The precarious security situation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where rebel fighters are continuing attacks against several villages, is a major obstacle to assistance programmes in the area, the United Nations humanitarian arm has said.

This latest report from the International Crisis Group examines the failed attempts of the past to dismantle the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an insurgency with roots that go back to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. It recommends a new approach to help end great civilian suffering and restore state authority in the eastern Congo. Clear division of labour and better coordination are needed to capitalise on recently improved Congo-Rwanda relations.

The Congolese military has promised to punish any soldiers found guilty of rights abuses, after activists claimed troops were carrying out mass rape. Military spokesman Colonel Leon Richard Kasonga said commanders must ensure the safety of civilians.

United Nations-backed Congolese armed forces conducting intensified military operations in eastern and northern Democratic Republic of Congo have failed to protect civilians from brutal rebel retaliatory attacks and instead are themselves attacking and raping Congolese civilians, Human Rights Watch has said. The attacks on civilians from all sides have resulted in a significant increase in human rights violations over the past six months.

Twenty female detainees in the central prison in Goma, a large town in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), were raped during a recent riot, officials have said. "Twenty female prisoners were raped on Monday [22 June] night during an attempted prison escape by a group of militia sentenced to long terms and jailed in the prison," Oscar Kasangandjo, the public prosecutor in Goma, told IRIN.

Banana peels, sugar cane and manioc are widely found in the trash piles that collect outside of homes in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. They're also the ingredients being used by environmental advocates to create a light, inexpensive cooking fuel that could ease deforestation in the region. Clement Kitambala, a Congolese advocate, and Ned Meerdink, an Advocacy Project (AP) Peace Fellow, came upon an idea online to make briquettes out of organic waste material. Mr Kitambala, who also produces the environmental newsletter Tunza Mazingira ("Conserve the Environment" in Swahili), secured $150 in funding from a United Nations fieldworker to construct a wood press for making the briquettes (shown below). He recently produced the first batch of about 500.

In a letter to president Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Committee to Protect Journalists urged the Congolese government to lift its ban of RFI in the eastern cities of Bunia and Bukavu.

A UN base in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been fired on by army soldiers in a dispute over pay. It is the latest in a string of mutinies in North Kivu by soldiers who have not been paid for six months. A senior UN peacekeeper told the BBC that army commanders are not handing over soldiers' wages.

The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the Voix des Sans-Voix pour les Droits de l'Homme (VSV), a member organisation of OMCT SOS-Torture Network, about the arbitrary detention as well as of the acts of torture and ill-treatment inflicted upon Mr.Norbert Luyeye Binzunga, president of the party “Union of the Republicans” (Union des Républicains, UR). He is currently detained at the Kinshasa Penitentiary and Re-education Centre, the main prison in Kinshasa, charged with “contempt of the head of State”.

On 15 June 2009, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court confirmed some of the charges brought by the Prosecutor against Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo for crimes committed on the territory of the Central African Republic from on or about 26 October 2002 to 15 March 2003.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has dismissed a bid by Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) ex-militia chief Germain Katanga for his war crimes trial to be thrown out. Judge Bruno Cotte dismissed an argument by Katanga that the case was inadmissible on the basis that legal proceedings had been brought against him before courts in his home country.

United Nations peacekeepers are refusing to patrol a zone in eastern Congo, leaving tens of thousands of civilians vulnerable to massacres, rapes and looting by gunmen, officials and witnesses said. The civilians, under attack from Rwandan Hutu rebels, are trapped in a corner of North Kivu province Indian peacekeepers officially operate in but cannot get to due to poor roads, and Pakistani soldiers nearby refuse to enter due to procedures.

The Democratic Republic of Congo will put part of its $9-billion investment agreement with China on hold to take into account concerns voiced by the International Monetary Fund, said Moise Ekanga, who oversees the accord for Congo. The central African country has put a $3-billion chunk of infrastructure investments by their Chinese partners ”on the back-burner” to satisfy objections by the IMF that the agreement will add to Congo’s $11-billion external debt, said Ekanga, the executive-secretary of the Coordination and Monitoring Office for the Sino-Congolese Program.

Sexual violence is a brutal reality in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo: Tens of thousands of women and children were raped in the region last year alone. In a guest editorial, François Grignon of the International Crisis Group urges the West to fight the epidemic before more lives are shattered.

The period from 1998 to 2003 is known in the Democratic Republic of Congo as The Great War of Africa, Africa's World War and the Second Congo War. Militias and armies from eight neighboring nations plundered the country's eastern provinces in a quest to control copper, gold, diamonds, tin and other high-value minerals to supply India and China's booming markets.

A three-year-old girl has died after being raped by a rebel fighter in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where armed forces are committing increasing numbers of sexual attacks, a United Nations spokeswoman said on Friday.

An independent United Nations expert has called on the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to protect human rights workers and prosecute those who threaten or attack them. Human rights defenders, including lawyers and members of non-governmental organizations, “face illegitimate restrictions of their right to core freedoms, i.e. freedoms of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association,” said Margaret Sekaggya, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights.

cc Returning to DRC for the first time since 1996, Lansana Gberie finds that a little cash comes in handy for dealing with bureaucracy and that it is impossible to get anything done without a ‘fixer’. Considering the conflicts in the country’s history, Gberie notes that in Congo ‘money is always at the centre of the bigger drama of suffering’ and that justice – or the interests of victims of mass atrocities – has had to be subordinated to wider geopolitical interests. Leaving Kinshasa after just over a week, Gberie finds himself feeling that he is ‘in a place whose future has come and gone’.

A Security Council delegation on a week-long visit to Africa met with internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today to assess efforts by the Government and the United Nations to consolidate peace and security in the area, a spokesperson for the world body said.

The United Nations humanitarian wing is urging greater protection for civilians in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has witnessed a surge in sexual violence since the beginning of this year. Some 463 women were raped in the first quarter of 2009, more than half of the total number of violations registered for the whole of last year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).