DRC: UN Report Says Armed Groups Killed Over 1,300 People In First Six Months Of 2020

A United Nations report on Wednesday claimed various armed groups killed over 1,300 people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the first six months of the year, three times more than in the same period in 2019, reported Eyewitness News.

The report published by the UN Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) noted that fighters of all armed groups were responsible for arbitrary killings of at least 1,315 people, including 165 children, between January and June 2020. The death toll was more than three times the 416 such deaths recorded in the first half of last year in the DRC.

The report attributed the increase in the number of killings to the deteriorating human rights situation in provinces where conflict is highly prevalent, particularly Ituri, South Kivu, Tanganyika and North Kivu.

Eastern DRC has been unstable for nearly three decades, as dozens of militia groups are active in the area. Violence in Ituri’s gold-mining region has increased since December 2017. The increase in violence has pitched the Hema ethnic group, who are predominantly herders, against the Lendu community, who are mostly sedentary farmers.

The deadly clashes between the two communities from 1999-2003 triggered concern across southern-central Africa and led to the European Union’s first foreign military mission, the short-term Operation Artemis.

The UN has warned that some of the latest attacks could amount to crimes against humanity. There have been conflicts in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu and the southeastern province of Tanganyika.

The army even launched operations against all armed groups in the eastern part of the country at the end of October 2019. But, despite those offensives, the killings of civilians have not stopped.

As per the UNJHRO report, the number of violations committed by state agents decreased slightly during the first six months of 2020.

It claimed that state agents were responsible for 43% of documented human rights violations, including the extrajudicial executions of at least 225 people, including 33 women and 18 children, throughout DRC.