Eight women have been burned to death or lynched in South Kivu province this month, say officials
Murders of women accused of witchcraft have surged in a troubled eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to officials and rights campaigners.
Eight women have reportedly been burned to death or lynched in three districts in South Kivu province this month.
Continue reading...Inquiry commissioned by WHO details sexual abuse, including rape allegations, during DRC outbreak
The World Health Organization has described itself as “heartbroken” after an independent inquiry it commissioned said scores of women and girls were sexually abused by aid workers during the devastating 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The findings were described as “harrowing reading” by the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while its regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said she was “humbled, horrified and heartbroken”.
Continue reading...Covid, climate breakdown, poverty and war threaten return to school after pandemic kept 1.5bn children out of classes
The education of hundreds of millions of children is hanging by a thread as a result of an unprecedented intensity of threats including Covid 19 and the climate crisis, a report warned today.
As classrooms across much of the world prepare to reopen after the summer holidays, a quarter of countries – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – have school systems that are at extreme or high risk of collapse, according to Save the Children.
Continue reading...Dolls found in rubbish dumps, radio parts and discarded flip-flops are among items used to create surreal costumes by a Kinshasa collective highlighting political and environmental issues
As a child, Shaka Fumu Kabaka witnessed the atrocities that took place during the six-day war between Ugandan and Rwandan forces in his home town of Kisangani in June 2000.
“It was not even our war, but a war between two foreign armies,” he said.
Continue reading...Hundreds of sexual assaults reported in south-east Tanganyika province as armed groups fight over goldmines
The UN has raised the alarm over widespread, systematic sexual violence in the south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), saying women were reporting armed groups carrying out mass rape.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, said its staff have heard horrific testimonies from forcibly displaced persons in Tanganyika province.
Continue reading...Mutant strain may emerge amid vaccine hesitancy, experts say, as even medics reject jabs in DR Congo
Dr Christian Mayala and Dr Rodin Nzembuni Nduku sit together on a bench outside the Covid ward at Kinshasa’s Mama Yemo hospital.
They are discussing the health of their father, Noel Kalouda, who contracted coronavirus weeks before, and is now lying in a hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen mask.
Continue reading...Swiss court ruling is not the first time plunder of DRC’s mineral wealth has been linked to the killing of Congolese people. Without accountability, it won’t be the last
According to the Swiss federal criminal court last week, the corruption destroying the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where devastating conflicts over minerals used in our electronics have killed more than six million people – is inextricably linked to the UK, Gibraltar and Switzerland.
It was a significant moment exposing corruption that has fuelled not only grinding poverty, famine and unemployment in DRC but also the impunity and violence required to sustain it. Yet, unless there is accountability, it won’t change.
Continue reading...Military victories combined with new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforce militants’ position across much of continent
Islamic State’s affiliates in Africa are set for major expansion after a series of significant victories, new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforced their position across much of the continent.
Following recent gains in Nigeria, the Sahel, in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Isis propaganda published by the group’s leadership in its heartland in the Middle East is increasingly stressing sub-Saharan Africa as a new front which may compensate the group for significant setbacks elsewhere.
Continue reading...eBioAtlas programme aims to identify fish, birds, amphibians and land animals in freshwater systems from the Ganges to the Mekong
Concealed by the turbid, swirling waters of the Amazon, the Mekong and the Congo, the biodiversity of the world’s great rivers has largely remained a mystery to scientists. But now a multimillion-pound project aims to describe and identify the web of life in major freshwater ecosystems around the world with “gamechanging” DNA technology.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and UK-based environmental DNA (eDNA) specialists NatureMetrics have launched a partnership to take thousands of water samples from freshwater river systems like the Ganges and the Niger delta to identify the fish, birds, amphibians and land animals that live in and around them.
Continue reading...Four experts from DR Congo’s Goma Volcano Observatory took the trail up Mount Nyiragongo last week to get a closer look at the volcano which last month spewed rivers of lava and forced the evacuation of a city
Continue reading...Concerns over impact on poorer countries, while richer governments try different containment measures
The Delta variant of Covid-19, first identified in India, has been detected in 74 countries and continues to spread rapidly amid fears that it is poised to become the dominant strain worldwide.
With outbreaks of the main Delta strain and several of its sub-lineages confirmed in China, the US, Africa, Scandinavia and the Pacific, concern increasingly is focusing on how it appears to be more transmissible as well as causing more serious illness.
Continue reading...Prosecutors accuse suspect of failing to ensure protection of convoy that was attacked in February
Italian prosecutors have placed a UN officer under investigation in relation to the murder of Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was killed in February along with two other people in an attack in the restive east of the central African country.
Magistrates in Rome are investigating the role of a UN World Food Programme (WFP) officer in the DRC, whose name has not been disclosed, who is accused of allegedly omitting to take all the necessary security to ensure against a potential attack.
Continue reading...City of Kinshasa, home to 15 million people, is amid third wave of infections, authorities confirm
The UN’s health agency said on Thursday that it detected a surge of coronavirus cases late last month in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
“An exponential rise in the spread of Sars-CoV-2 virus has been recorded in Kinshasa,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a weekly report.
Continue reading...Devastation hampers relief efforts around city of Goma as people speak of losing everything after eruption on Mount Nyiragongo
Continue reading...Thousands of people have fled the Congolese city of Goma, some picking their way across landscapes scarred with lava, after officials said a second volcanic eruption could happen at any time.
Thirty-one people were killed on Saturday evening when Mount Nyiragongo, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, sent a wall of orange lava downhill towards the city, destroying 17 villages on the way. The lava stopped just 300 metres short of Goma airport, the main hub for aid operations in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
More than 500 homes have been destroyed by the lava that has poured into villages, officials and survivors say
At least 15 people died when torrents of lava poured into villages after dark in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, destroying more than 500 homes, officials and survivors said on Sunday.
The eruption of Mount Nyiragongo on Saturday night sent about 5,000 people fleeing from the city of Goma across the nearby border into Rwanda, while another 25,000 others sought refuge to the north-west in Sake, the UN children’s agency said on Sunday.
Continue reading...Thousands of residents abandoned their homes as the city of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was thrown into panic when a nearby volcano erupted. Lava from Mount Nyiragongo destroyed homes on the edge of Goma, which has a population of about 1 million people, but appeared to be slowing by midday on Sunday, giving hope that further damage could be avoided
Continue reading...Thousands of people head towards border with Rwanda as lava approaches outskirts of city
A river of flaming lava that poured out of the erupting Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has reached the suburbs of Goma, an eastern city of nearly 2 million people.
Officials said on Sunday that the molten stream had reached the airport on the outskirts of the city, but witnesses said the flow appeared to have halted later in the morning.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Peru
Continue reading...As the value of gold reached new heights last year, those mining it continued to face crippling deprivation and dangerous conditions
The muddy slopes surrounding the eastern Congolese gold-mining town of Kamituga hold vast wealth and crippling deprivation.
In South Kivu province near the borders of Rwanda and Burundi, Kamituga has mineral resources estimated to be worth $24tn (£17tn) in untapped deposits. Yet the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the lowest levels of GDP per capita in the world and people work in dangerous conditions with little hope of scratching out anything more than a meagre existence from tough and dangerous work.
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