GENEVA: The UN Human Rights Council announced on Tuesday it would hold an urgent session on the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which is gripped by violence. Friday's special session will focus on "the human rights situation in eastern DR Congo", council spokesman Pascal Sim told reporters in Geneva. He said the DRC requested the session on Monday. The council is the United Nations' top rights body and was not due to meet until late February.
Last week, the armed group M23 and Rwandan troops seized Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu — a mineral-rich region in the DR Congo's east that has been blighted by war for over three decades. Fighting has stopped in the city of more than a million but clashes have spread to the neighbouring province of South Kivu, raising fears of an M23 advance to its capital Bukavu. — AFP
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