UN report on rights violations in DR Congo to be released next month

The report documenting the most serious human rights violations committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 1993 and 2003 will be made public on 1 October, the United Nations announced today.

The so-called mapping exercise and its resulting report are “unprecedented in scope,” the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated in a news release, noting that it covers 10 years and the entire territory of the DRC, not just the war-torn east.

Its overarching objective is to help the people of the region in establishing transitional judicial systems and assist in the fight against impunity.

The report, a draft of which was recently leaked and published in the French newspaper Le Monde, describes a total of more than 600 incidents in the DRC during the 10-year period in which tens of thousands of people were killed, and reportedly implicates a number of groups in the atrocities.

“Following requests, we have decided to give concerned States a further month to comment on the draft,” said High Commissioner Navi Pillay.

“I have offered to publish any such comments alongside the report itself on 1 October, if they so wish,” she added.

More than 1,280 witnesses were interviewed to corroborate or invalidate alleged violations, including previously undocumented incidents, and at least 1,500 documents were collected and analysed during the two years that it took to research and write the report.