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Fixed Broadband Subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in 2020

Stop internet shutdowns and promote freedom of expression and access to information online and offline.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a country located in Central Africa with a population estimate of 95.2 million. Its 2005 Constitution provides for various human rights including the rights to expression, privacy, association and assembly and many more. Despite these constitutional guarantees, freedom of expression and civil liberties are subject to severe restrictions. Media groups face intense government censorship and surveillance. Journalists are frequently targeted with threats, physical attacks and arbitrary arrest. The government imposes internet shutdowns to control the flow of information. Multiple state-directed shutdowns have been documented since December 2011, and their increasing frequency poses a grave threat to freedom of expression and access to information in the DRC.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

We conduct advocacy during the pre-session through direct lobbying to UN member state representatives and support local advocacy events and workshops that amplify the UPR. During the reviews, we amplify the UPR process and the recommendations our partners have drafted through live- monitoring by our local partners and on social media. We then conduct advocacy during the post- UPR period with activities such as training for government officials and events that highlight the recommendations made during the UPR. 

The country clusters are a local working group in each Uproar target country made up of our partner organisations. The clusters are organised by local lead organisations, who then coordinate local civil society and human rights defenders with digital rights expertise to engage in national-level advocacy and campaigning.

A review cycle is a four-and-half-year period within which all UN Member states’ human rights records are reviewed.  Each 4.5-year period is called a UPR cycle. In this section, you can find all recommendations made organised by cycle.

Over a hundred local and international human rights organisations are part of the wider Uproar programme. You can find them listed here.

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Access Now

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The Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa

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Ligue des droits de la personne humaine dans la région des Grands-Lacs

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Rudi International

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Si Jeunesse Savait

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Cluster

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Arsene T

It’s time for countries planning to make recommendations on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to take a strong stance on digital rights issues.

395 recommendations were made to the DRC during the first (2009) and second (2014) Universal Periodic Review (UPR) cycles. The Congolese government supported more than 80% of the recommendations made. But none of these recommendations touched on human rights online.

In 2009 and 2014, human rights online may not have been priority issues in the DRC. But it’s now 2019, and so many human rights violations have happened online, hence the need for more attention on the state of digital rights in the Congo.

I am in Geneva this week and attended the UPR-info pre-session on the DRC on Tuesday April 2. There were six speakers on the stage, but none of them spoke about human rights in the online environment.

Some of the issues that were touched on included the fight against gender-based violence, the rights of minority groups including pygmies and the LGBTI community, and the protection of journalists and human rights defenders.

Of course, these are very important human rights issues that still require global attention too. Indeed, without free and open access to the internet, many of the human rights issues raised by the six speakers become even more imperilled.

![1_zCSXRObVqaJpEpzsT29oRw.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/cld-storage/image/upload/v1643983664/1_z_CSXR_Ob_Vqa_Jp_Epzs_T29o_Rw_e1147baa83.png)


##### *Myself and Mr. Michal Dvorak, Human Rights Expert, Czech Republic*

**Human rights online are important!**

At [Rudi International](https://rudiinternational.org/), we believe that everyone should be entitled to the full enjoyment of their human rights everywhere, including online. And the situation of human rights online has been terrible in the Congo since the last UPR review nearly five years ago.

The DRC has tallied up a good number of internet freedom violations with communication disruptions (that include Internet and SMS shutdowns) topping the list. The most recent full shutdown of Internet and SMS in the DRC happened, on December 31, 2018, [right after the recent general elections](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-46721168) and [lasted 20 days!](https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/01/1029952)

**Lobbying for digital rights in Geneva**

On Wednesday morning I had the opportunity to meet with the Congolese Ambassador and head of the DRC Permanent Mission at the UN in Geneva, [Mr. Zenon Mukongo Ngay](https://www.linkedin.com/in/z%C3%A9non-mukongo-ngay-72192213).

During this meeting I mentioned many of these issues and encouraged him to champion this cause and use every opportunity he has to encourage the Congolese government to adopt internet freedom-friendly actions.

A copy of the advocacy document that we developed was given to him with the four top recommendations and he promised to consider them as he gets his own report ready for the review that will be held on May 7th.

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##### *Ambassador Zenon and myself right after the meeting*

Other violations that Congolese citizens are facing include the surveillance and interception of communications and the censorship of some online media outlets. These violations are preventing them from fully enjoying their digital life. For a country with nearly 15% of its population being online, there is much the DRC can do to encourage more people to go online.

**Putting digital rights on the agenda**

Throughout the week, I have had the opportunity to meet with a dozen diplomats from different countries who have made recommendations to the DRC in previous UPR reviews and they have mentioned their willingness to make more this year.

Many of them said they plan on evaluating how many of their past recommendations have been implemented (after being supported by the DRC government) and/or will make new ones covering new emerging issues. Our ask was that they make sure they include the online aspect when redrafting past recommendations and add new ones that touch on these important digital rights issues.

We are aware that recommending countries are limited in the time they have on the floor at the UPR to make recommendations, and that the Congo has many issues going on that need to be addressed. But we are hopeful that the countries I met, as well as those I didn’t get to meet here in Geneva, will consider championing and joining our fight for digital rights in the DRC.

We have until the DRC is reviewed in May to evaluate the results of our lobbying in Geneva this week! Stay tuned.


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Rudi International’s Arsène Tungali sets out the case for the international community to make digital rights in the DRC a priority in the 33rd Universal Periodic Review

#UPR33: A Pressing Need for Digital Rights Recommendations for the Democratic Republic of the Congo

There are many civil society leaders from across the globe that have been involved in the *Universal Periodic Review* (UPR) process since the beginning. But there are many others, like myself, for whom it is a completely new experience.

Not only was this my first experience with UPR advocacy, it was also my first trip to Geneva. And of course it didn’t go so smoothly at first. But I’ll get to that story in a minute.

I’m the Executive Director of [Rudi International](https://rudiinternational.org/), a civil society organisation from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and this April I was invited by [Small Media](https://www.smallmedia.org.uk/), [CIPESA](https://cipesa.org/) and [DATA4CHANGE](http://www.data4chan.ge/) to travel to Geneva to represent digital rights on the global stage.

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##### *From left to right: Glenn, Bronwen and Arsene*

The DRC is being reviewed this year for the 3rd time in May, and I was grateful to be able to attend the UPR-info Pre-Sessions that took place at the UN.

Before traveling to Geneva, Rudi International had worked with the [UPROAR](https://uproar.fyi/) network to develop a research paper focused on some digital rights key recommendations. It was then beautifully designed to become a great DRC briefing document that we would carry with us for the meetings in Geneva.

![factsheet.jpeg](https://res.cloudinary.com/cld-storage/image/upload/v1644181262/factsheet_859516bedf.jpg)
##### *The fact sheet designed by Small Media*

I have to admit that for the DRC’s pre-session on the morning of Tuesday, April 2nd, our briefing document was the most beautiful, not only in terms of design but also because it touches on a really important topic that no one else in that room touched on: recommendations on digital rights in the Congo.

Even with that document ready in advance, just getting me to Geneva was a huge challenge. With my record as a globetrotter, flying to Geneva was yet another painful and stressful experience to add to the list.

I am based in Goma, eastern DRC and that’s where I was supposed to fly from…

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##### *City of Goma on the map!*

**Here is the story!**

**1. Acquiring my visa**
I have always struggled to get a visa to the EU. Not only have diplomatic relations between my country and the EU representation in Kinshasa (the capital city of the DRC) been worsening over the past two years (a story I am not planning to share here), I actually have to travel from Goma to Kinshasa in order to physically apply for a Schengen visa.

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##### *Map showing the journey from Goma to Kinshasa*

Thanks to the support from the UPROAR project, I was able to go to Kinshasa and apply for a visa at the Swiss Embassy. Another fact is that due to my extensive travels this year, I had just come back from a long trip to Kobe, Japan, for an ICANN meeting. I wasn’t able to give the Embassy the required time to process my visa, but they were super kind and agreed to process my visa application as a matter of urgency.

Because I could not stay in Kinshasa to wait for my visa, I flew back home and asked a colleague to collect my passport and deliver it to me in Goma.

**2. Traveling to Geneva**

Long story short, I was supposed to fly from Goma to Geneva on March 30th to arrive in Geneva on March 31st, and attend a training session hosted by UPR-info on April 1st.
I was expecting my passport to arrive on Friday, so that I could fly out on Saturday, but it didn’t arrive, so there was no way I could make my scheduled flight. My passport finally arrived in Goma on Sunday at 11:30am.

Next problem. Not many flights leave from Goma.

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##### *Goma International Airport*

So I booked a flight from Kigali (in Rwanda!) that would depart on Sunday at 4.20pm. On a good day, it’s a four-hour drive from Goma to Kigali. Let’s just say (because this is the short version of the story) that I arrived at the airport 10 minutes before they were due to close the check-in counter.

I was tired but I was so glad I made it on time.

**3. The UPR Training**

So, my two 13-hour back-to-back flights arrived in Geneva at 7:30am on Monday, the very same day the training was happening. I immediately collected my bag and ran to my hotel, checked-in and dropped my stuff there, and then took the train to the UN building where I was supposed to get my accreditation.

With this being my first UPR experience, I was eager to attend this training. Because I arrived late, the French training session was full. The organizer’s thought that it was unlikely for a Congolese to speak English fluently, and thought I wouldn’t be able to attend after all. But I proved to them that I had the needed fluency!

It was 12.20pm when I finally entered the training room and found an amazing presentation by a US diplomat who was sharing his experience of engaging with the UPR process. Some of the things I recall from his speech:

- Civil society organisations need to work on their recommendations early enough and submit them ahead of time;
- Up to 3 specific and well-defined recommendations are okay, because diplomats have so little time and they need to hear straight to the point recommendations so they can see whether they can include them into their own to the state under review;
- I was also touched by the fact that he knew what was going on in my country and to hear about the issues his country cares about.

I learnt that these pre-sessions, convened by a Swiss nonprofit called [UPR-info](https://www.upr-info.org/en), are designed to help civil society organisations present recommendations on the specific issues they are working on to diplomats, and to learn to lobby the diplomats to consider including them in their own recommendations to the state under review.

Despite my fatigue, I closely followed his presentation and had a couple of remarks and questions related to my country, as well as all the lobbying activities happening in Geneva.

I asked:

*“Is it really worth traveling this far, spending energy, time, and resources to come to Geneva? Or should civil society organisations just focus their efforts and very limited resources on their own in-country advocacy work?”*

The diplomat helped me understand that both are important. Lobbying in Geneva helps the organisation meet and engage with diplomats based here and shows them what’s really happening on the ground, first-hand. That can really help the diplomats decide which issues to raise when they are making recommendations.

I had come to Geneva with recommendations developed by my organisation, Rudi International alongside other digital rights champions. After this presentation and the next training session, a more elaborate one describing the UPR process, I was ready and equipped with all I needed to take advantage of my time in Geneva.

My country, the DRC had the first pre-session on Tuesday at 9am and I was curious to meet the groups that would be speaking as well as to find out whether any representatives from my country’s permanent mission would show up in the room to listen and to speak.

During my next days of the week in Geneva, I’ll be focusing on meeting diplomats from permanent missions and speaking with them about the issues we care about.



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Rudi International’s Arsène Tungali made the long journey to Geneva to speak out for digital rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So was it worth the trouble?

The Longest Journey to Geneva For My First UPR Experience

On May 7, 2019 the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) was having its human rights record reviewed in Geneva as part of the Universal Periodic Review process (or UPR), but we were having trouble tuning in. The live-stream kept crashing, but usually came back after we’d hit the ‘refresh’ button a few times.

When the live-stream was working properly, we watched government officials — including the Minister of Human Rights, Mrs. Marie-Ange Mushobekwa — listening to recommendations from the international community about how to improve the human rights situation in the DRC.

In collaboration with [Small Media](https://smallmedia.org.uk/) and its partners, [Rudi International](https://rudiinternational.org/) is a member of the [UPROAR](https://uproar.fyi/) coalition, which supported us to take part in advocacy and lobbying efforts to raise the profile of digital rights in the DRC at the UPR.

Although we’d traveled to Geneva to lobby diplomats at the UPR-Info pre-sessions in April, we weren’t able to go back in May for the actual review. So instead, we crowded into a meeting room in Goma to watch it all happen online.

But our unreliable connection meant this wasn’t easy. This experience clearly demonstrated why there’s such a need to support and expand high-speed connectivity across the country — it was just a frustration in our case, but on a larger scale this lack of connectivity undermines the rights of Congolese citizens to access information freely, to assemble, and to engage with core services.

Rudi International was specifically interested in following the recommendations put forward by a number of countries that we met with during the lobbying period in Geneva, to see whether they took our digital rights concerns seriously, and incorporated our suggestions into their recommendations.

Despite the fact that there are so many other pressing human rights issues in the Congo, and despite the fact that countries only have around two minutes to speak about their chosen issues, a number of them managed to touch on digital rights issues either as a component of their main recommendations, or as an advance question. This was such a great thing to hear!

#### **Assessing Our Impact**

Now that the UPR report has been distributed, we’re happy to share the outcome.

The good news is that two recommendations from **Austria** and **Belgium** now mention issues relating to internet freedom (focusing on internet shutdowns and freedom of expression online). These recommendations can be traced back directly to our meetings with human rights experts from the two countries’ missions.

***Belgium** — Withdraw all media closure measures and no longer resort to the practice of limiting or cutting off communications systems (such as the internet and sms), including during moments of tension or popular mobilization;*

***Austria** — Ensure that perpetrators of violations of international humanitarian law and human rights violations, including against journalists, online media professionals, bloggers and human rights defenders, are brought to justice;*

We also had some direct impact on a question made by the USA, which mentioned challenges around freedom of expression online and offline:

***USA** — “What steps is the new government taking to guarantee individuals’ rights to free expression and free assembly online and offline?”*

Other countries we met with — including **Czechia**, the **Netherlands**, and **Germany** — also made recommendations or posed questions that are relevant to freedom of expression, even if they were not explicit in their treatment of “online” expression.

We have also engaged with a number of other countries via email, and shared our comprehensive advocacy document. The **UK**, **France**, and **Estonia** (who all received our briefings) all made broader recommendations relating to freedom of expression and the protection of media broadcasts and journalists.

#### **Where We Go Next**

It is worth to note that the DRC has been reviewed twice as part of the 2009 and 2014 cycles, but this cycle is the first time that digital rights have made it onto the international community’s agenda. At Rudi International, we’re happy to have contributed towards making this possible, through our work and advocacy.

It’s also worth noting that **ALL recommendations are currently under consideration by the government of the DRC**, and we don’t yet know which ones they will accept. The final decision on each of these recommendations will be made public around September 2019 — we hope they will all be supported, and call on the government to provide real support to digital rights!


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After travelling to Geneva to try and put internet shutdowns and access on the agenda, Arsène Tungali tuned in to see whether the international community had been listening.

Hitting ‘Refresh’ on Digital Rights in the DRC

DRC Factsheet.pdf

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Democratic Republic of the Congo Factsheet

Journalists and media workers

Free expression

Digital rights

Human rights defenders

Participation in public and political life

Justice and impunity

Arrest and detention

Association and assembly

Due process

Protection from violence

LGBT+

Advox is a project of Global Voices. They are a global network of activists and journalists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online. They report on threats to online speech, share tactics for defending the work and words of netizens, and support efforts to improve Internet policy and practice worldwide.
 
Global Voices is an international, multilingual, primarily volunteer community of writers, translators, academics, and human rights activists. The non-profit reports, translates, defends and empowers freedom of expression.

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Global Voices

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A global network of activists and journalists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.

In partnership with Advox Global Voices - a global network of activists and journalists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.

Uproar Tools are interactive data-driven tools that aim to show you how you can use the Universal Periodic Review to improve the situation of human rights in your country. 

Uproar Tools aims to show you how you can use the Universal Periodic Review to improve the situation of human rights in your country. 

The Tools were made in partnership between Uproar and Data4Change, a non-profit organisation working at the intersection of data, design, journalism and technology, collaborating with organisations on social and policy change interventions to forge real change and lasting impact.

Uproar Tools

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Use our free interactive tools to build recommendations and tailor advocacy efforts at the Universal Periodic Review.

Uproar Tools 

Advocacy Assembly is a free multilingual e-learning platform set up in 2015 aimed at educating campaigners, activists, human rights defenders and journalists in digital rights and digital skills. 
In partnership with leading digital rights organisations and experts, Advocacy Assembly offers self-paced online courses in Arabic, English, Farsi and Spanish using a variety of videos, quizzes and slides. The courses cover topics like design, data science, investigative journalism, open source investigations, effective campaigning for social change and much more.

Advocacy Assembly

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A free multilingual platform to access courses with leading organisations such as Amnesty International, Witness and Greenpeace. 

Advocacy Assembly is a free multilingual e-learning platform to educate on digital rights and digital skills.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

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