The Election Watch from Idasa is designed to aid civil society groups in the DRC and the region in holding governmental institutions accountable and ensuring a free and fair election. The Election Watch is based on the SADC principles and guidelines for conducting elections. It holds countries to the standards that they originated and agreed to abide by as members of the regional community.

Journaliste en danger (JED) has expressed surprise over local authorities' decision to close, without warning, five community and faith-based radio stations in Kambove, located about 22 km from Likasi, the second largest city in Katanga province, southeastern DRC. Territorial administrator Brigitte Luta moved to close Radio Télé Jedidja (RTJ), Radio Fondation Thérèse Lukenge Kapuibwe, Radio Communautaire de Kapolowe, Radio Rocher du Salut and Radio Plein Evangile on 18 November on the orders of provincial media and communications chief Mulanya Ilunga after they were accused of failing to pay required broadcast licencing fees.

Gecamines, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s state-owned copper miner, rejected a directive by the government and International Monetary Fund to publish its mining contracts because any disclosure may result in legal action, reports Bloomberg. In May, Congolese Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito ordered that all contracts involving mineral, timber, oil and gas concessions be made public within 60 days of signing to increase transparency. The Mines Ministry reiterated the demand in a 8 September letter to Gecamines, and the IMF and World Bank have also requested the company publish the documents.

Use these maps and graphics to explore the DRC as it prepares for just its second general elections in four decades.

As DRC prepares for its third presidential election on 28 November, Antoine Roger Lokongo cautions that external interests in the country’s vast mineral wealth mean that a genuine democracy owned by the Congolese people is likely to remain elusive.

They are men who have lost all pride and self-confidence and who have been left severely traumatised by their experience. At the medical centre in Uganda where they are being treated, they talked candidly about the crimes carried out against them. 'In the past, I thought that it was only females who were raped but not men. I cannot understand myself today. I feel pain all the time in my anus and bladder. I feel like my bladder is full of water. I do not feel like a man. I do not know whether I will ever have children,' said John (not his real name), a 27-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is just one of possibly thousands of victims of male rape as civil wars and tribal conflicts continue unabated across Africa.

Access to basic education in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remains poor, with up to seven million children across the vast country out of school - despite a 2010 government decision to make primary education free. DRC is still struggling to overcome the effects of wars that raged between 1996 and 2003, compounded by continuing violence in the east of the country and decades of corruption and poor governance. The seven million figure was contained in the preliminary findings – reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - of a study conducted by the DRC government with the UK Department for International Development and the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF.

Britain is being urged to help close down a legal loophole that lets financiers known as 'vulture funds' use courts in Jersey to claim hundreds of millions of pounds from the world's poorest countries. The call came from international poverty campaigners as one of the vulture funds was poised to be awarded a $100m (£62m) debt payout against the Democratic Republic of the Congo after taking action in the Jersey courts. Vulture funds legally buy up worthless debt when countries are at war or suffering from a natural disaster and defaulting on their sovereign debt. Once the country has begun to stabilise, vulture funds cash in their cheap debt deeds, at massively inflated cost to the countries.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has resumed a voluntary repatriation programme for tens of thousands of Angolan refugees after their displacement into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during the civil war that ended in 2002. On Friday, 252 refugees were transported in the first convoy of the repatriation programme jointly organised by the UNHCR, host countries and the Angolan government. The UN agency estimates that 113,000 Angolans remain in exile as a result of 27-year conflict.

Just over three weeks before the presidential election on 28 November, Reporters Without Borders and Journalist in Danger (JED), its partner organisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, have written to Adolphe Lumanu Mulenda Bwana N’Sefu, the deputy prime minister and interior minister. The two organisations, concerned about the increase in violence against media workers since the start of the election campaign, are asking him to do all he can to ensure journalists are able to carry out their work without being targeted.

A website has been launched to promote transparency in the Democratic Republic of Congo's mining sector, which is plagued by conflict and corruption. The Carter Center said it helped launch congomines.org to give people more information about the mining sector, including contracts and payments. Hundreds of mining documents and maps will be published on the site, it said.

Women make up just 12 per cent of the roughly 18,000 candidates who will stand for election to parliament in the Democratic Republic of Congo's 28 November elections. According to the Permanent Framework for Dialogue for Congolese Women, a gender equality pressure group, only 42, or 8.4 per cent, of the 500 members of the current National Assembly – the lower house of parliament – are women.

Democratic Republic of Congo’s National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) has released the official list of the presidential and legislative candidates. There are less than 40 days to election day in the Central Africa state in the poll set for 28 November. According to the list released by CENI chairman Daniel Mulundaongo, 11 candidates will be running for president while a whopping 18,500 candidates will be contesting for the 500 legislative seats.

Its gritty portrayal of sex, violence and gangsters in Kinshasa will come as little surprise to people who live there. The unknown quantity is how Congolese film Viva Riva! will play from Kenya to Senegal, from Zimbabwe to Burkina Faso, reports The Guardian. 'The award-winning thriller is set for release in an unprecedented 18 African countries, its producers say, signalling hopes that a new generation of African cinema-goers will watch home-grown productions instead of foreign imports. Viva Riva! is the first film shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo since the industry was shut down by President Mobutu Sese Seko 25 years ago.'

The Spine Africa Project focuses on three objectives: the treatment of those afflicted with spinal conditions, the education of local medical personnel, and social change. Each of these three factors contributes individually to what seems to be an exclusively medical epidemic. Visit their website for more information.

According to the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index, almost 80 per cent of households in this Central African nation now live on less than two dollars a day. Child poverty is estimated to be even higher, says the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), with eight out of 10 children not having access to basic services, such as education, health, nutrition or safe drinking water. 'The situation of Congolese children is worrisome. Only about a third of children of primary school age attend primary school,' says UNICEF DRC monitoring and evaluation specialist Bertin Gbayoro.

This Africa Files post is a summary of a UNEP report on DR Congo’s post-conflict natural resources environment. It states that the country has immense natural resources and could become a powerhouse for Africa’s development if the multiple threats to these resources are urgently addressed.

The latest news about the US conflict minerals law is that California State has become the first state in the United State to pass its own conflict minerals legislation. This legislation mirrors Section 1502 of the national legislation, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, which also aims at addressing the problem of conflict minerals originating from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). All companies, regardless of whether they are importing to the US raw or processed minerals, or as finished components, are expected to report on the due diligence they have undertaken to verify their supply chain and avoid conflict-promoting metals.

There has been an increase in the number of cholera cases and deaths in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo where an outbreak has been ongoing since March, say humanitarian agencies. At least 6,910 cases and 384 deaths had been reported as of 3 October, according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), compared with a total of 3,896 cases and some 265 deaths by 20 July 2011.

In 2011 Global Witness visited 67 communities in three provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This short film tells the stories of the people they met, who are impacted by the expansion of industrial-scale logging. A pattern of similarly devastating outcomes emerges. This film was shown at the World Bank’s annual meeting in Washington DC, September 2011. The World Bank is undertaking a review of its forest policies, such as those implemented in the DRC.