Demokratische Republik Kongo

The 2023 electoral process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will mark “a new critical stage” in the country’s journey to democratic transition and stabilization, UN Special Representative Bintou Keita said on Tuesday in her first briefing to the Security Council. 

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More than 100 armed groups are active in the northeastern DRC, in a perpetual fight for political power, control of natural resources and survival. The U.N. refugee agency said one of them, the Allied Democratic Forces or ADF, has become especially violent of late, killing nearly 200 civilians and displacing an estimated 40,000 in the DRC’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces over the past two and a half months.

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Thirty people, including 11 civilians, have died in two days of fighting between government forces and a militia in the eastern DR Congo province of Ituri, the army said Thursday. The area, located in the territory of Djugu, around 60 kilometers (35 miles) from Ituri’s capital Bunia, is rich in gold, and CODECO has been accused by local civil groups of illegally extracting the precious metal.

Washington on Thursday labeled the ADF militia, suspected of hundreds of civilian killings in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s east, a “foreign terrorist organization” linked to the so-called Islamic State (IS) group.

Child soldiers and other victims of Congolese militia leader Bosco Ntaganda are to be awarded millions of dollars by the International Criminal Court.

On February 23, the Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Luca Attanasio, his bodyguard Vittorio Iacovacci and their driver Mustapha Milambo were killed in eastern Congo. They were part of a convoy that travelled from the World Food Programme's compound in Goma, eastern Congo. … Questions are being asked as to who did it and why. These quickly lead to a murky terrain.

The Italian ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a World Food Programme (WFP) staff member, together with an Italian embassy official, were killed on Monday during an attack on a UN convoy in the east of the country, the agency has said. 

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR says it is alarmed by atrocities committed by armed groups against civilians in Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The agency is reporting killings and kidnappings are continuing this year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s volatile North Kivu province.