DR Congo death sentences rocket, report warns

Kinshasa — The number of death sentences handed down in the Democratic Republic of Congo has soared since a moratorium on executions was lifted in 2024, a report by a campaign group warned on Tuesday.

Congo in 2024 ended a de facto moratorium on carrying out the death penalty that had been in place for over 20 years, during which time such sentences were systematically commuted to life imprisonment.

Courts sentenced more than 480 people to death in 2024, and 344 in 2025, up from 122 in 2023, according to the report compiled by the French campaign group Together Against the Death Penalty and several Congolese NGOs.

"To date, no execution has been officially confirmed, but the multiplication of death sentences is creating an unprecedented climate of fear," the report warns.

The report is based on 11 months of fact-finding in around 20 prisons and detention camps by an investigative mission made up of lawyers, civil society actors and Congolese parliamentarians.

This mission identified at least 950 people on death row detention in Congo, the report said, compared with a little over 500 in 2019, when they last investigated.

The report describes overcrowded and dilapidated prison facilities, where detainees live in conditions of "extreme health and food insecurity," sometimes without even knowing they have been sentenced to death.

Death sentences "are often handed down at the end of summary trials," the authors wrote.

"In many cases, effective legal assistance from a lawyer is also lacking, and respect for the right to a fair trial is not always guaranteed," the report says.

In a country whose judicial system is "opaque" and "subject to influence," avenues of appeal "turn out to be inaccessible to those who do not have a lawyer, financial means, or outside connections," the text adds.