SW News:

The Democratic Republic of the Congo's security and human rights situation worsened, especially in its eastern provinces. This was revealed in the latest report of Human Rights Watch, which highlights human rights abuses in more than 100 countries.
The systemic reforms that President Félix Tshisekedi's administration promised to implement to end the country's decades-long cycles of violence, abuse, corruption, and impunity have made little headway.
The repression of journalists, activists, government critics, and nonviolent protesters persisted amid a climate of escalating intolerance for competing viewpoints.
The military control imposed in North Kivu and Ituri a year earlier failed to stop the atrocities against people by various armed factions in eastern Congo. Between January and late October, over 2,000 people were killed in both provinces by armed groups and government forces.
The crisis in North Kivu became worse when the resurgent M23 rebels, supported by Rwanda, launched their largest attack against state forces in a decade and took control of areas of the region.
According to the United Nations, about 5.6 million people were displaced nationwide as of July, with more than 1.6 million in Ituri and more than 1.8 million in only the provinces of North Kivu. The UN peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO, was constantly accused of failing to protect civilians, sparking rioting and the looting of its bases. As a result, an East African military force began to deploy in eastern Congo in August.
Under martial law, the freedom of speech and association hit rock bottom in the eastern regions. The military employed violent force to suppress peaceful protests that were initially imposed to address regional insecurity. They also used it to arbitrarily jail and punish activists, journalists, and opposition members.
The Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, and Tanganyika provinces in eastern Congo were home to some 120 armed factions like Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda combatants. Many of its leaders have been charged with war crimes, including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, looting, and assaults on hospitals and schools. Joint military operations by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Uganda against the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an armed organization led by Uganda with ties to the extremist organization Islamic State (also known as ISIS), failed to stop the ADF from killing civilians in North Kivu and Ituri. M23 rebels committed numerous violations in 2012 and 2013, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The UN Group of Experts on Congo discovered "strong evidence" that the Rwandan military was directly supporting M23 fighters in a confidential report to the UN Security Council that was leaked to the media in August. Rwanda refuted these charges. To combat armed groups in eastern Congo, nations of the East African Community (EAC), to which Congo was admitted in April, decided to establish a regional force.