UN Human Rights Office Releases Report on Ethnic Violence in Democratic Republic of the Congo (August 4, 2017) [1]
On August 4, 2017, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report [3] detailing the violence that a team of human rights officers documented through interviewing refugees in Angola who had fled violent attacks in the Kasai province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The report notes that the human rights violations at issue took place between March 12 and June 19, 2017, and that DRC government armed forces and pro-government militia attacks against civilians were often conducted along ethnic lines. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) has stated that “approximately 30,000 people fled the Kasai to Angola between April and 22 June 2017 while 1.3 million people were internally displaced.” The report further states that the crisis began in August 2016 over a local dispute concerning chieftaincy and traditional rights, but that it has evolved since then to take on “a more pronounced ethnic dimension, with attacks that were well planned and systematic and targeted the population of several villages.” A UN press release [4] notes UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein’s comments on the report: “Their accounts should serve as a grave warning to the Government of the DRC to act now to prevent such violence from tipping into wider ethnic cleansing.”