The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has found significant levels of caloric deficiency and food insecurity in areas of the capital, Kinshasa. FAO also expressed concern for people living in areas of Katanga inaccessible to humanitarian assistance due to continued military activity.

Human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have increased throughout the national territory since the signing of the Sun City agreement, according to a newly-issued report from one of the primary Congolese rights organisations.

World Bank President James Wolfensohn has announced in Kinshasa that his Bretton Woods institution has cancelled 80 percent of Democratic Republic of Congo's debt of 12 billion US dollars.

One of the main rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo was responsible for a massacre in the eastern town of Kisangani earlier this year, a report by the United Nations Human Rights Commission says. The report says up to 180 people, the majority of them civilians, were killed in reprisal attacks by gunmen from the RCD Goma rebel faction after a mutiny.

The Child Survival Program Manager is responsible for overseeing the implementation, monitoring and supervision of IRC's child survival program in Kabare Health Zone, South Kivu province, eastern DRC. All child survival activities are designed and implemented in coordination with local health authorities.

Scores of people have died in fighting between the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) and a militia representing the Hema people, in the northeastern town of Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). "We have counted 40 dead among the soldiers, and we do not know how many casualties there are on the other side," Ernest Uringi Padolo, a RCD-ML official, said from Bunia.

Disagreements over command and control of the army constituted the factor causing talks on a transitional ruling body between the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the former rebel Mouvement de liberation congolais (MLC) to stall on 5 June.

The African Development Bank and the African Development Fund jointly approved on Wednesday a mechanism designed to help the Democratic Republic of the Congo clear arrears of US $800 million owed them. The bank reported that the sum represented 60 percent of the total arrears the Congo owed both bodies.

A worsening humanitarian crisis is unfolding in the south of South Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, as fighting rages between mainly Rwandan army troops and the dissident Banyamulenge forces of Commandant Patrick Masunzu, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday.

Heavy fighting has broken out again in South Kivu Province, southeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), between the leader of a mutiny among troops of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) and loyal forces of the Rwandan-backed rebel movement, news agencies reported.

Minister of Communications and Press Kikaya Bin Karubi has responded to the recent protest letter from Journaliste en danger (JED) which denounced threats and harassment aimed at the private broadcaster RAGA and journalist Jean-René Mputu Biduaya. In an 18 June 2002 letter to JED, Kikaya denied any involvement in the blackmail efforts and intimidation campaign designed to force RAGA to stop criticising the government. The minister described the remarks reported by JED as "gratuitous" and "fabrications aimed at having our foreign partners believe that the private press in the Congo is bullied by the authorities."

Burundi authorities have suspended the dismantling of Ngagara refugee camp, north-west of Bujumbura after the 1,500 DR Congo settlers of the camp, refused to be transferred to eastern part of Burundi Tuesday.

Forces on all sides in the Congo conflict have committed war crimes against women and girls, Human Rights Watch says in a new 114-page report. The report documents the frequent and sometimes systematic use of rape and other forms of sexual violence in the Rwandan-occupied areas of eastern Congo. "War continues to rage in eastern Congo. Within that larger war, combatants carry out another war -- sexual violence against women and girls," said Alison Des Forges, senior advisor to the Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

The Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Asma Jahangir, will go to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 16 to 22 June to gather information concerning extra-judicial killings alleged to have occurred in the city of Kisangani on 14 May 2002 and immediately thereafter.

Thousands of residents were forced to flee into a nearby forest when Rwandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) forces attacked the town of Kampene, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Missionary Service News Agency (Misna) reported on Saturday.

The International Secretariat of OMCT requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The International Secretariat of OMCT has received information from the l'Association Africaine de Défense des Droits de l'Homme, a member of the OMCT network, that 22 detained prisoners launched a hunger strike on May 13th, 2002 in protest of their illegal detention at Buluo prison in Katanga Province.

Rwandan-backed rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) have accused a rival group allied to the Kinshasa regime of massacring nearly 400 civilians last week in the northeastern Ituri region. "The Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) denounces the widespread massacring of the civil population near Bunia by the RCD-ML led by Mbusa Nyamwisi and allied to the forces of the Kinshasa government," the rebels said in a statement in Kigali.

A total of 518 of 3,000 refugees of Congolese origin have been transferred from transit centres in Cibitoke and Bujumbura Rural to Muyinga Province in a government-led move to establish a unified refugee camp in the north of the country. Some of the refugees had been living in the "transit centres" for up to two and three years, an official from the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees told IRIN.

A programme to distribute 60,000 insecticide-treated mosquito nets to thousands of households in Kikimi, an outlying district of Kinshasa, has been launched. The programme is part of the global "Roll Back Malaria" initiative, which seeks to halve the world's malaria burden by 2010.

Inter-Congolese dialogue facilitator Ketumile Masire is continuing efforts to resume the talks with the help of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), Africa's foremost political body. At a meeting on Thursday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, he said "only a minute fraction" remained to be done to complete the dialogue. He added, in a statement released from his office, that if the parties returned to the negotiation table an inclusive deal could be clinched in which there would be neither "victor nor vanquished".