Top UN political officer to visit DR Congo ahead of elections

In a bid to encourage smooth and peaceful presidential and provincial assembly elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the top United Nations political officer will begin a four-day visit on Friday as the vast country seeks to cement its transition from six years of civil war and continued factional violence.

Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari will meet with the key Congolese political actors and the Independent Electoral Commission as well as with Secretary-General Kofi Aannan’s Special Representative William Swing and his team.

He will be accompanied by Craig Jenness, Director of the Electoral Assistance Division of the Department of Political Affairs. The landmark elections began with a first round of presidential and National Assembly polls in July, one of the largest and most complex votes the UN has ever helped organize and the country’s first free polls in 45 years.

President Joseph Kabila and Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba, the top candidates in July’s first round, will compete in a run-off presidential election on 29 October.

The civil war, which officially ended in 1999, cost 4 million lives through fighting and attendant hunger and disease, widely considered the most lethal fighting in the world since World War II. Since then factional fighting has continued in the country’s east, killing and displacing tens of thousands more.

The UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC) reported that the Congolese Armed Forces remain the main human rights violators in the restive eastern provinces of the Kivus and Katanga and in the Ituri District.

The National Police also flouted human rights by arbitrarily rounding up some 800 people, including street children, during recent post-election unrest, it added in its latest monthly human rights assessment.

Sexual violence against women and girls, as well as the unlawful activities of Congolese and foreign armed groups such as the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army also continue to pose enormous challenges to the Congolese authorities, it noted.

After his visit to the DRC, Mr. Gambari will go to Cape Town, South Africa, to launch on 16 October the first of a series of consultations about mediation in peace processes, involving experts from different world regions.