The number of death sentences issued in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has soared since the government overturned a de facto moratorium on executions in 2024, a campaign organization said on Tuesday.
According to a report released by the French NGO Together Against the Death Penalty and various Congolese organisations, courts sentenced over 480 people to death in 2024 and 344 in 2025, up from 122 in 2023.
No executions confirmed, but climate of fear
To date, no execution has been officially confirmed. However, the report warns that the multiplication of death sentences is creating an “unprecedented climate of fear” in a country already plagued by decades of conflict.
An investigative mission visited around 20 prisons and identified at least 950 people on death row – nearly double the 500 recorded in 2019.
Overcrowded jails and summary trials
The report describes overcrowded, dilapidated prison facilities where detainees live in “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.
Effective legal assistance is frequently lacking, and the right to a fair trial is not always guaranteed.
In Congo’s opaque and influence-prone judicial system, avenues of appeal remain inaccessible to those without a lawyer, money or connections.
One third of those interviewed had been convicted for “criminal conspiracy” — a vague and expandable offense, according to the report.
