“Too often, these tragedies have been minimized, downplayed, sometimes even denied. Today, it is time to break the silence.” With these words, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi opened his virtual address at the 60th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. This solemn and historic moment marks the first official, formal call for the recognition of the genocide that has plagued the Democratic Republic of the Congo for over three decades.
“For more than thirty years, our people have paid an unbearable human toll: families decimated, villages erased from the map, women and children shattered by planned and systematic crimes,” he recalled. “These atrocities constitute, in some cases, the logic of genocide. Recognizing these crimes is about protecting the future and ensuring that such horrors are never repeated.”
President Tshisekedi emphasized the legal basis and tangible dimension of his initiative. “Our advocacy is grounded in indisputable legal foundations and a body of consistent national and international reports. This is not about emotions; this is about rights,” he stated. His approach is structured around three main pillars:
- Mapping acts of genocidal nature committed in the DRC over the past 30 years.
- Establishing the existence of genocides according to internationally recognized legal criteria.
- Setting up a transitional justice framework to guarantee truth, prosecution, and reparations adapted to Congolese realities.
“Our generation has the responsibility to break the cycle of denial, impunity, and recurrence,” he added. “The stability of an entire region depends on our ability to speak the truth, to hold criminals accountable, to repair the irreparable, and to ensure non-repetition.”
The president also issued a direct appeal to states, international institutions, and civil society:
- “Support the establishment of a robust international mechanism for truth and legal qualification of crimes.”
- “Ensure the protection of civilians today, justice for victims of yesterday, and credible guarantees of non-repetition tomorrow.”
- “Recognizing a genocide is not waging a fight against a community. It is serving humanity.”
Through this initiative, the DRC aims to end the cycle of denial and impunity and to rally the international community around a universal cause: “Do not forget, never repeat, begin to heal.”
This initiative forms part of a bold diplomatic strategy blending state engagement and religious diplomacy. Under Tshisekedi’s leadership, the DRC hosted American pastors from the White House Office of Faith in Kinshasa in July 2025 in a historic visit. Building on this, Pastor Johnson Travis, a member of the Office of Faith who led the delegation, launched a petition in the United States aiming to collect one million signatures for recognition of the Congolese genocide, promoting truth, justice, and reparations. Roaming Ambassador Antoine Ghonda Mangalibi, described as “visionary” by the presidency, leads this innovative international diplomacy.
Under President Tshisekedi and his religious and diplomatic partners, the recognition of the Congolese genocide is becoming an international effort combining justice, memory, and reparations, offering hope to victims and sending a clear message to the global community: peace is not decreed; it is built on truth.
At the same time, the DRC is already undertaking a national memory initiative for victims of the past thirty years of killings. The FONAREV (National Fund for the Rehabilitation and Memory of Victims) has been established, and memorial sites are being gradually set up across the country to preserve victims’ memory, support survivors, and strengthen national reconciliation.
Jonas Eugène Kota
