United Nations relief officials are calling for stepped-up humanitarian and peacekeeping measures to confront hunger and "horrific atrocities" in Katanga in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where fighting between the army and Mai Mai rebels has driven over 150,000 people from their homes in the last six months. Apart from the people who have fled, many others remain trapped or hidden in remote and inaccessible locations, making it likely that the actual figure is much higher than 150,000, OCHA added of the situation around three Katanga sites – Mitwaba, Malemba Nkulu and Dubie. Many of these people are living in appalling conditions with alarmingly high malnutrition and mortality rates.

The large number of presidential candidates, the withdrawal of the main opposition party and the continuing violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have given rise to fears among international observers of a fraught run-up to the elections. By the time the registration of candidates in the 2006 election closed Sunday, 72 candidates had put themselves forward for the presidency and more than 4 000 for the 500 posts up for grabs in the legislative elections, the Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) said.

Tens of thousands of children living on the streets of Kinshasa and other cities of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) suffer extreme hardship and exposure to daily violence, says a new report from Human Rights Watch. "Turned out of their homes and without family care and support, they are victims of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. With no secure access to food, shelter, or other basic needs, they are exploited by adults, including law enforcement personnel, who use them for illegal activities to the detriment of their health and welfare and in violation of their basic human rights."

Jean-Louis Ngalamulume, the editor of the newspaper "L'Eclaireur", was freed on the evening of 31 March 2006 after paying US$40 in bail. He had been detained since 31 January. After meeting with Reporters Without Borders and its local partner organisation, Journalist in Danger (JED), President Joseph Kabila sent the justice ministry a request for the release of Ngalamulume and "La Tolérance" editor Jean-Pierre Pambu Lutete, who is expected to be freed on bail in the next few days.

Three years of transitional government in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has led to anything but stability and economic prosperity. The corrupt, ruling political class is, more than anything else, engaged in enriching itself. Based on investigations of the situation in the Congolese province of Katanga, the report Fatal Transactions demonstrates how members of the government, with the help of international donors such as the World Bank, have profited from the natural wealth of the Congo in recent years, at the expense of the Congolese people.

Civic education ahead of elections scheduled for June is of "utmost importance" to sensitise the public for the democratic process, the head of the Democratic Republic of Congo's Independent Electoral Commission, Abbé Apollinaire Malu-Malu, has said. Speaking on Tuesday in Brussels at a hearing organised at the European Parliament, Malu-Malu said the commission, known by its French acronym CEI, had proposed a US $40-million budget to international donors for the sensitisation of the public.

Reporters Without Borders and its partner organisation Journaliste en Danger (JED) have written to the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor asking him to carry out more thorough enquiries into the June 2003 disappearance of Agence France-Presse assistant Acquitté Kisembo. Militia chief Thomas Lubanga, who was arrested on war crimes charges and transferred to the ICC on 17 March 2006, is suspected of ordering his murder.

UN head Kofi Annan has said the Democratic Republic of Congo elections in June will pose "major logistical challenges, if not nightmares". He is visiting DR Congo, where the UN has its largest peacekeeping mission, ahead of the country's first free elections in 45 years. He also welcomed a planned deployment of European Union troops to act as a rapid reaction force during the polls. The polls are to end a power-sharing period after a five-year civil war.

The International Criminal Court, which has a Congolese rebel leader in jail as its first defendant, will have speedier proceedings than the U.N. special tribunal for Yugoslavia, the court's chief prosecutor said Saturday (March 18). The Criminal Court's first prisoner, Thomas Lubanga, was flown to the Netherlands just before midnight Friday and taken into custody at the court's newly opened detention unit - the only inmate there so far. Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said the arrest warrant covered crimes committed after July 1, 2002, when the world's first permanent war crimes court came into existence.

A controversial South African multimillionaire and convicted fraudster has been ordered to answer questions about his involvement in the shadowy DRC mining industry. And the Pretoria High Court order, which will force Niko Shefer to take the stand, also promises to uncover how figures within the local mining company became embroiled with the Democratic Republic of Congo's state mining company, Gecamines.

No country in Africa has suffered more at the hands of foreign powers than the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Congo is in many ways a microcosm of the entire African continent. As it was raped and pillaged and abused by foreigners, so was the rest of the continent. As it continues to be raped and pillaged and abused by foreigners, so is the rest of the continent. Its vast resources, both existing and potential, also mirror those of the continent as a whole. In a sense, when we read about the Congo, we are reading about ourselves. When the Congolese are ridiculed and abused, all of us on this continent are ridiculed and abused.

On 6 March 2006, Jean-Pierre Pambu Lutete, publisher of the Kinshasa-based newspaper "La Tolérance", was transferred to Kinshasa's Penitentiary and Reeducation Centre (Centre pénitentiaire et de rééducation de Kinshasa, CPRK, formerly Makala Central Prison). The journalist was placed under arrest just before noon on 3 March 2006 by the Kinshasa/Kalamu Public Prosecutor's office for "damaging allegations" and "inciting tribal hatred" against Michel Tudu Zingo te Lando at the Land Registry Office of Funa, a district of Kinshasa. At issue is an article he published entitled: "Pillage and collusion in the fraudulent sale of lands left to the Mount Amba Land Registration Department: Steward Michel Tudu Zingo te Lando has his hands in the coffers".

"Our small Cessna Caravan plane flew for two hours north of the capital Kinshasa towards the Equateur Province where our Congo Heartland is located," wrote AWF President Patrick Bergin on a recent trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa. "Below us were seemingly endless dense tropical forests with scattered broad sleepy water-ways winding through the trees on their way to join the mighty Congo River. Occasionally the green canopy would be disturbed by a small clearing of felled trees and smoke where a farmer had decided to strike out on his own and hunt forest animals while growing a bit of maize on the limited fertility of forest soils." Using the latest technology, NASA, University of Maryland and USAID are assisting the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) to monitor these new clearings by overlaying satellite images of the forest canopy and of large fires detected from space on a map of the Congo Heartland.

Information released today (March 8) by the World Bank reveals that it has failed to ensure proper protection of the environment and local peoples in its programmes to 'develop' the vast rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which are the second largest on Earth after the Amazon, reports the Rainforest Foundation. The revelations come following a preliminary investigation by the World Bank Inspection Panel, the official independent watchdog agency.

The British medical journal Lancet recently took greater notice of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) than all western media outlets combined, says this article from "Some people have suggested the reason that there isn’t greater awareness and equitable intervention in the Congo is because 'we simply don’t know what to do' to remedy the situation.  However, it is fairly clear what needs to be done, the West is just unwilling to do it because of powerful economic and geopolitical reasons."

Since the mid-1990s, millions of Congolese have fled their homes to escape fighting between rebel groups and the national government in a complex conflict which has, at times, involved as many as nine neighbouring states. Close to four million people are estimated to have died as a result of the conflict which has been accompanied by widespread human rights violations. Displacement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) peaked in 2003, with an estimated 3.4 million people forced from their homes, most of them in the east.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres Tuesday welcomed 401 Congolese refugees home as they disembarked in Baraka from a former German imperial warship that is said to the oldest working vessel in the world. "Karibu sana, karibu sana, karibu sana," Guterres called out to the returnees in Kiswahili – "you are very welcome" – as they arrived in this port in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) after an eight-hour journey across Lake Tanganyika from refugee camps in Tanzania where they have lived for up to nine years.

Hundreds of civilians have been displaced by fighting between United Nations-supported government troops and militiamen in the northeastern province of Orientale in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Bunia, Ituri District. Three hundred displaced persons fled fighting in the town of Tcheyi and arrived in Aveba village, 12 km south, on Monday, Modiba Traore said.

Warning that there is "a huge risk for conflict to rise again" in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC), the top United Nations refugee official has called on the international community to provide greater support for the vast country's transition to full democracy for the first time in 45 years. "The scale of the problem, the complexity of the problem, and the nature of the problem are such that all our resources combined together won't easily solve it," UN High Commissioner for Refugees AntÃ'nio Guterres told ambassadors from donor countries in Kinshasa, capital of a nation that is moving towards national elections in June after the most lethal fighting in the world since World War II.

This Partnership Africa Canada report shows how illicit diamond trafficking remains the biggest obstacle on the bumpy road to peace and stability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Armed militias smuggled an estimated $200-300 million worth of diamonds out of the country in 2005. Given the importance of the diamond industry in the DRC - it sustains 800,000 people and their families - the Kinshasa government and the UN peacekeeping mission must take action to ensure that benefits reach those who live and work in diamond mining areas.