A UN peacekeeper takes stock of weapons and ammunition collected during the demobilization process in North Kivu, DRC

Although the general war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo started to wind down, some of the most brutal fighting continued to take place in the northeastern DRC provinces of Ituri and North Kivu. As of 2007, the fighting in these areas was mainly conducted by a wide variety of ethnic-based rebel groups, some of which operated as proxies for the militaries of Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC. These northeastern provinces have been the sites of some of the most horrific human rights violations of the entire conflict.

For example, in the Ituri province, reports have surfaced of massacres committed by rebel groups against civilians because of their ethnicity. One such massacre occurred in the town of Nyakunde where 1,200 women, children, and other civilians were killed over a 10-day period when armed combatants went methodically from house to house killing people. A UN peace enforcement operation entered Ituri with the mandate to protect civilians, using force if necessary. Acts such as those committed in Nyakunde and other parts of Northeastern DRC are considered serious violations of human rights. However, if those acts were found to be part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against any civilian population, or if they were found to be committed with the intent of destroying in whole or in part a certain national, racial, ethnic or religious group, the people who committed those atrocities would also be guilty of committing crimes against humanity and genocide as it is defined by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

A mother and child in a Kinshasa hospital, DRC, January 2007

Although the scale of killings and violence in the DRC has been catastrophic, the vast majority of the people who died during the conflict and its aftermath fell victim not to violence but to disease and malnutrition.

A member of the South African Technical Assistance Team of MONUC working on geographical surveillance and verification at Camp Ndromo, October 2006

One of the major impediments to ensuring adequate health care for the population of the DRC, especially in its eastern half, is security. Health and aid workers have difficulty distributing services to areas where rebel groups and government forces continue intermittent fighting, leading to inadequate security for both health and aid workers, as well as civilians.

Congolese gold miners in Montgbawalu, Ituri district, September 2005

A further contributing factor in the destabilization and general lawlessness of parts of the DRC was the exploitation of natural resources, by the government as well as armed rebel groups. This exploitation was so drastic that the DRC has been described as:

“A carcass being chewed at by its elite and its neighbors. They have looted and sold its natural resources on a scale without precedent. This, with direct or tacit complicity of pious governments and corporations around the world.”

— Richard C. Hottelet, The plundering of Congo: without          precedent. The Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 2001

The DRC is rich in natural resources and precious minerals and metals, especially diamonds and gold. The United Nations has determined that the war in the DRC was partially perpetuated by the exploitation of natural resources by both the countries and rebel groups involved in the conflict, which used the money they made selling natural resources to purchase arms to attack each other and civilians.

Military officials and rebel leaders were not the only ones who profited from the plundering of the DRC. Western and non-western corporations also benefited from these activities and have been accused of directly and indirectly helping to fuel the conflict. For example, Human Rights Watch has documented in extraordinary detail how gold was looted in the eastern DRC, transferred to Uganda, and then shipped to corporations in Switzerland who then sold it worldwide.

Corporations have also been accused of having a more direct impact in the DRC. For security, they have hired rebel groups who commit human rights abuses.