Groups Urge UN To
Restore DRC Monitor
Campaign
groups from around the world, including many from Africa, have
urged the UN to restore the post of UN rights monitor to the
Democratic Republic of Congo.
The groups say restoring the post had become imperative because
the situation there is dire.
The Geneva-based UN Watch said that a total of 50 groupings had
signed the appeal to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and human
rights Chief Navi Pillay.
Appalling situation
The signatories said they were ’’appalled to learn of the
serious violations committed by the Congolese government in
recent weeks’’ which, they said, included summary executions,
torture, arbitrary arrests and rape.
They said that a permanent UN monitor should be able to help
rectify the dire situation in the mineral rich country, where
various national, local and outside factions are fighting in the
east.
The 47-member UN Human Rights Council in Geneva abolished the
Congo monitor, formally called a special rapporteur, in March
1998 at the request of the Congolese government, backed by
developing countries, which formed the majority in the body.
No reprieve
A new report on the situation in Congo by a UN Group of Experts
is to be discussed by the UN Security Council in New York. The
appeal signatories said that it showed the situation there was
‘increasingly becoming precarious’.
The appeal said that the group's report describes unchecked
impunity and complete lack of transparency regarding government
exploitation of national resources.
In an earlier report, UN monitor on extra-judicial execution,
Philip Alston said that civilians in the east, often the target
of rebels, have also been gang-raped or shot dead by the
Congolese army which is supposed to protect them.
‘More concerns’
Earlier this week, the international humanitarian group ‘Doctors
without Borders’ put violence against civilians in the east of
Congo as top in its list of the world's worst 10 humanitarian
crises.
African human rights groups that signed the appeal included
bodies from Congo itself and its neighbouring Congo Republic,
Nigeria, Liberia, Cameroun, Senegal, Zambia and Burkina Faso.
Others included groups in Europe, the U.S. and Mexico.
NAN/Yinka
