UN's new special envoy for the Great Lakes, former Irish president and renowned rights activist Mary Robinson, will next week make her first tour of the region since assuming her role, the United Nations said in a statement Thursday. The week-long visit, which will bring her to Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and South Africa, starts Monday and will wrap up on May 5, with a visit to the African Union in Ethiopia's capital.

The United Nations said Wednesday it would investigate dozens of claims of rape by army officers and rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The UN's mission in the country, Monusco, said that 126 cases of rape were recorded between November 15 and 30 last year in and around Minova, in the restive eastern province of South Kivu. Monusco will lead "an inquiry into rights violations by the army and the M23" rebel movement, spokesman Madnodje Mounoubai said Wednesday.

The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported the Congolese government has taken actions to bring to justice the perpetrators of mass rapes committed in the strife-torn east of the country last year, a UN spokesman said here on Friday. The UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) has been notified formally that the Congolese government "has launched investigations and recorded around 400 testimonies from victims, witnesses and suspects," said Eduardo del Buey, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, at

The M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday warned that they would retaliate if attacked by a peacekeeping brigade that the United Nations has recently approved to deploy to the country's restive northeast to disarm insurgents. "We, as M23, do not have the right to attack the UN contingent," spokesman Vianney Kazarama told AFP. "But if they attack us, we have the right to react, to retaliate... to defend ourselves."