Abstract

In 2015 the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (“DRC”) promulgated the adoption of the bill implementing the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute into the DRC’s domestic laws. The promulgation of the Act implementing the Rome Statute, published in the DRC’s Official Journal, allowed the DRC to give full effect to the Rome Statute and have its domestic laws amended in line with the Rome Statute. This article analyses the Act in relation to sexual and gender-based crimes committed in armed conflict situations. This article also considers two cases to assess how mobile judges have applied the Act since its promulgation in the investigation and prosecution of such crimes, thereby identifying the challenges faced by the courts in applying international crimes, and how they have tried to overcome these challenges.