The majority of attendees at a three-day meeting in the parliament of the Democratic Republic of Congo have decided to end military control in two eastern provinces that have been severely impacted by long-running insecurity.
In order to combat armed groups operating in the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, the central government imposed the state of siege in May 2021, replacing civil rule with military control.
However, Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ report to the UN Security Council last week stated that the situation in the two provinces, where about four million people have been evacuated, has gotten worse.
“The siege situation provided us nothing…The populace is sick of it. Let the civilians regain control,” Béatrice Nyiramugeyo, a member of parliament who attended the conference, told the BBC Great Lakes.
According to MP Fabrice Adenonga, 195 of the 196 attendees of the consultative conference that ended on Wednesday voted in favour of lifting the state of siege, according to UN-backed Radio Okapi.
President Félix Tshisekedi must now “eventually react” to the situation, according to government spokesman Patrick Muyaya, who spoke at a press conference in Kinshasa.