UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Friday expressed profound concerns at the ongoing violent escalation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) caused by the ongoing Rwanda-backed M23 offensive. “If nothing is done, the worst may be yet to come, for the people of the eastern DRC, but also beyond the country’s borders,” he told a Special Session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Since 26 January, nearly 3,000 people have been killed and 2,880 injured in attacks by the M23 and their allies “with heavy weapons used in populated areas, and intense fighting against the armed forces of the DRC and their allies”, the High Commissioner said, as UN Member States weighed setting up a fact-finding mission to investigate extreme rights violations still being committed in the DRC provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.
Hostilities have continued unabated in this mineral-rich region that has been unstable for decades amid a proliferation of armed groups, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. Fighting escalated in late January when majority-Tutsi M23 fighters seized control of parts of North Kivu, including areas near Goma, and advanced towards South Kivu and the eastern DRC’s second city of Bukavu.
A draft resolution circulated before the Special Session – the 37th since the Council was created in 2006 – also condemned Rwanda’s military support of the M23 armed group and called for both Rwanda and M23 to halt their advance and to allow lifesaving humanitarian access immediately.
