DRC war crimes: how to give a follow-up to the Mapping Report

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), none of the crimes committed during the two wars and documented by the UN have been tried. A symposium was held yesterday, Monday, December 2, in Paris, at the French National Assembly to study the ways and means to give follow-up to the famous report Mapping which had identified some 617 war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 1993 and 2003. Crimes mainly committed by foreign armies and their Congolese allies. This conference was wanted and supported by the Nobel Peace Prize 2018, Denis Mukwege and the Francophone Institute for Justice and Democracy.

Almost every year, the French Parliament hosts a meeting on crimes committed in the Congo during the two wars and was found taxed, including by the Rwandan authorities, to support the supporters of a « double genocide ».

« Take out the Mapping report from the drawer »

This year, no blame or interruption of debate. Dr. Mukwege’s appeal to « pull out the Mapping Report from the drawer » when he received his Nobel Prize would have changed the game. This is what Luc Henkinbrant, human rights investigator for the UN between 2001 and 2011, believes. He is one of the initiators of the Mapping report and still lives in Congo: « A number of people, writers presumed crimes, today still exercise a very high level of responsibility. Names are coming out more and more on social networks, in WhatsApp groups … « 

The involvement of Dr. Mukwege is also what leads the Francophone Institute for Justice and Democracy to launch several conferences and seminars on the subject this year, as next year for the ten years of the Mapping Report. Professor Jean-Pierre Massias is its president: « We are working on the concept of transitional justice and the mechanisms that lead to impunity. And we have this report Mapping which basically is the symbol of this blockage. That’s what interested us. « 

Victims in fear

Dr. Mukwege was not there. He had to leave in disaster, following the death of his mother. But in a speech read by activist Jean-Jacques Lumumba, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize recalled that he had lost thirty of his colleagues and patients in his Lemera hospital in 1996 and that the victims were still living in fear. .