Almost 30 of the militias which have been destabilising the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) north-east Ituri province with ethnic and political violence, agreed at the weekend to lay down arms and join the national peace process. They signed a disarmament agreement in Kinshasa after four days of negotiations with the power-sharing DRC transitional government and the United Nations peacekeeping mission Monuc.

Conditions of detention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are such that a prison term of one to five years is tantamount to a death sentence, according to the Human Rights Section of the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC. In a 44-page report titled "Rapport sur la detention en RDC avril 2004", made available to IRIN last Thursday, the human rights section denounced as unacceptable the conditions of detention.

The humanitarian situation of tens of thousands of Congolese who had been expelled from Angola into two southwestern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is stabilising as the number of new arrivals decreases, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported last Thursday. In a report detailing the situation of the expellees in the provinces of Bandundu and Kasai Occidental, OCHA said that the improvement in the humanitarian conditions could be attributed to a request made by the Congolese authorities to Angola to halt the expulsion of illegal migrants in its diamond mines until better conditions for their return could be arranged.

The job purpose is to identify, plan, manage and report on programmes in North Kivu Province, eastern DRC, focussing on livelihoods and emergency preparedness and response; to advise on partnership approaches and train national staff in capacity building of partner organisations; to participate in the assessment and identification of other potential new interventions elsewhere in DRC.

IRC has operated a multi-sector program in eastern DRC since early November 1996. IRC has been active in health, water and sanitation, shelter construction, structural rehabilitation and support of local NGOs. From its inception, the IRC-eastern DRC program was designed to meet the urgent needs of refugees attempting to repatriate to Rwanda, while also serving the rehabilitation needs of the local communities adversely affected by the civil war and the subsequent damage caused by the mass exodus of over one million refugees and the looting of departing armies. The Provincial Coordinator is ultimately responsible for overseeing all project implementation.

United Nations forces in the volatile north-eastern Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Saturday stepped up their patrols, a day after they killed at least 10 militia in clashes there, a UN spokesperson said. The UN force is in charge of peacekeeping in the province, which has been beset for several years by brutal ethnic violence between the Lendu and the minority Hema ethnic group. Periodic Lendu-Hema violence in Ituri, which is rich in gold and diamonds, has caused 50 000 deaths and displaced 500 000 people since 1999.

Close to 25,000 people have been displaced in the eastern province of South Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since fighting began in April between the army and Rwandan Interahamwe militia, the UN Office for the Coordination of the Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Tuesday. This estimate was the result of a census system set up by an NGO, Caritas, with the support of local authorities and representatives of internally displaced persons (IDPs), OCHA reported.

Tens of thousands of Congolese expelled from Angola may be in need of psychological support and health care following reports of systematic sexual violence they underwent upon their expulsion, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has reported. "OCHA calls for an increase in the capacity of health partners already working on the ground and the financing of new partners with expertise in sexual violence and the prevention and transmission of HIV/AIDS," the agency said.

Medecins Sans Frontiere-Belgium said on Wednesday it had sent an emergency medical team to a sector of the Democratic Republic of Congo's border with Angola, following an announcement by the Angolan government that was expelling another 18,000 Congolese illegal diamond miners. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had already reported the arrival of 68,000 exhausted Congolese at the DRC border provinces of Bandundu, Kasai Occidental, Kasai Orientale and Katanga. "There have been massive expulsions for ten days now," Gilbert Gitelman, OCHA's field coordinator, told reporters on Wednesday in Kinshasa, "families have been separated, intrusive body searches have been conducted on women, children have given laxatives to expel hidden diamonds, and women and even some men have been raped in public."

Human rights defenders “form the base that regional and international human rights organisations and mechanisms build upon in the promotion and protection of human rights” and that “as a result of their involvement in the struggle for human rights, the defenders are often the first victims of human rights violations,” according to the United Nations. Africa in general and particularly the DRC is characterize by the persistence of actions that directly or indirectly prevent or hinder the work and security of individuals, groups or organisations working to promote and protect human and peoples' rights, including the growing risks faced by human rights defenders and their families.

The Southern Africa Human Rights NGO Network (SAHRINGON), consisting of at least 50 human rights NGOs' in the region, has noted with regret the recent kidnapping, assault and torture of a fellow human rights defender Been Masudi Kingombe by security forces in the town of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo. Kingombe is the Executive Director of the Centre for Human Rights (CDH) based in Lubumbashi, DRC.

The International Criminal Court could begin investigations this year into war crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, following a request by the country's president, the ICC said. President Joseph Kabila sent a letter to Louis Moreno Ocampo, the court's chief prosecutor, asking him to look into alleged war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, the court said in a statement. When the court was launched last July, Ocampo said he intended to probe the situation in the war-torn Ituri region, and he has received six complaints of atrocities in the northeastern region since that time.

A local human rights organisation, Voice of The Voiceless, has claimed that at least 200 people of the Ngbandi ethnic group in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been arrested in connection with a recent attack by ex-soldiers of the nation's former army on several military and civilian installations. The chairman of the Kinshasa-based NGO, Floribert Chebeya, told IRIN on Monday that a government investigation into the incident had been "oriented" in a manner in which it seemed that only the Ngbandi people, the ethnic group of the late Congolese president, Mobutu Sese Seko, had been targeted.

Amnesty International has reiterated the importance of effective international oversight of the human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through the UN Commission on Human Rights. "Barely a week ago UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned continuing atrocities in DRC and expressed concern over rising factionalism within the DRC's government of national unity. In Amnesty International's view, it therefore staggers belief that the Commission would consider removing such an essential mechanism for the effective international scrutiny of human rights in that country."

NGOs in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have allied to challenge industrial logging in their country's rainforests. In February they appealed to the World Bank and other agencies to halt a plan which would make up to 60 million hectares of rainforest available to logging companies in the coming years. The dispute is instructive about the Bank's approach to human rights and international law. Roger Muchuba of the human rights group Héritiers de la Justice, said: "Civil society is taking the initiative of informing the population about the new laws, as the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organisation have so far failed to."

The bodies of at least 25 people hacked to death by unidentified assailants have so far been discovered in Lutwegi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the public information officer for the UN mission in the eastern town of Goma, Jacqueline Chernard, told IRIN on Sunday. "We anticipate that the figure of those dead during the attack could rise," she said. Quoting a local administrator of the affected area, in North Kivu Province, she said the dead were mostly women and children. She said 150 homes were completely burnt down by the unidentified attackers.

A Dutch court has sentenced a former colonel from the Democratic Republic of Congo to 30 months in prison for torturing people there in the 1990s. This is the first case of war crimes committed in another country to reach a Dutch national court. Sebastian Nzapali - known as the king of the beasts - was acquitted on charges of rape and received half the sentence recommended by prosecutors. He was tried under a new law based on the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture.

The international humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has expressed its serious concern about continued sexual violence against women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a phenomenon that is being perpetuated by ongoing insecurity. One year after a peace agreement was signed to put an end to the war in DRC, MSF continues to see victims of rape in its clinics. Releasing a report entitled "I have no joy, no peace of mind", MSF describes the terrible medical, psychosocial and socio-economic consequences of sexual violence in the DRC and the use of rape - against both women and men - as a weapon of war.

On 1 April 2004, at around 7:30 p.m. (Kinshasa time), seven Military Intelligence (Détection militaire des activités anti-patrie, DEMIAP) soldiers and three National Intelligence Agency (Agence nationale des renseignements, ANR) officers raided the offices of Radio Kilimandjaro, a private station in Tshikapa, the second largest city in West Kasai province, central Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The soldiers stopped the broadcast as soon as they entered the station's studios and ordered all of the staff members who were present to undergo a two-minute voice test.

On February 12, more than 100 environment, development and human rights groups in the war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) formed an alliance to oppose the "development" of the country's rainforests, which could include a vast increase in industrial logging. The social network sent a letter to the Minister for the Environment, Waters and Forests, the World Bank Resident Representative, and the FAO Representative, expressing their concern regarding the future of the country's forests and the people living within these forests. Covering around 1.3 million square kilometres, the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo are the largest in the world after Amazonia, and have so far largely been spared extensive destruction. An estimated 35 million people live in and around these forests, including Bantu farmers, and Twa and Mbuti hunter-gatherer 'Pygmies'.