Congo Republic of The Issues - 2024

Disputes - international

Republic of the Congo-Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC): the location of the boundary in the broad Congo River is indefinite except in the Pool Malebo/Stanley Pool area

Refugees and internally displaced persons

refugees (country of origin): 33,916 (Central African Republic), 29,646 (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (refugees and asylum seekers) (2024)

IDPs: 27,000 (multiple civil wars since 1992) (2022)

Trafficking in persons

tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List — The Republic of the Congo does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so; the government trained law enforcement officials on the anti-trafficking law and issued six decrees to protect Indigenous People from trafficking; however, officials did not demonstrate overall increasing efforts, compared with the previous reporting period, on its anti-trafficking capacity; no investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of traffickers occurred; no reports identified victims for the third consecutive year; the government did not take any proactive measures to address alleged official complicity in trafficking, and the lack of a national anti-trafficking task force hindered overall efforts; therefore, the Republic of the Congo was downgraded to Tier 2 Watch List (2023)

trafficking profile: human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in the Republic of the Congo, and victims from the Republic of the Congo are exploited abroad; forced labor of adults and children is the primary type of trafficking, predominantly in the agricultural sector; most victims originate from Benin and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and to a lesser extent from Gabon and other neighboring countries; children, primarily from West Africa, are exploited in domestic servitude in cities; fraudulent employment agents in Benin, the Central African Republic, the DRC, and Gabon recruit victims who are exploited in the Republic of the Congo; foreign business owners and Congolese exploit most foreign victims in forced domestic service, market vending, and the fishing sector; some hotel owners and criminals exploit adults and children, mostly from the DRC, in sex trafficking; some parents, mostly in West African countries, send their children to the Republic of the Congo expecting the child will send remittances or receive an education, but traffickers exploit the children in sex trafficking or forced labor; internal trafficking primarily involves recruitment from remote rural areas for exploitation in cities; refugees and Indigenous Populations are particularly vulnerable; traffickers, including some from the majority Bantu community, exploit Indigenous people in forced agricultural labor; the majority of internal victims are from the Indigenous population (2023)