At least 10,000 Congolese, mostly illegal miners, have been expelled from Angola since December 2003 under inhumane conditions, a Congolese human rights organisation said on Thursday. "They were forced back by the military and hundreds of others have been arrested and detained in subhuman conditions," Dolly Ibefo, vice-president of the rights body, Voice of the Voiceless (Voix des Sans Voix), said.

The international community must compel leaders of the transition government to place political will behind the transition agenda, and hold Rwanda and Uganda to their commitments to support peace in Congo. In addition, a regime of individually-targeted sanctions should be developed and implemented by donor countries against Congolese political leaders and others who violate peace accords or continue participating in the plunder of Congo’s resources. These are two recommendations of a report by a delegation of human rights and peacekeeping experts from American non-governmental organisations that visited the DRC from July 25 to August 4, 2003. The report found that Congo’s transition process is complicated by: widespread impunity for atrocities perpetrated during the war; the continuing violence - and prospect of violence - in Ituri and the Kivu provinces; the flow of arms and military support that sustains militias; and the continuing presence of Congolese and foreign armed groups, primarily in the east.

The UN Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, MONUC, is to send a team to investigate a reported massacre in Ituri District, eastern DRC, a MONUC official told IRIN. According to local authorities, armed men said to belong to a militia group called the Front des nationalistes integrantistes (FNL) killed at least 100 people in Gobu, a lakeside village some 60 km north of the town of Bunia.

The blame for recent attacks on the United Nations Mission (MONUC) in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as well as summary executions of civilians, abductions and daily extortion, has been laid at the feet of a recently promoted militia leader, MONUC says. "Witnesses and complainants have accused Commander Bosco Ntaganda of committing gross human rights abuses. He is charged, among other things, with the summary executions of two people in Bunia in March 2003, kidnappings, rapes, barbaric acts on civilian populations, daily extortion of people's money and items in Ituri, illegal levying of taxes and other offences," MONUC said.

The Inga Dam in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been portrayed as a key for NEPAD's future success. But the plan to build the world's largest hydroelectric project on the Congo river which will have the capacity of supplying the current electricity demands of the entire continent is challenged by groups from civil society. They allege that the social promises made at the World Summit in Johannesburg have been betrayed. The Inga project departs from the goal of small-scale sustainable energy projects discussed at the World Summit, where the talk was of bringing electricity to rural people through local wind and solar power projects. Megaprojects like this often imply social, economic and environmental disruption of people's livelihoods, lands and life.

A committee overseeing the two-year transitional process in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has again expressed concern about continuing delays on the part of the country's national unity government in adopting key legislation for the transitional period intended to culminate in national democratic elections. In an effort to make up for lost time, the DRC's two chambers of parliament - the Senate and the National Assembly, which had just ended their ordinary session on Monday - have been reconvened.

Message de vie Radiotelevision (RTMV), a Kinshasa-based religious broadcaster owned by Pastor Fernando Kutino's Army of Victory Church (Église Armée de Victoire), resumed its broadcasts on 14 December 2003 after six months of forced silence. RTMV spokesperson Dede Kubiala told said that "those in charge of RTMV chose to resume broadcasting of their own volition since no official act prohibited them from doing so. The station had been forced to close after it was ransacked and its television equipment was confiscated by the Congolese National Police (PNC)" on 10 June.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on Monday launched a national campaign to promote education of all girls. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy, speaking at the "All Girls to School" campaign launch in the capital, Kinshasa, underlined the importance of educating children, especially girls, to national development.

Thirty-seven people have died following an outbreak of diarrhoea in Lomela town in Kasai Oriental Province, central Democratic Republic of the Congo, a medical official told IRIN on Friday. "Some 184 people have been affected and 37 deaths were recorded by 3 December," Dr Benoit Kebela, a departmental director in the Ministry of Health, said.

The integration of former rebels into a new unified army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) began on Monday at a ceremony in the eastern town of Kisangani. Some 150 soldiers paraded for the occasion in a common uniform. They included 40 men from the former government army, 40 from the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) and 40 from the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo - the two former principal rebel movements.

A UN General Assembly committee ended its session on Monday in New York, approving draft resolutions on human rights in three countries, among them the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Under the draft's terms, the UN General Assembly would condemn the continuing violations of human rights and international law in the Congo, and condemn all massacres and reported perpetration of acts of mutilation and cannibalism, cases of summary or arbitrary executions as well as the continuing recruitment and use of child soldiers.

The eldest son of Mobutu Sese Seko, former leader of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has ended his six-year exile. Manda Mobutu, 43, who has started a new political party, was welcomed at the airport by 200 cheering supporters, reports Reuters news agency.

Some 700 people associated with Mayi-Mayi militias were demobilised in Kindu, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), on Saturday by the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MONUC, in cooperation with forces of the seventh military region of the unified national army. A statement issued by MONUC on Monday reported that the 700 individuals - including women, children and the elderly - who opted to return to civilian life, were part of a larger group of about 2,000 fighters, the remainder of whom asked to be integrated into the national army.

The applicant must have a BA in Community Development or equivalent as the main requirement, and have a driving license. He/She must also have experience of working in a humanitarian programme for not less than 3 years.

A recent humanitarian assessment mission to Walikale territory of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has found populations in dire need of assistance, many thousands of whom remain unreachable due to the presence of numerous armed groups.

The BBC has obtained a key unpublished part of the latest United Nations report on the exploitation of Congolese resources, which had been intended for Security Council eyes only. Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch said: “It means the peace process will fail...Exploitation is one of the things driving the war. We must not ignore it.”

The United Nations has protested to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after being prevented from inspecting a plane it suspected of bringing weapons into the volatile east of the country. "MONUC (the UN Mission in the DRC) has protested vigorously to the transitional government of the Democratic Republic of Congo for having prevented its verification assignment in Kamina," it said in a statement.

Members of the government of national unity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been told to stop all electioneering until officially cleared to go ahead with their campaigns, an official of the High Media Authority told IRIN on Tuesday.

The prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) may have reached 20 percent in certain regions of the country, according to Dr Francois Lepira, director of the national programme against AIDS (Programme national de lutte contre le sida).

The Health Manager (HM) is responsible for overseeing all IRC health interventions in Nundu Health Zone. The Health Manger is responsible for planning, developing and implementing emergency health interventions (in collaboration with the Health Coordinator) as needed, while planning longer-term public health programs.