Good morning, this is Kasmira. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a US-brokered peace is hanging by a thread, a lawyer’s fight to reverse the recently reinstated death penalty has only grown harder as human rights commitments take a back seat to war.
My colleague Michelle Langrand spoke with Vascos Saasita about his hopes for real justice, “where truth can be told”, in his country. |
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Vascos Saasita , a Congolese lawyer who has spent 14 years fighting torture and the death penalty in his country, pictured in Geneva after receiving the French Marianne Initiative award for human rights defenders, in May 2025. (Michelle Langrand/Geneva Solutions)
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In Geneva, Vascos Saasita speaks quietly but with urgency. The Congolese lawyer has spent 14 years fighting torture and the death penalty in the Democratic Republic of Congo, seeing slow but sure progress. Since the escalation of hostilities in 2024 between government forces and the paramilitary group M23 in eastern Congo, his fight has only grown harder.
Saasita, who travelled to Geneva in May as part of a delegation of defenders awarded the French Marianne Initiative, warned the DRC is in “free fall” as the government abdicates its human rights commitments. In March 2024, Kinshasa lifted a 20-year moratorium on executions, arguing it needed to combat “treason” in the army amid rising tensions with rebel groups and a surge in gang violence in cities.
“This regression has dashed the hope we once had,” Saasita says. “Executing someone is to torture them. And it hasn’t stopped M23 rebels from looting, raping, and killing.” The government’s decision drew heavy criticism at the time, with Amnesty calling it a “callous disregard for the right to life” and “a further sign that the Tshisekedi administration is backtracking on its commitment to respect human rights”.
Read the full story on Geneva Solutions.
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Here's what else is happening
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💎UN experts warn Congo’s conflict minerals slipping into global market.
Verifying whether extracted resources have come from a conflict zone has become increasingly difficult for commodity traders, as the smuggling of minerals from the country into Rwanda reaches unprecedented levels, a UN report warns.
Swissinfo (EN)
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🌊The system that moves water around the planet is increasingly ‘erratic and extreme’.
Only one third of river basins had normal conditions in 2024 while glaciers melted across all regions for a third year in a row, a report by the World Meteorological Organization found.
CNN (EN)
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😷Countries kick off talks at WHO on crucial pandemic treaty annex.
Member states gathering in Geneva pushed ahead with work on a new system to share pathogen access in exchange for benefits from their use, as pressure mounts to agree on a text before the next World Health Assembly next year.
Geneva Health Files (EN)
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🛠What’s broken in global health, and how do we fix it?
The global health architecture has long been hobbled by the same structural flaws. Amid widespread donor cuts, the need to build a system that is less fragmented, less donor-driven, has become even more urgent.
Devex (EN)
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🫁Progress slowing ‘significantly’ against non-communicable diseases, WHO warns.
In a new report, the UN health agency said that diseases like heart disease and cancer, which are often preventable and caused by an unhealthy lifestyle or living conditions, kill 43 million people every year, including 18 million under the age of 70.
Agence France Presse via CP24 (EN)
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