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General Introduction on the Democratic Republic of Congo

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Abstract

Situated in Central Africa, the DRC is the second largest country in Africa, after Algeria. It shares borders with nine countries, namely Angola, Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, South-Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Zambia. It meets the Atlantic Ocean through the Congo River that is 4,374 km (2,718 miles) long, making it the second longest river in Africa (after the Nile) and one of the longest in the world. The vast territory of the DRC covers 2.5 million km2. The population of the DRC is estimated at 70,916,439, according to the 2010 US Census Bureau’s estimate, and the population density approximates 31.3 people per km2, making the DRC a “country continent”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was sentenced by the ICC on 10 July 2012 to 14 years imprisonment for war crimes committed by his UPC, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers. His conviction was the first by the ICC for international crimes.

  2. 2.

    The Interahamwe are elements of the former Rwandan army and the Hutu militia who perpetrated the Rwandan genocide in 1994. They are known as the Rwandan génocidaires (Rwandan ‘perpetrators of genocide’).

  3. 3.

    The M23 designates a rebel movement that insurrected in protest to the Congolese government for not respecting the terms of peace accorded brokered on 23 March 2009. They launched their rebellion in April 2012 and were defeated in November 2013 by the FARDC backed by the UN forces.

  4. 4.

    An estimation given by a member of Caritas International . This figure was generated from statistics obtained from interviews with self-demobilised soldiers, and from registers at transit and orientation centres where child soldiers who exit armed groups and militias recuperate and receive psychosocial support before family reunification. Many of these armed groups are unidentified and bear the name of the self-proclaimed General that purchases weapons and distributes these to his soldiers for the control of rich mineral resorts, or to protect particular ethnic groups who feel threatened by rival ethnic groups, or to protect agricultural land (Interview with the Coordination office, Goma, 13 May 2014).

  5. 5.

    Bosco Ntanganda, nicknamed the Terminator was a military chief of Staff of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) and deputy-chief of the Forces Patriotiques pour la Libération du Congo (FPLC) in North Kivu. He was indicted by the ICC in 2006 and stands trial since September 2015. Charged brought against him include 13 counts of war crimes and 5 crimes against humanity to which he has pleaded non-guilty. His violation of international law also encompass conscription of children below the age of 15 and their use in hostilities.

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  1. International Centre of Nonviolence, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa

    Jean Chrysostome K. Kiyala

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Kiyala, J.C.K. (2019). General Introduction on the Democratic Republic of Congo. In: Child Soldiers and Restorative Justice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90071-1_2

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