Mapping Report > Introduction > Implementation of the mapping exercise

The Mapping Exercise was rolled out in three successive phases. Phase one, known as the “Pre-Deployment Phase”, began with the arrival of the Chief of the Mapping Exercise on 17 July 2008 and ended with the deployment of the in-field Teams from 17 October 2008 onwards. Phase two covers the deployment of the Teams across the country to cover all provinces of the DRC from five regional field offices. The deployment phase lasted seven months and ended on 15 May 2009 with the closure of the field offices. In the final, post-deployment phase, all the data were compiled and final verifications made with a view to completing the draft of the final report, which was submitted to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on 15 June 2009.

Phase one (17 July 2008 to 17 October 2008) was essentially aimed at ensuring the successful start-up of the Mapping Exercise, obtaining logistical support and developing the necessary methodological and legal tools for the Mapping Team to carry out the mandate.

Meetings were also held with the main partners of the Mapping Exercise (MONUC and UNDP), diplomatic missions as well as actors involved in human rights and the fight against impunity in the DRC (UN organisations, international NGOs, religious groups and trade unions, among others) to explain the Exercise and seek their collaboration.

Phase two (17 October 2008 to 15 May 2009) was dedicated to carrying out the mandate itself, including all analyses, investigations and consultations necessary both to prepare the inventory of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and also to assess the existing capacities of the Congolese judicial system to deal with this, including options relating to transitional justice mechanisms that could contribute to the fight against impunity.

Phase three (15 May 2009 to 15 June 2009) saw the closing down of the Mapping Exercise with the compilation of data, final updating of the database, the organisation, digitisation and classification of all the archives and the drafting of the final version of the report. Regional consultations regarding transitional justice were held in this last phase in the form of round-table meetings with civil society representatives in Bunia, Bukavu, Goma and Kinshasa.

Activities of the mapping exercise

Official meetings

The Chief of the Mapping Exercise attended official meetings with nearly one hundred actors, partners and individuals involved in matters of justice and the fight against impunity in the DRC to explain the objectives of the Exercise and seek their support. Among these, the following should be noted:

• DRC government authorities, i.e. the Minister of Justice (on two occasions) and the Minister of Human Rights (also on two occasions). Both Ministers assured the Chief of the Mapping Exercise of their collaboration and support for this exercise.

• Donors, who were met at the start, mid-point and end of the Exercise, and to whom a progress report was submitted on each occasion. Meetings were held with the following: the Ambassadors of Belgium, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and representatives of the Republic of Korea and Switzerland.

• Representatives of United States, French and European Union diplomatic missions.
• Heads of United Nations organisations: UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNFPA/UNIFEM.

• MONUC leaders: Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Alan Doss, and his deputies, Ross Mountain and Leila Zerrougui; and representatives of the various MONUC offices, including Human Rights, Child Protection, Rule of Law and the Gender Office.

• Francis Deng, Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide; Walter Kälin, Representative of the Secretary-General on the human rights of internally displaced persons.
• Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delegation; representatives in the DRC of OXFAM, Save the Children, Global Rights, Médecins Sans Frontières (France and Belgium), International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Avocats Sans Frontières (Belgium) and a representative of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

• A number of local NGOs involved in human rights and justice in the DRC.

Professional contacts

A number of contacts were established with Congolese non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in order to obtain information, documents and reports on the serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law that occurred in the DRC during the period covered by the ToR. To this end, meetings were held with over two hundred NGO representatives during the course of the mandate, both to present the Mapping Exercise and request their collaboration. Thanks to this collaboration, the Mapping Team has had access to critical information, witnesses and reports relating to the violations committed between 1993 and 2003. Without the courageous and outstanding work of the Congolese NGOs during these ten years, documenting the many violations in such a short period of time would have been incredibly difficult.

Contacts were also established with international organisations and NGOs to obtain information, reports and documents relating to the Mapping Exercise mandate.⁸² Almost all responded positively to this request. ⁸³ Research and documentation centres also contributed to the success of the Exercise by allowing Team members to consult their archives and meet with researchers.⁸⁴ Several DRC experts also visited the Mapping Exercise on trips to Kinshasa to speak to the Team.⁸⁵

Collection and analysis of information

The main activity of the Mapping Exercise consisted in collecting and analysing as much information as possible on the serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed during the period covered by the ToR. The Mapping Teams obtained over 1,500 documents. The documents come from many sources, including the United Nations and its agencies, the Congolese government, major international human rights organisations, Congolese human rights organisations, the national and international media and various NGOs (unions, religious groups, aid agencies, victims’ associations, etc.). Among the documents, over three hundred are confidential, notably the archives of the Secretary-General’s 1998 investigative Team, and some internal NGO reports. The Mapping Teams also consulted a large number of articles in the national and international press, as well as monographs on topics related to the mandate. Lastly, various sources, individuals and experts, national and international, were also consulted in order to open up new avenues of research, corroborate some of the information obtained and streamline the overall analysis of the situation.

Analysis of all these documents enabled the Team to establish a chronology by region of the main incidents revealing serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed on the territory of the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003. The analysis resulted in the initial identification of over 660 major incidents for verification. Only incidents meeting the gravity threshold developed in the methodology were considered. Subsequently, investigative work in the different provinces revealed the existence of new and unreported serious incidents which were added to the original chronology as and when they were found, bringing the number of major incidents in the database to 782 major incidents.

In-field verification investigations

On the basis of the chronology, five in-field mobile Teams had the task of verifying, corroborating or invalidating information relating to the occurrence of key incidents revealing the commission of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Each Team comprised two international human rights officers, supported by a Congolese human rights associate. The work of these Teams consisted essentially of meeting with witnesses to corroborate or invalidate the occurrence of the most serious violations reported in the chronology. To this end, each reported incident had to be corroborated by at least one independent source in addition to the primary source in order to confirm its authenticity. Every incident investigated by the Teams was then recorded in the Mapping Exercise database.

Over one thousand witnesses were interviewed by the Mapping Exercise Teams about major incidents identified in the chronology. Of the 782 open incidents and cases in the database, the Teams were able to close 563 (71%) cases in the verification Although some cases were invalidated, the majority of them were confirmed in accordance with the mapping methodology. It was not possible, however, to verify the 219 remaining cases (29%), either due to lack of time or access to the regions in question or the witnesses of incidents, or due to the lack of an independent source to confirm the information obtained from an initial source. Some cases include several incidents, meaning, for example, that a large-scale attack could encompass different types of violations or target different groups. Consequently, the report contains 617 incidents confirmed in accordance with the mapping methodology.

All the relevant information relating to the 782 open incidents and cases can be found in the Mapping Exercise database, which was submitted to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva. The following entries can be found in the database for each incident or case: the source(s) of the original information, fiche(s) d’entretien with witnesses to the incident, the nature of the violations committed, a description of the violations and their location in time and space, preliminary classification of crimes revealed by the incident, the approximate number of victims, the armed group(s) involved and the identities of some of the victims and the alleged perpetrators.

Investigation and analysis of specific acts of violence against women and children, and acts of violence linked to the illegal exploitation of natural resources

Given that the methodology used for the first part of the report would not allow for full justice to be done to the numerous victims of specific acts of violence such as sexual violence and violence against children, nor adequately reflect the scale of the violence practised by all armed groups in the DRC, nor enable an analysis of the causes of some of the conflicts, it was decided at the beginning of the Exercise to devote a part of it to these subjects, based partly on the investigations of the Mapping Team but also to a large extent on specific documents supporting these violations. Although these specific acts of violence are mentioned in several incidents recorded in the first part of the report, this more global approach enabled the Team to better illustrate in Part II the scale of the phenomena of rape, recruitment of child soldiers and violations of human rights linked to the illegal exploitation of natural resources. This has helped to highlight the recurrent, widespread and systematic use of these specific violations by all parties in the various conflicts and enabled a brief analysis to be produced.

Assessment of the resources available to the national justice system to deal with the serious violations identified

One important aspect of the ToR for the Mapping Exercise is the assessment of the resources available to the Congolese justice system to deal with the numerous crimes committed. A “Justice Team” was created within the Mapping Exercise to address these matters. Around 200 actors in the judicial system as well as national experts in domestic criminal law and international law were interviewed by the Justice Team in Kinshasa and in the provinces, notably the civilian and military judicial authorities, government representatives and the government agencies responsible for the reform of the Congolese judicial system.

The Justice Team began by carrying out an analysis of the domestic and international law applicable in this area, as well as the courts with jurisdiction to prosecute and judge the alleged perpetrators of the serious violations of human rights and international law committed between March 1993 and June 2003. A study of Congolese case law on crimes under international law was also carried out to illustrate domestic judicial practice in this area. The Team then assessed the capacities of the national justice system with regard to fighting impunity. The Team integrated the points of view and the needs expressed by judicial system actors met in Kinshasa, Orientale Province, Ituri, South Kivu and North Kivu, as well as in audit reports for the Congolese justice system created by the Congolese authorities (Plan of Action for Justice Reform) and by international agencies and some donors involved in the reform of the Congolese justice system.

Formulation of options in the field of transitional justice mechanisms that could help to combat impunity in the DRC

To formulate options for transitional justice mechanisms that were compatible with efforts already underway and with the international obligations of the DRC concerning the fight against impunity, consultations were held in Goma, Bukavu and Kinshasa with professors of criminal law, human rights NGOs, victims’ associations, civil society experts working in the fight against impunity and representatives of bar societies and judges’ associations. Regional consultations regarding various areas of transitional justice were organised in the form of round-table meetings with civil society representatives in Bunia, Bukavu, Goma and Kinshasa. In all, these round-table meetings attracted more than one hundred representatives of victims’ associations and human rights organisations involved in matters of justice and the fight against impunity.

In particular, the Team assessed the extent to which current reforms of the justice system and the security sector address the imperative to prevent further violations of human rights, combat impunity and meet the needs of the many victims in terms of truth and reparation. Finally, the Team was in a position to formulate several transitional justice options as part of the current efforts in the country to reform the judicial system, to reform Congolese law and to create new institutions that would promote greater respect in the DRC for its international obligations concerning justice and the fight against impunity.