Members of Independent Commission of Inquiry on the human rights situation in Eastern DRC appointed
The President of the UN Human Rights Council, Ambassador Jürg Lauber (Switzerland), has announced the appointment of Arnauld Akodjenou of Benin, Maxine Marcus of Germany/United States of America and Clément Nyaletsossi Voule of Togo to serve as the three independent members of the recently established Independent Commission of Inquiry on the human rights situation in the South and North Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mr. Akodjenou will serve as chair of the commission.
The commission members are requested to carry out their first field visit “at the earliest opportunity and, if possible, by January 2026 at the latest.”
The members of the commission are also requested to “present an oral update on the situation of human rights in North Kivu and South Kivu Provinces, within the framework of an enhanced interactive dialogue, at the Human Rights Council’s sixty-second session in June-July 2026” and to “submit a comprehensive report to the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in the above-mentioned provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, within the framework of an enhanced interactive dialogue, at its sixty-fourth session in February-April 2027 and to the General Assembly at its eighty-second session in September 2027.”
Hopefully the reports of this long-awaited Independent Commission of Inquiry will not be reserved the same fate as the Mapping report on human rights violations in the DRC in 1993-2003. More than 16 years after its publication, all perpetrators continue to evade accountability for their acts.