11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award

Congo in Conversation

Congo in Conversation

Tag: Violence

Bunia, DRC, September 4, 2020. A fighter from the CODECO militia (C) holds rocket-propelled grenades as government soldiers take up positions while crowds of people look on after more than 100 heavily armed militiamen caused alarm by entering the eastern Congolese city of Bunia last Friday. Drawn mostly from the Lendu ethnic group, CODECO is accused by the United Nations of committing widespread and systematic killings, beheadings, rape, and other atrocities that the world body has said may amount to crimes against humanity. © Dieudonné Dirole for Fondation Carmignac

Politics and Insecurity

Militia Incursion Stirs Fear in Bunia

I got the call from a friend at around 6am on Friday: dozens of CODECO militia fighters had infiltrated our ...

byDieudonne Dirole

September 8, 2020

Goma, DRC, July 13, 2020. Protesters are arrested by a police officer in the eastern Congolese city of Goma on July 13 while denouncing the nomination of an election commission chief accused of rigging past elections in favour of former President Joseph Kabila. Congolese authorities have come under fire for cracking down on peaceful critics, journalists, and political party members while using pandemic state of emergency measures as a pretext to curb political protests. © Moses Sawasawa for Fondation Carmignac

Access to clean water

Congo Lifts Coronavirus State of Emergency

Congo this week lifted health emergency measures put in place on March 24 to contain the spread of coronavirus. The ...

byMoses Sawasawa

Northeastern Ituri Province, DRC, February 2020.The likeness of a Congolese soldier stands in a field near the village of Tche in Congo's northeastern Ituri Province in mid-February. With few government forces in the area villagers from the Hema community erected the likeness in the hopes of warding off armed members of the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO), an armed political-religious sect drawn from the Lendu ethnic group that has been blamed for a wave of killings in the province over the past two years. Conflict between the Lendu, mainly farmers, and the Hema, herders and traders, has a long history in the gold and oil-rich province, with tens of thousands of people killed between 1999 and 2003. Militia attacks have killed at least 444 civilians in Ituri since March and displaced more than 200,000 people since the beginning of the year, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which cited United Nations sources. A January UN report said some of the deaths could constitute a "crime against humanity". The army launched an offensive in January against militias operating in Ituri as part of a wider offensive launched last October, and announced that CODECO’s leader, Justin Ngudjolo, was killed in late March. The group has since split into different factions and continues to kill civilians across the province, according to HRW, which said Congolese security forces fighting the militia have also committed serious abuses, including extrajudicial executions. © Dieudonne Dirole for Fondation Carmignac

Politics and Insecurity

Conflict Reignites in Congo’s Ituri Region

I found the woman giving birth on a dusty road just outside Bunia in Congo’s northeastern Ituri Province late last ...

byDieudonne Dirole

Brussels, Belgium, June 2020. A statue of Belgium's King Leopold II, which had been defaced by protesters and then cleaned, was scrawled last week with fresh graffiti reading "Stop Cleaning Start Reflecting" in Brussels, where a campaign under the name “Let’s Repair History” (Réparons l’Histoire) has called for the city to remove statues of Leopold, starting with a monument in Place du Trône near the Royal Palace. As massive gatherings for racial justice gain momentum around the world, activists in Belgium are hoping the global movement may finally shift attitudes toward the colonial legacy of King Leopold II, the monarch whose tyrannical rule over the Congo Free State (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) is blamed for the deaths of between 10-15 million Congolese. Belgium’s federal parliament on June 17 approved a proposal to create a commission that will examine the country’s colonial history while the city of Ghent has announced that a defaced bust of Leopold II in Zuidpark will be permanently removed on 30 June, the anniversary of Congolese independence. © Pamela Tulizo for Fondation Carmignac

Obstacles to Progress

Congo’s 60th Anniversary of Independence, a Time of Reckoning?

Congo marks its 60th anniversary of independence on Tuesday at a time of global reckoning as countries are being forced ...

byJustin Makangara

Environment

Deadly Attack in Virunga Park

The morning of the attack, I was driving down the road from Rutshuru towards Goma on my way home from ...

byGuylain Balume