DIILS instructor in DRC, speaking through an interpreter, discusses
international legal norms.

NEWPORT, R.I. - Joint Military Operations Professor Navy Captain Kevin Brew returned recently from leading a 2-week mission to train the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) on issues ranging from ethics and anti-corruption to military investigations and prosecution of sexual violence crimes.

The Defense Institute for International Legal Studies (DIILS) sent Brew to Kinshasa to lead a mobile training team. His presentations to DRC military judges and line officers addressed the law of armed conflict, ethics, anti-corruption, rule of law, the International Criminal Court (including the ICC’s recent first conviction and sentencing -- of DRC militia commander Thomas Lubanga Dyilo for use of child soldiers) and atrocities (e.g., ethnic cleansing and genocide).  Brew also spent five weeks in the DRC for DIILS in 2011 training DRC military at various locations on similar subjects.

Since the DRC, site of the African Great War, continues to face security, social and economic challenges, Congress, the State Department and the Department of Defense have placed a special emphasis on its development, including its military. The recent outbreak of fighting in the East, a mutiny of M23 led by the rogue general Bosco Ntaganda, a.k.a. The Terminator, (himself under indictment by the ICC), was a topic of much discussion during the training.

Graduating course group.

The seminar was collaborative in nature, as DRC military magistrates provided instruction on their Constitution, their new Code of Ethics, and their military code.