The United Nations Human Rights Council holds a special session on the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

On February 7, local time, the United Nations Human Rights Council held a special session on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to review the human rights situation in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Earlier, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) submitted a request to the UN Human Rights Council to convene an emergency session, which was supported by more than one-third of the UN Human Rights Council’s member states. Recently, the situation in eastern DRC has deteriorated, and the anti-government armed group “M23 Movement” has invaded a number of important towns, including Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, raising international concerns about the outbreak of a wider regional war. Analysts point out that the conflict has a background of ethnic contradictions, rooted in the legacy of colonialism, and the competition for the region’s rich mineral resources has further exacerbated the complexity of the conflict.