Mapping Report > Section I. Inventory of the most serious violations
SECTION I. Inventory of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003
The period examined by this report is probably one of the most tragic chapters in the recent history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), if not the whole of Africa. Indeed, the decade was marked by a string of major political crises, wars and multiple ethnic and religious conflicts that brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people.86 Very few Congolese and foreign civilians living on the territory of the DRC managed to escape the violence, and were victims of murder, maiming, rape, forced displacement, pillage, destruction of property or economic and social rights violations.
CHAPTER I.
MARCH 1993 - JUNE 1996 : FAILURE OF THE DEMOCRATISATION PROCESS AND REGIONAL CRISIS
CHAPTER II.
JULY 1996 - JULY 1998 : FIRST CONGO WAR & ALLIANCE OF DEMOCRATIC FORCES FOR THE LIBERATION OF CONGO REGIME
CHAPTER III.
AUGUST 1998 - JANUARY 2001 : THE SECOND WAR AND THE 'RASSEMBLEMENT CONGOLAIS POUR LA DEMOCRATIE' (RCD)
CHAPTER IV.
JANUARY 2001 - JUNE 2003 : TOWARDS TRANSITION - FROM LAURENT-DESIRE KABILA TO JOSEPH KABILA & INTERCONGOLESE DIALOGUE
CHAPTER V.
LEGAL CLASSIFICATION OF ACTS OF VIOLENCE COMMITTED IN THE DRC BETWEEN MARCH 1993 AND JUNE 2003
Compiling an inventory of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed in the DRC during this period presents a number of challenges. In spite of the scale and the extreme nature of the violence that characterises the violations in some of the country’s provinces, it has been necessary to take into consideration less serious violations as well as seemingly less affected regions. Confirming violations that occurred over ten years ago can sometimes prove impossible on account of the displacement of witnesses and victims. In some cases, violations appear to be isolated crimes and it is difficult to account for them. They can only be integrated in the waves of violence occurring in a given geographical location or within a given timeframe. Vis-à-vis the frightening number of violations committed, the sheer size of the country and difficulties accessing many sites, the Mapping Exercise is therefore necessarily incomplete and cannot reconstruct the complexity of each situation or obtain justice for all of the victims.
The inventory that follows, therefore, aims solely to present the most serious violations committed during the period under examination. The inventory endeavours nonetheless to cover the entire Congolese territory. It will be presented in chronological order, in relation to four key successive periods in the recent history of Zaire/Congo. The first period, from March 1993 to June 1996, describes violations committed in the final years of the regime of President Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, marked by the failure of the democratisation process and the devastating consequences of the Rwandan genocide, in particular in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu. The second period, from July 1996 to July 1998, covers violations committed during the First Congo War and the first fourteen months of the regime established by President Laurent-Désiré Kabila. The third period concerns the inventory of violations committed between the start of the Second Congo War in August 1998 and the death of President Kabila in January 2001. Lastly, the final period lists violations committed against a background of increasing observation of the ceasefire along the front line and the speeding up of peace negotiations in preparation for the start of the transition period on 30 June 2003.
