The DRC’s desire to choose its own mining trading partners, whether Chinese investors or Western corporations, calls the bluff of global financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, writes Antoine Roger Lokongo. Negotiations the country has conducted reveal how these institutions are putting pressure on the DRC government to ditch the Socomin deal with China – a Beijing-based, joint-venture between the DRC’s Gécamines and a group of Chinese state-owned enterprises – as a condition to get its debt forgiven. That is clearly blackmail, Lokongo maintains, and is inconsistent with the spirit of free trade and globalisation.

Civilians are slowly returning to their homes in the North Kivu region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite continuing violence and displacement due to militia activities, sources said. "While we are seeing tentative returns in some areas, we are also seeing new displacement due to ongoing rape, killings and looting," Bob Kitchen, country director for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said in Goma.

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has demobilized 880 children associated with armed groups in the volatile eastern province of North Kivu between 30 January and 2 March. Madnodje Mounoubai, spokesperson for the mission, known by its French acronym MONUC, told a news conference in Kinshasa that the great majority of the 839 boys and 41 girls are Congolese, but there are also 31 Rwandans, two Burundians and two Ugandans.

In Bukavu, the main town in South Kivu Province of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Panzi referral hospital receives six to eight women daily who have experienced sexual violence. "At least 60 percent of the women have been sexually violated, probably as sex slaves, through gang rape or through domestic violence," Maria Bard, manager of the hospital's Victims of Sexual Violence Project, said.

cc The DRC’s desire to choose its own mining trading partners, whether Chinese investors or Western corporations, calls the bluff of global financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank, writes Antoine Roger Lokongo. Negotiations the country has conducted reveal how these institutions are putting pressure on the DRC government to ditch the Socomin deal with China – a Beijing-based, joint-venture between the DRC’s Gécamines and a group of Chinese state-owned enterprises – as a condition to get its debt forgiven. That is clearly blackmail, Lokongo maintains, and is inconsistent with the spirit of free trade and globalisation.

A Bandundu court has declared the charges pending against Bwamputu Akienzin Zéphyrin unfounded, acquitting him on all counts at his fifth court appearance. Zéphyrin was originally summoned to court in December 2008 on a defamation charge brought by Marie Théodore Kipulu Samba, a former RTNC director, after he broadcast the news of Kipulu's sacking as director of RTNC-Bandundu. Kipulu asked the court for US$50,000 in damages, in addition to the sentence provided for by law. His request was denied.

The UN refugee agency expressed concern Tuesday about mounting violence against Congolese civilians in North Kivu province after some 3,000 people were displaced during an attack on their village. "Since February 14, the so-called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda [FDLR] have carried out numerous attacks in Masisi, Lubero and Walikale areas in North Kivu, sparking a new wave of displacement," a UNHCR spokesman said, referring to a rebel militia composed of ethnic Hutu fighters.

The World Bank will give a $100 million emergency grant to help cash-strapped Democratic Republic of Congo pay essential bills and teachers' salaries, the Bank said on Friday. The World Bank proposed the emergency funds earlier this month after the country's mining sector was hit by the financial crisis and foreign reserves dwindled to just $36 million, down from more than $225 million last April.

An appeal submission is being prepared for an asylum claimant in Thailand who is from DRC. His case is being adjudicated by UNHCR. The refugee has been rejected on the grounds that he can go to an alternative part of the country, i.e. Kinshasha.

More than 15,000 Congolese have fled to South Sudan since the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) began launching attacks in north-east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the United Nations refugee agency reported today. “It is critical to move all of these refuges away from border areas both for security reasons and to facilitate distribution of aid,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva. “Access to the refugees will soon become impossible when the seasonal rains begin in April and roads become impassable.”

The United Nations Security Council should act with urgency to send additional peacekeepers to northern Democratic Republic of Congo, where the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continues its brutal attacks on civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report. The Security Council is expected to discuss the situation in Congo on February 17, 2009.

As people around the world celebrate their loved ones on Valentine's Day weekend, activists are working to ensure that the ongoing horrors of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are not forgotten. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands women and girls have been brutally raped in the DRC, primarily by rebel groups vying over control of land and mineral resources.

Peace talks between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the mainly Tutsi rebel group which last year launched a devastating offensive in the eastern region of the country are expected to restart soon, the United Nations envoy leading the negotiations announced. The talks between the Government and the National Congress in Defense of the People (CNDP), which began in Nairobi in December, seek to bring an end to a conflict which has uprooted an estimated 250,000 people since August, on top of the 800,000 already displaced in the region, mainly in North Kivu province.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is kicking off a five-city tour of the United States aimed at highlighting the horrors faced by thousands of Congolese rape victims, while calling for an end to impunity for the perpetrators of the worst kinds of sexual violence. Simple everyday tasks, such as gathering wood and fetching water, expose thousands of girls and women to vicious abuses in the conflict-ridden eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), “where rape is used as a weapon of war,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman.

Behind the headlines heralding potentially positive developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), women and girls continue to be at risk. Media outlets report the arrest of rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda and the possibility of peace openings, but the eastern region where women and girls have been savagely raped and mutilated remains traumatized.

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo should urgently carry out new recommendations from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to protect children from violence and abuse, Human Rights Watch and the Coalition of Congolese Non-governmental Organizations on Child Rights (CODE) has said.

The top United Nations envoy to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has formally accepted an invitation by the nation’s Government to support the joint DRC/Rwanda military operation targeting ethnic Rwandan Hutu militias. “We are going to bring our support so that this process can succeed as soon as possible,” Alan Doss, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative, said following talks with DRC authorities yesterday in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province.

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been terrorizing the Haut Uélé area of Orientale province in north-east DRC in recent months. The UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), along with partner agencies, visited affected areas from 16-17 January to help them set up an appropriate humanitarian response. In Faradje, the team assessed the damage to property and spoke to those remaining in the town following the deadly LRA attacks, noting the need for protection and psychosocial assistance for civilians.

Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda has been arrested in Rwandan territory after he tried to resist a joint Rwandan-Congolese military operation in eastern Congo, the operation's joint command said on Friday. The arrest of Nkunda, who has led a Tutsi rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo since 2004, occurred during a joint Congolese-Rwandan military operation launched this week to hunt Rwandan Hutu rebels operating in Congo.

Reporters Without Borders notes that Nsimba Embete Ponte, the editor of the biweekly L’Interprète, was released on completing a 10-month prison sentence for “insulting” President Joseph Kabila by referring to rumours about his health in a series of articles.