Thank you, Madam President.
The United Kingdom thanks the High Commissioner, the United Nations Joint Office for Human Rights and the International Team of Experts on the Kasai region for their report and continued work to support human rights in DRC.
Despite reported progress, the UK remains deeply concerned about the consistently high number of abuses and violations and continued violent repression of journalists, human rights defenders, and civil society actors.
We note that the state of siege in North Kivu and Ituri is already leading to human rights abuses. We continue to call on the Government of DRC to ensure that human rights and international humanitarian law are respected and that the state of siege has clear, measurable and time-limited aims and that its impact is evaluated.
We commend the Government's commitment to fulfilling its international commitments through legislative reforms and building the capacity of the state, and encourage it to redouble its efforts to to address human rights violations and combat the culture of impunity that persists in DRC.
As MONUSCO plans to withdraw from Tanganyika province in 2022, we would welcome the views of the commission regarding any lessons learned from the 2021 withdrawal from the Kasai region.
