Kinshasa: MONUC discusses human rights with UNIKIN students

Kinshasa, 17 August 2009 - MONUC took part in a legal forum organised on 14 August last by students of the Faculty of Law of the University of Kinshasa (UNIKIN) on the theme of “Putting an end to violations of human rights”. The event, which saw participation from representatives of MONUC's Human Rights, Rule of Law and Gender sections, enabled about 700 students from UNIKIN’s different faculties to deepen their knowledge about human rights issues, particularly of what is meant by a “human rights violation.”

To give participants a better grasp of the theme, Mr. Louis-Marie Bouaka, Deputy Director, MONUC Division of Human Rights, and Mrs. Yande Kane started out by discussing the definition of a “human rights violation.”

They provided examples of the most common human right violations in the DRC, including sexual violence, arbitrary arrests, torture, the death penalty and breaches of the right to freedom of expression.

This led to a discussion of how to put an end to human rights violations in the DRC, what concrete efforts were being done at the national level and how MONUC was helping in these efforts to achieve that goal.

Major Eric Charland of MONUC’s Rule of Law section said part of the solution lay in raising public awareness over the issue.

This, he said, includes promoting public legal awareness through dissemination of information on legal texts; ensuring citizens were aware of their rights and encouraging them to denounce any abuse; providing magistrates and other judicial workers with adequate training to enable them to render fair and impartial decisions and combat impunity at all levels.

Discussing the impact of MONUC’s action on the human rights situation in the DRC, Mrs. Yanda Kane said that the growing number of denunciations by NGOs working with MONUC were an indication of growing awareness and local commitment.

Also speaking on the occasion, Mr. Akele Adau, a law professor and state prosecutor, noted that putting an end to human rights violations was among the objectives laid out in the new Congolese Constitution.

It was both a requirement and a challenge, as the country was striving to rebuild state institutions. He said the issue regarding human rights should be replaced within the broader context of the issue of State reconstruction, i.e., constructing “a republican and democratic State worthy of the name.”

This also means rebuilding governance, he added. According to Prof. Akele, governance produces human rights violations and so it is governance that can also protect them. “If we want to know what is being done to put an end to violations of human rights, we must put particular emphasis on governance,” he said.

In this sense, Prof. Akele said the Ministry of Human Rights should be a structure that performs a cross-cutting mission within all state structures, in order to establish concrete protection programmes as well as monitoring, assessment and planning mechanisms in all areas of governance (political, administrative, judiciary and military).

The ministry of Human Rights should also monitor respect for human rights standards at the administrative, economic, political, security, judicial and social levels.

But this challenge must concern each and everyone, he said, because it is not only about simply recreating the State but also recreating the society on new moral foundations that are focused on the protection of human rights.

At the end of the conference, Mr. Bouaka invited the students to follow the future presentation by the DRC before the United Nations Human Rights Council, in an exercise known as the Universal Periodic Review (Human Rights Exams), a mechanism to examine the human rights record of every United Nations Member State.

In this regard, the Government plans to organise this week a national conference on human rights as part of preparatory work for the report it is to present in Geneva on 1st 1 September 2009, prior to appearing before the Human Rights Council in March.