The U.N.'s top human rights body was holding an urgent session on Friday on spiralling violence in eastern Congo, where Rwanda-backed rebels recently captured a key city and some 3,000 people have been killed and nearly as many injured since late January.
The special session of the Human Rights Council was called by Congo with the support of dozens of countries. The government in Kinshasa urged the 47-member-country council to hold Rwanda and the M23 rebels who captured the city of Goma responsible for crimes against humanity, and to create a fact-finding mission to examine rights abuses in the area.
U.N. experts say the rebels — the most potent of more than 100 armed groups in the region — are backed by roughly 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has urged the rebels to lay down their guns and agree to mediation.
Volker Türk, the U.N. human rights chief, said an estimated 3,000 people were killed and nearly 2,900 wounded in an upsurge in violence since Jan. 26. He said the real figures are “probably a lot higher.”
“If nothing is done, then the worst could still be yet to come for the inhabitants of the eastern part of the country, but also in people living beyond the DRC’s borders," he said, referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The area holds vast deposits of minerals critical to the manufacture of much of the world’s technology, including mobile phones.
Türk noted attacks by M23 and their allies, the use of heavy weaponry, and intense fighting with Congo's armed forces and their allies.
“The Congolese people have been suffering terribly for decades,” he said, calling for international action. "How many more innocent lives must be lost before sufficient political will is galvanized to resolve this crisis?”
The rebels sought to reassure residents Thursday, holding a stadium rally and promising safety under their administration as they try to shore up public support amid growing international pressure.
Patrick Muyaya Katembwe, Congo's communications minister, called on the council to “hold Rwanda responsible for its war crimes and crimes against humanity" through allegedly forced displacement and an aim “to definitively occupy these territories."
Ambassador James Ngango, Rwanda's permanent representative to U.N. institutions in Geneva, said members of an armed group that participated in the Rwanda genocide in 1994 had fled to Congo, “where they now pose an existential threat to our security” and were spreading “their genocidal ideology."
After a string of statements by diplomats, the council was expected to consider a draft text presented by Congo that would among other things create an independent fact-finding mission into human rights violations and abuses in the region.
