Belgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht failed to secure the support of his EU counterparts for the deployment an EU mission to Congo until UN reinforcements can arrive. The ministerial meeting on Monday (8 December) ended with no commitments for a so-called bridging mission, despite UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calling on the EU to send troops until 3,000 additional soldiers can take their place and under a UN mandate.

Due to the absence of clashes as well as patrol operations by MONUC, nearly 65% of the families that fled from Kanyabayonga, 150km north of Goma due to insecurity, have started returning home during the past week. The same situation is happening in Kaina, Lubero, 200km north of Goma. Unfortunately in Kanyabayonga, most of the houses were looted by armed troops who carried away mattresses, blankets, kitchen utensils and many valuables.

Rebels in the strife-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) launched new military attacks today under the cover of a so-called police and pacification operation, breaking the ceasefire and exacerbating the humanitarian crisis, the United Nations mission has reported.

The IFJ has condemned the killing of a journalist working for Radio Okapi who was shot dead in the town of Bukavu, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. According to the radio's website, Didace Namujimbo was shot in the head by unknown assailants on Friday night near his home. "We condemn strongly the murder of our colleague Didace which shows yet again the alarming lack of protection for journalists in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo," said Gabriel Baglo, director of the IFJ Africa office. "In the last three years, six journalists have lost their lives in targeted attacks."

Congolese state security forces have killed an estimated 500 people and detained about 1,000 more, many of whom have been tortured, in the two years since elections that were meant to bring democracy, Human Rights Watch said in a report. The brutal repression against perceived opponents began during the 2006 elections that carried President Joseph Kabila to power, and has continued to the present.

Women and girls in eastern Congo's North Kivu province are once again suffering increasing levels of sexual violence amid renewed conflict, instability and widespread displacement of civilians. An International Rescue Committee team conducted a three-day assessment of conditions in Kibati Camp, north of Goma, where roughly 55,000 people have settled. The team found that women and girls are being raped both in and around the camp.

The UN special envoy to the Democratic Republic of Congo Olusegun Obasanjo, met with various leaders of the Great Lakes region, President Joseph Kabila and rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, in an effort to bring both parties to the table for peace talks. The African Union’s (AU) Peace and Security Council, discussed at its 157th session the security situation in Darfur expressing support to the AU-UN chief mediator and urging all parties to the conflict to respond positively to the call made by President Bashir for an immediate cessation of all forms of hostilities. In addition, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan will lead a delegation of the Elders Group of Eminent Persons to Zimbabwe to assess the country’s escalating humanitarian crisis and see how to respond more effectively to prevent its spill-over effects into neighbouring countries.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa summit of heads of State and government scheduled to take place in Zimbabwe has been postponed until next year because of the current political instability. The Commission of the Economic Community of West African States has congratulated the electoral commission and people of Ginuea Bissau for the peaceful, free and transparent elections that were held on Sunday and their commitment to the ideals of democracy. Nigeria’s President Umaru Yar’Adua, speaking at the opening of the 44th session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, called on African leaders to support the commission, work hard towards the promotion and protection of human rights and eradicate poverty in the continent. Penal Reform International used the Commission’s 44th session to launch a new publication: ‘Africa’s Recommendations for Penal Reform’ that brings together declarations, plans of action and recommendations for penal reform.

In other news, China’s top legislator Wu Bangguo, during his talks with the AU Commission chairperson, said that China was committed ‘to enhance bilateral communication and coordination on international and regional issues with the AU in a bid to push for improvement of China-Africa relations and safeguard the interest of developing countries’. South Africa’s President Kgalema Motlanthe, who was the only African representative to the Group of 20 summit of world leaders, said that the Group agreed to strengthen the system of international financial governance by giving developing countries effective representation. Finally, economists studying currency unions have claimed that the ‘adoption of a common currency increases trade because it eliminates exchange rate volatility and reduces the transactions cost of trade within that group of countries’, but concerns over national sovereignty in Africa are holding back economic integration.

The UN refugee agency and its partners have been taking advantage of relative calm in the eastern Congolese province of North Kivu this week to step up work on a new camp for up to 30,000 displaced people. UNHCR and the provincial authorities want to move almost half of the 67,000 internally displaced people (IDP) currently staying in two camps in Kibati to the new Mugunga III camps, located to the west of the provincial capital, Goma.

The 3,000 extra UN troops being sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo need to be elite soldiers from Europe, the UN's ex-peacekeeping chief says. Jean-Marie Guehenno told the BBC there was an urgent need for an effective international force in the east.

“Women and girls are in urgent need of protection as fighting continues in North Kivu,” Bob Kitchen, International Rescue Committee (IRC) country director in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has said. “Vulnerable to sexual violence and abuse in a highly unstable environment where armed groups roam with impunity, women and girls are particularly at risk of harm when they have to leave camps or population centres to collect firewood for cooking,” he added.

Fighting in eastern Congo continues to put the lives of thousands at risk. The need for an urgent response only grows. But Europe shamefully continues to fail to take the kind of action that is most needed - sending in a rapid-response military mission.

Mikhael Missakabo reveals the extent to which Canadian mining companies are benefiting from instability and weak institutions in the Democratic Republic of Congo to reap huge profits while paying little attention to the ecological and human cost of their actions. These companies have become adept at hedging their bets in the ongoing conflict and negotiating contracts that literally impoverish the host country. All that remains in their wake is environmental and economic and social ruin.

Fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has forced most schools in Rutshuru territory to close, leaving an estimated 150,000 children out of class, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said. "Most children have been displaced," Jaya Murthy, UNICEF communications specialist, told IRIN. "Other children are in the area but unable to attend school."

Tens of thousands of refugees at a frontline camp in eastern Congo will be urgently moved to prevent them being caught in crossfire between rebels and the army, aid officials said on Thursday. More than 65,000 civilians who have fled weeks of fighting are camped at Kibati, a few kilometres south of combat lines between Tutsi rebels loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and government troops.

A UNHCR-chartered aircraft carrying vital shelter aid for thousands of displaced civilians arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) troubled North Kivu province on Thursday. The flight touched down in the provincial capital, Goma, after leaving Entebbe Airport in Uganda earlier in the day carrying 1,500 bales of plastic sheeting and three giant portable warehouses, known as Rubb halls, from UNHCR's regional stockpile in Dubai.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has warned that journalists in Democratic Republic of Congo are facing extreme danger after Congolese journalist Alfred Nzonzo Bitwahiki Munyamariza was killed in the town of Rutshuru and Belgian journalist Thomas Scheen was kidnapped nearby.

Fighting continues on several fronts in North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo despite a unilateral ceasefire declared by the armed group, the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), on 29 October. The CNDP's offensive in October forced a routed government army and hundreds of thousands of civilians down roads towards the provincial capital, Goma.

Since August, the conflict in Nord Kivu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), between the DRC Armed Forces (FARDC) and the troops of rebel general Laurent Nkunda of the National Congress for the Defense of the People (Congrès national pour la défense du people, CNDP) has intensified and has been accompanied by grave and massive human rights violations of the civilian population.

The UN Security Council should urgently increase the number of peacekeepers to help protect civilians in northern Democratic Republic of Congo following renewed attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), four international and national human rights organizations has said. Human Rights Watch, Enough, Resolve Uganda, and the Justice and Peace Commission of Dungu/Doruma also called on the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom, and governments in the region to develop and carry out an arrest strategy for LRA leaders wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In the last few months, fighting between the Congolese army and rebels has escalated, and more and more children are being kidnapped to bolster numbers amongst the various militia.