Mapping Report > Section I. Inventory of the most serious violations > CHAPTER V. Legal classification of acts of violence > D. Serious human rights violations

As has been shown, almost all the crimes listed by the Mapping Team can be classified as “crimes under international law”, being war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly crimes of genocide. Certain other crimes were not committed in the context of an armed conflict or were not of such a widespread or systematic nature that they could be classified as crimes against humanity. Some of these, however, can be classified as serious violations of human rights, committed by the government authorities and their agents. This is the case, for example, with the numerous serious violations of human rights on the part of the Zairian security forces until 1997 and subsequently by the DRC security forces until 2003.

Unfortunately, it was not possible for the Mapping Team to carry out detailed investigations to check the multitude of individual cases; certain cases are therefore documented in this report for illustrative purposes only. Nonetheless, it remains the case that there were hundreds or even thousands of individual incidents of serious violations perpetrated by the security forces, often with the consent of other State authorities, or even driven by them. These were serious violations of the rights recognised by the international human rights mechanisms ratified by Zaire/the DRC.