Tactics and tools for the protection
of Human Rights Defenders

A/HRC/14/24/Add.3

Distr.: General
1 June 2010
Original: English


Human Rights Council
Fourteenth session
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development

Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summaryor arbitrary executions, Philip Alston

Addendum

Mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Summary

I visited the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) from 5-15 October 2009 to investigate allegations of unlawful killings. My investigations focused on political killings in Kinshasa and Bas Congo; killings by rebels and the Congolese army in the Kivus and in Province Orientale; and deaths in prisons. I also investigated incidents of sexual violence leading to death; killings of accused “witches”; killings of human rights defenders and journalists; and vigilante killings.
In separate conflicts in the Kivus and Province Orientale, many hundreds of civilians were killed in 2009 by rebel groups, including the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR) and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), and by Government forces. In both areas, there have been a series of poorly planned military operations by the Government and the UN, which, while having the laudable aim of neutralizing rebel forces, have achieved far too little and at a catastrophic civilian cost. The rebels have responded to the military operations by launching devastating revenge attacks on the insufficiently protected civilian Congolese population, committing widespread sexual violence, forced labor, kidnapping, looting, village burning, and killings. Not only have the Government and the UN failed to effectively plan for civilian protection in their operations, but the Government forces have themselves actively abused the civilian population. In some cases, army abuses have been small-scale and motivated by the poor pay and rations provided to soldiers. In others, Congolese soldiers have massacred civilians in the Kivus perceived to support the rebels, or otherwise seen to be ethnic or political rivals. The rapid and poorly conceived integration of former Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) rebels, including senior commanders accused of grave war crimes, into the Congolese army has been a primary cause of these large-scale killings.
Despite Government claims that it has pushed the LRA out of Province Orientale, the reality is that the group continues its brutal attacks on civilians. In fact, at the time of writing, LRA attacks, often resulting in disfigurement of victims’ faces and death, were on the increase. In addition, the deployment of units of ex-CNDP members into Province Orientale has also been accompanied by a rise in reports of army abuses against the population. With military and rebel abuses encouraging the growth of local self-defence groups, long-term stability in the province will be under serious threat unless the Government and MONUC work to promote an accountable and effective security presence in Orientale.
In the west of the country, unaccountable and politicized security forces in Kinshasa and Bas Congo killed hundreds of opposition supporters in 2007 and 2008. Despite the very real threat of further violence as the next election approaches, little international attention is paid to the issue, and the Government has taken no steps towards reform of the security sector.
Across the country, many people die in detention from hunger and atrocious prison conditions. Most prisons receive no Government budget, and prisoners are fed by their families. The interior of most facilities is controlled by prisoners themselves, and not surprisingly, escapes and violence are common. Records and monitoring are so poor that the Government does not even know how many prisons and prisoners are in the country.
Children and women accused of being witches are also killed in the DRC, with officials all too often turning a blind eye to the violence. Similarly, private acts of “justice” against suspected criminal are common, and the police response is slow or non-existent. Human rights defenders and journalists are also regularly threatened, and some have been killed for their efforts to promote respect for human rights.
Impunity for all forms of killings is the norm. This is in part due to systemic problems in the justice system, especially corruption at all levels, regular political interference, and severe resource constraints. While there have been some recent improvements in the military justice system in the east of the country, impunity for senior commanders remains pervasive. The Government refuses to investigate and arrest suspected war criminals, including Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the ICC. At the time of writing, the UN mission in the Congo was still yet to publish a clear conditionality policy for its support to Congolese army operations, and, despite widespread army abuses, the UN had withdrawn support from only one Congolese unit.
At the end of my October 2009 mission, I recommended six achievable key reforms to reduce killings and promote accountability in the DRC. These included: that UN assistance be pre-conditioned on the Government providing uniforms to soldiers that identify their name and rank; the indictment of senior commanders accused of war crimes; vastly improved preventative and protection measures for civilians; the integration of the Republican Guard into the Congolese army; a census of the prison population and the establishment of a budget for each prison; and improvements to UN monitoring and reporting. At the time of writing, it does not appear that there has been real progress on implementing any of these reforms. This report analyses in detail the urgent need for their implementation.

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