attended a high-level panel chaired by Ms. Trierweiler, Ambassador of France Libertés, the gravity of the violations committed against civilians and women in particular deserves a strong response of the UN Human Rights Council :

At this unprecedented and crucial time for DRC, "a strong response of the Human Rights Council is needed to establish a human rights monitoring mechanism to prevent the increase risk to civilians created by the deployment of an offensive UN military brigade and follow-up on all recommendations made by the UN regarding the fight against impunity in the DRC", as stated by Ms. Trierweiler during the side event

As underlined by the UN mapping report : «tackling impunity is crucial to ending the cycle ofviolence“.

The United Nations Security Council recently decided to extend the mandate of MONUSCO until March 2014, with the addition of a proactive “intervention brigade”, authorized to engage in military action against armed groups in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the situation of the civil population, and more specifically that of women, remains very serious.

 materials related to the event :

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