Louis Michel, the Belgian former EU development commissioner and current prominent Liberal MEP has shocked his home nation and its one-time central African subjects by calling King Leopold II, the Congo's colonial master responsible for between 3 million and 10 million deaths, a "visionary hero."

The top United Nations envoy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has paid tribute to a group of Senegalese blue helmets who are the first batch of peacekeepers to leave the country in line with the recent decision by the Security Council to alter the UN mission there.The Council last month agreed to transform the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC (MONUC) into a stabilization mission in the coming weeks, authorizing the withdrawal of up to 2,000 UN military personnel – from an existing strength of 19,815 – by 30 June from areas where security has improved enough to allow their removal.

Operation Amani Leo, launched jointly by MONUC (the United Nations Mission in Congo) and FARDC (the
Congolese army) in January to regain control of mining territories in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu from rebels, while ensuring security for the local population has been extended to September. But Congolese women are arguing for changes in the conduct of military operations.

Following a violent attack on Emmanuel Lubala Mugisho, President of leading Congolese human rights organisation Heritiers de la Justice, Christian Aid is appealing to the international community for increased protection for human rights activists and greater support to the Congolese authorities to bring perpetrators to justice and end the cycle of violence.

The notorious rebel group known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is carrying out ever more deadly attacks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and also continues to abduct children to use as soldiers in its ranks, United Nations aid workers reported. The rebels have murdered an average of 102 civilians every month in the DRC’s Orientale province since last December, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, compared with an average of 64 per month in the previous two years.

At least 19 people including five soldiers killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo's volatile east after the Hutu rebels attacked an army post, the army reported. About 150 fighters from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) rebel group staged a pre-dawn attack Wednesday on a military position in Nord-Kivu province, Vianney Kazarama, the army spokesman in the region said.

Nearly 1.9 million people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – half of them children – continue to live away from their homes after having been displaced by armed conflict, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has reported, adding that a lack of funds was hindering efforts to continue assisting them.

A leading rights activist in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been found dead in the capital, Kinshasa. Floribert Chebeya's body was discovered, partially clothed, on the back seat of his own car. Rights group Amnesty International says oppression of activists in DR Congo is growing.

The human rights situation in key parts of DR Congo remains extremely serious, according to a report by UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions Philip Alston. The expert warned that killings, rapes, mutilation, village burnings and displacement would continue to take place unless civilian protection measures are urgently improved.

Eleven militia members have been sentenced to death in the Democratic Republic of Congo for their part in an attack that left two UN staff dead. During the attack, in April in the town of Mbandaka, local militia overwhelmed UN and government troops and briefly seized the airport.

Families left homeless by a landslide on the slopes of a volcano which left 54 people missing in the Democratic Republic of Congo will be relocated, the UN says. A UN spokesperson told the BBC that some 250 homes had been destroyed. An overflowing river caused a landslide at the weekend on the slopes of Nyiragongo volcano, near the eastern town of Goma.

''The rebel leader asked me two things: 'Do you want us to be your husbands? Or do you want us to rape you?'. "Congolese mother-of-eight Clementine speaks in a quiet and hesitant voice: "I chose to be raped." She explains: "I told myself, if I tell them that I want to be their wife, they will kill my husband. I didn't want my children growing up saying the one that made our father die is our mother."

President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has pledged to promote the emergence an AIDS-Free Generation, to ensure safer motherhood and to eliminate mother-child-transmission of HIV in his country. “These are priorities for the women and children of my country,” President Kabila said as he received a joint mission to his nation by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, UNFPA’s Executive Director, and Michel Sidibé, UNAIDS’ Executive Director.

In the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, many families have been battered by war, rape, poverty and a lack of education. However, a humanitarian group says there’s a way to help families not only deal with the issues, but rise above them. The eastern DRC has become synonymous with war and rape. In recent years, various rebel groups have attacked and looted villages, driving civilians into the bush to escape. Attempts by government forces and U.N. troops to defeat them have often made matters worse for civilians, as militias launch retaliatory strikes against villagers.

Dozens of people are dead or missing after a boat capsized in a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The boat, carrying 125 people, overturned on Wednesday evening in the Congo River near the city of Kindu, the capital of Congo's eastern Maniema province.

A report alleging that government troops summarily executed fifty civilians in early April in fighting around Mbandaka, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo's northwestern Équateur Province has been rejected by the government. "About fifty Congolese civilians were killed without warning by the Congolese Armed Forces (known by its French acronym, FARDC) in April 2010," says a report by human rights group ASADHO (Association africaine de défense des droits de l’homme), a group based in Kinshasa, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Congolese authorities have been urged to ensure two soldiers and a civilian sentenced to death for murdering a reporter face some form of punishment. A right groups says it fears as there is a moratorium on death penalties in the Democratic Republic of Congo those found guilty this week may be freed.

They may number as few as 100 men, women and adolescents, but Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) units scattered across the forests of northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo's Orientale Province have sown sufficient terror to make some 318,000 people take flight, abandoning their homes and fields, in many cases to the uncertain sanctuary of urban centres.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is “the rape capital of the world”, a senior UN official has said. Margot Wallstrom, the UN’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict, urged the Security Council to punish the perpetrators in DR Congo.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has spoken out against the large number of rapes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), voicing concern at the impunity with which the attacks are being carried out. On average, 14 assaults have been recorded daily over the past three months, but “we fear that the real numbers could be much higher considering that many survivors keep silent for fear of being ostracized,” agency spokesperson Melissa Fleming told reporters in Geneva.