A group of international and Congolese human rights organizations are greatly concerned that international fair-trial standards have been violated in the trial and appeal of four men convicted in the murder of Congolese journalist Serge Maheshe.

The United Nations is investigating allegations that its peacekeepers sexually abused children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), its mission in the war-scarred country said on Wednesday. The mission (Monuc) "is deeply concerned by allegations that surfaced recently of sexual exploitation and abuse against some of its Blue Helmets, in the province of North Kivu", spokesperson Kemal Saiki told reporters.

Two agreements signed since the end of 2007 offer some hope for an end to more than a decade of violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), even if fighting has continued and a lasting solution has yet to be found to the presence in the region of Rwandan Hutu rebels, according to analysts. Since the DRC government and various armed groups in the chronically unstable North Kivu province signed a ceasefire in January, the truce has been repeatedly violated and the number of displaced civilians in the province has increased.

The latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the local conflict’s root causes, including unequal access to land and unfair sharing of revenues from exploitation of natural resource. It analyses in detail a district that has too often been ignored by Kinshasa and which now needs a strategy involving national and provincial institutions, with the active support of the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC) and donors.

The Greatest Silence is an apt title for the film this article reviews, since it keeps under wraps one of the most common crimes, so common that people just shrug their shoulders, sometimes with the words: it is human nature. The filmmaker, Lisa F. Jackson, has brought out something which horrifies people, but the horror, strangely, does not seem to lead to anything serious enough to change the dominant mindset about rape. Why do the offenders brag about raping one might ask?

Although the United Nations spends over $1 billion per year to maintain a presence in the Congo, that presence has been plagued with numerous missteps and wrongdoings. UN troops have been involved in the raping and prostitution of Congolese women and girls and of late, have been accused of smuggling natural resources and selling weapons to rebel groups.

A Congolese warlord known as "the Terminator" is being sought for prosecution, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague has revealed. The arrest warrant for Bosco Ntaganda, was issued in 2006 but not made public and he is still at large. He is accused of conscripting children under 15 to fight in hostilities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo between July 2002 and December 2003.

Renewed fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu province has forced the United Nations refugee agency to halt the distribution of aid to internally displaced persons and to call off a drive to register newly displaced people in the Rutshuru area.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s vast tropical rainforest is a true natural treasure, home to over a thousand species of plants and hundreds of species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians. The tropical rainforest of the Congo Basin is the world’s second largest, after South America’s Amazon Rainforest. Situated in the heart of the African tropics, the DRC is home to the greatest expanse of rainforest in all of Africa. Unfortunately, the global trend toward tropical deforestation has not left this region untouched.

April is the beginning of the rainy season for the DRC's eastern provinces, a time when perpetually more water gets dumped on an already drenched region. But despite an abundant rain supply and churning rivers, access to clean water has been a persistent problem for this Central African nation. As large as Western Europe, the DRC is still attempting to pick up the pieces after a decade of war and attendant upheaval that claimed the lives of over five million people, according to recent figures from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) relief organisation.

Africa is set to benefit from a comparative study on the BPO (business process outsourcing) industry. Research for the study, commissioned by the International Development Research Council (IDRC), will begin next month with the aim of bridging the gap of insufficient data and statistics on BPO in many African countries.

Seven African governments and the world's largest banks and construction firms meet in London today to plan the most powerful dam ever conceived - an $80bn (£40bn) hydro power project on the Congo river which, its supporters say, could double the amount of electricity available on the continent.

Wading through the chest-high grass outside of this hamlet in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mathieu Nyakufa gestures to the bones -- still bleaching in the sun -- of those who have been lost to the country's wars. "I was living just down here in the valley," the 52-year-old farmer says of one terrible morning in February 2003. "They were killing people with guns, with machetes, with spears and arrows. I escaped because I saw people running in my direction. Three of my children were killed in my own house."

Reporters Without Borders and Journalists in Danger (JED), its partner organisation in Democratic Republic of Congo, have written to Congolese interior minister Denis Kalume Numbi asking him to intervene in the case of newspaper editor Nsimba Embete Ponte and his assistant, Davin Ntondo Nzovuangu, who are being held incommunicado.

The new Country Assistance Strategy for the Democratic Republic of Congo, which the Bank has kept secret, suggests a continued emphasis on the natural resource sectors as sources of growth going forward and predicts at least $1.4 billion in new lending over the next three years.

In mid-March hundreds of Congolese women, men and girls raised banners that read, Together, let us say No to the silence, for the dignity of the Congolese and Enough sexual violence!. With faces of determination, the women, men and girls waved these slogans high above their heads. More than 1,000 Congolese authorities and civilians, UN leaders, NGOs and civil society groups’ were gathered in Kinkole, a suburb of Kinshasa, to kick off a nationwide public awareness campaign aimed to eradicate an epidemic of sexual violence.

The Congolese government through its police forces has again targeted the people of Bundu Dia Kongo (BDK); a religio-political organization made up of the Kongo people in the Bas Congo province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The government crushed the group in February of 2007 pursuant to protests in Bas Congo stemming from corrupt provincial elections.

DRC mining contract commission to push for a greater share in the Tenke Fungurume mining concession, one of the largest copper-cobalt deposits in the world. Critics charge that EIB's investment in the highly contested project before the conclusion of the contract review was "irresponsible."

Efforts to combat the spread of tuberculosis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been slowed down by the problem of TB patients also infected with HIV, local health officials said. "The disease [TB] is on the increase because there is a link with HIV - there are co-infected patients. These are the patients who have caused the number of TB cases to be on the rise," said Guylaine Tshitenge, an activist of the NGO National anti-Tuberculosis League in Congo, during a march organised in Kinshasa on 24 March to mark the World Day to Combat Tuberculosis.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has set up a new chicken-rearing and egg producing project to improve the nutrition of some of the neediest internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the volatile North Kivu province in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The project, in partnership with Veterinaires sans Frontieres (VSR), seeks to raise the self-sufficiency of the displaced though the consumption and sale of poultry products.