Law amending and supplementing the Criminal Code of 1940 (Loi nº 15/022 du 31 décembre 2015 modifiant et complétant le Décret du 30 janvier 1940)

The publication of the 2010 Mapping Exercise report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights—which documented violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 1993-2003—played a key role in prompting human rights activists to call on the government to take urgent and significant measures to punish the perpetrators of the international crimes described in the report. In response to this advocacy, members of parliament in the Democratic Republic of the Congo discussed amending three laws: the Military Criminal Code, the Procedural Code, and the Criminal Code of 1940. The first code to be modified was the Criminal Code, in order to reflect the international commitment made by the DRC to punish those responsible for international crimes committed during the armed conflict in the country. Under this law, war crimes (art. 223 – attacks on schools and hospitals, recruitment, conscription and use of children under the age of fifteen), crimes against humanity (art. 222 – denial of humanitarian access to the population, killing of children) and genocide (art. 221 – forcible transfer of children from one group to another) are punishable.