UN suspects all sides in DR Congo conflict guilty of war crimes

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk calls for accountability for victims of atrocities.

Gross rights violations, perchance including warfare crimes and crimes against humanity, whitethorn person been committed by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia and the Congolese subject and its affiliates successful eastbound Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to United Nations investigators.

A fact-finding ngo by the UN Human Rights Office said connected Friday that it has determined that each sides successful the devastating struggle had committed abuses since precocious 2024, including summary executions and rampant intersexual unit successful the provinces of North and South Kivu.

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Eastern DRC, a portion bordering Rwanda, has been plagued by non-state equipped groups and suffered utmost unit for much than 3 decades.

Since taking up arms again astatine the extremity of 2021, the M23 equipped radical has seized swaths of onshore successful the restive portion with Rwanda’s backing, triggering an equipped struggle with the DRC military, resulting successful a spiralling humanitarian situation that killed thousands and displaced astatine slightest 7 cardinal people.

While aggregate quality rights bodies and the UN person accused parties successful the DRC struggle of gross atrocities, this is the archetypal UN study to find that those abuses whitethorn person constituted crimes against humanity.

“The atrocities described successful this study are horrific,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk successful a statement, calling for accountability for victims.

The findings “underscore the gravity and wide quality of violations and abuses committed by each parties to the conflict, including acts that whitethorn represent warfare crimes and crimes against humanity”, the study added.

M23 seized Goma, eastbound DRC’s largest city, successful January and went connected to marque gains crossed North Kivu and South Kivu.

(Al Jazeera)

The UN study recovered the taste Tutsi-led M23 carried retired summary executions, torture, and enforced disappearances – which whitethorn magnitude to crimes against humanity.

The radical besides utilized systematic intersexual violence, including pack rape, mostly against women, with an intent to “degrade, punish, and interruption the dignity of victims”, the study stated.

M23 received grooming and operational enactment from the Rwandan Defence Forces, and determination are credible allegations of the covert beingness of Rwandan unit wrong M23, it added.

Rwanda has repeatedly denied backing M23 and says its forces enactment successful self-defence against DRC’s service and taste Hutu militiamen linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. M23 has besides antecedently denied committing atrocities.

The study besides recovered that the DRC armed forces and affiliated equipped groups, specified arsenic pro-government militia fighters known arsenic Wazalendo, had committed sedate violations, including pack rape, the deliberate sidesplitting of civilians, and looting.

In August, a abstracted UN study recovered that healthcare providers successful the eastbound portion of DRC treated much than 17,000 victims of intersexual violence from January to May successful 2024.

Following mediation by Qatar, the DRC and the rebels signed a declaration of principles connected July 19 successful which they pledged to commencement negotiating a bid woody successful August.

The 2 sides person truthful acold missed the deadline to scope a bid agreement.

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies