The Congolese government, in the wake of the Carter Center press release on March 10, 2008 and at the end of a five-day mining conference in the Congo, published the final report of the mining contract review, which was initiated in April 2007. The report indicated that the government launched the review process to make certain that Congo's mineral wealth benefit the people of the Congo. In order to achieve this goal the government had to review 61 existing mining contracts and establish a process for rectifying the abusive contracts. Deputy Mines Minister Victor Kasongo noted "that none of the contracts met international standards of contracts."

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has joined forces with civil society groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Government in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to launch a nationwide public awareness campaign aimed at reducing the country’s appalling levels of sexual violence.

The suffering of the women in the Congo, particularly in the east of the country has long reached biblical proportions, yet and still the silence continues throughout the global community. Hundreds of thousands of women have been violently raped, mutilated and terrorized by a host of culprits (Rebel Groups, Rwandan Soldiers, Congolese Soldiers, civilian population and even the United Nations).

Buyers of minerals from rebel areas of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be punished under a United Nations arms embargo, a group of experts has told the Security Council. A five-year war in the vast Central African nation that ended in 2003 has left much of DRC's eastern borderlands a volatile patchwork of rebel fiefdoms and militia-controlled zones.

Congolese Tutsi rebels said on Friday they were suspending participation in an east Congo ceasefire commission until an independent inquiry was launched into United Nations allegations that they massacred civilians. The move announced by renegade Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda marked the latest hitch in a ceasefire accord for eastern Democratic Republic of Congo signed on January 23 by Nkunda's rebels, the government and rival militia groups.

The United Nations peacekeeping operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has said that it is investigating human rights violations committed by both Government troops and rebel groups in the eastern part of the strife-torn nation. The human rights section of the mission, known by its French acronym MONUC, has positively identified eight victims, including three children, who were killed by Congolese Army soldiers on 2 January in a village near Goma, the capital

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken steps to get rid of foreign rebel militia in the country. This was evidenced by a presidential order, authorising the formation of a pilot committee for the purpose. Coordinated by Congo's Foreign Affairs Minister, Antipas Mbusa Nyamwisi, the committee is expected to get backing from the UN peacekeeping mission [MONUC] in the country to monitor and coordinate disarmament, demobilisation and repatriation activities of foreign fighters to their respective countries.

The UN refugee agency has launched a final distribution of aid for a large group of displaced people who have returned to their homes in the southern province of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). "This intervention is being carried out as part of UNHCR's programme of assistance and protection for people displaced in northern and central Katanga," said Roger Hollo, a protection officer in the provincial capital, Lubumbashi.

With the third DRC war crimes suspect now at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, the ICC Prosecutor has signalled that his work in Ituri is done. According to the Prosecutor, the arrest of Mathieu Ngudjolo now closes the first phase of investigations in the DRC. He is now turning his attention to the ongoing atrocities in the Kivus, just south of Ituri.

Forty-year-old Fabukuze Ulimubenchi suffered a miscarriage and lost contact with her two children after fleeing her home in troubled North Kivu province last week. "We fled in different directions when we heard gunshots. I am not even sure my [two] children are with their father," the tearful woman said as she queued up to receive aid at a Catholic church in Kiwanja, the main town in North Kivu's Rutshuru district. UNHCR is providing protection services.

A former Congo warlord was flown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on Thursday to face war crimes charges including murder, sexual slavery and using child soldiers, a court spokesman said. Mathieu Ngudjolo was the head of the Front of Nationalists and Integrationists (FPI) militia during conflict in northeast Ituri Province that grew out Congo's 1998-2003 war.

The World Bank independent Inspection Panel said that it appreciates the World Bank Group’s efforts to tackle difficult and risky problems under trying circumstances in the forest sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). While pointing to a series of significant policy compliance failures in Bank-supported forest-sector reforms, the Panel noted the view of many stakeholders, including critics of the Bank’s actions, that the Bank should stay engaged in DRC forest work and strengthen efforts to address problems and correct policy shortcomings.

An organization defending press freedoms in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the National Union of Professionals of the Press (SNPP), attacked the incarceration of a reporter who has investigated the country's mining industry. Investigative journalist Maurice Kayombo has been behind bars in the Democratic Republic of Congo since January 9 on charges of “blackmail and bringing (the mining) authority into disrepute,” according to Journalists in Danger and the International Federation of Journalists.

Fighters loyal to Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general, have signed a peace deal with the government of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and an armed tribal group. Joseph Kabila, the DRC president, attended the signing in Goma, the capital of eastern North Kivu province, which has suffered heavy fighting in recent months. The accord on Wednesday followed two weeks of negotiations.

The UN refugee agency has welcomed a peace agreement signed this week by rival warring groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) but warned that the accord would not solve all the problems immediately. UNHCR attended the conference and witnessed the signing Wednesday in Goma, capital of the troubled North Kivu province. UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres had earlier said in a message to the conference that the gathering "represents a big step in the search for a lasting peace."

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called on the authorities of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to release the journalist Maurice Kayombo, who has been held for two weeks on charges of “blackmail and disparaging an official,” after the Secretary General of the Mining Ministry filed a complaint against him.

Rape and other forms of sexual violence remain prevalent in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite the cessation of military activities and the disarmament of militias in the region, according to aid workers. Before, this was mainly attributed to men in uniform, but now civilians comprise a significant number of the perpetrators.

The insurgency led by dissident general Laurent Nkunda in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has spelt out its demands at a peace conference to end the conflict in the troubled North and South Kivu provinces in the east, where, according to the UN, insecurity and human rights abuses have displaced at least half a million people in the past 12 months.

Reporters Without Borders has called on the authorities to explain how Maurice Kayombo, an investigative reporter for the privately-owned monthly Les Grands Enjeux, came to be detained. Arrested on 9 January while interviewing the secretary-general of the ministry of mines in his office, he has been charged with blackmail and “disparaging an official.”

More than 550 people have fallen victim to a cholera epidemic so far this year in Lubumbashi, capital of Congo's mineral-rich Katanga province, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Friday. At least eight people have died from the waterborne illness in the city of around 1 million, and 104 are receiving medical care at a treatment centre set up by MSF's Belgian chapter.