Project dates: 1/11/2015 - 06/25/2019

Target prison: Centre pénitentiaire de rééducation de Kinshasa, known as Makala

Prison statistics in December 2016 :

On 15 December 2016, Makala's population exceeded design capacity by 450%, i.e. it was housing 7 600 prisoners, although it was built for 1 500. Here, pre-trial detention prisoners made up almost 75% of the population.

39 persons have received instruction on legal safeguards (officials of the judicial and prison administrations and members of civil society).

Results in 2017

On 17 February 2017, 1 246 cases of abusive pre-trial detention were identified, 861 detainees were provisionally released (i.e. 69% of cases supported by assisting lawyers) and 385 files of those held on pre-trial detention were brought to court. Currently, 400 other files are being processed by lawyers assisting with the project.

This project is being supported by the ACAT France Foundation, Tavola-Valdese, MONUSCO, the ACAT network and the Paris Bar Foundation .