By Joe Bavier KINSHASA, July 21 (Reuters) - A 6-month-old peace deal in eastern Congo is "meaningless" because it has failed to protect civilians against rape and murder, a leading human rights group said on Monday. Nearly two dozen rebel and militia movements signed a Jan. 23 peace accord with Congo's government to end a decade of conflict in North and South Kivu provinces. The deal included a ceasefire and a pledge by all groups to respect international human rights law and protect civilians. However, United Nations' officials have documented some 200 ceasefire violations over the past six months. On a 10-day trip to some worst-hit areas in North Kivu, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented more than 200 killings of civilians and hundreds of rapes of women and girls. "Six months after the peace agreement was signed there has been no improvement in the human rights situation and in some areas it has actually deteriorated," Anneke Van Woudenberg, a senior researcher with HRW, said in a statement. North and South Kivu are still charged with ethnic tensions rooted in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, which helped trigger a 1998-2003 war in which six foreign armies fought over Congo's mineral riches. An estimated 5.4 million people were killed in the conflict and a resulting humanitarian disaster. On-and-off fighting last year pitted Congolese Tutsi insurgents loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda against the army, local Mai Mai militia and Rwandan Hutu rebels, displacing more than a half million people in North Kivu alone. Diplomats and observers had hoped the peace agreement would allow refugees to return home, but 100,000 more civilians have been forced to flee this year. Nkunda's fighters continue to clash with a loose coalition of Mai Mai and Rwandan rebels in a daily turf war. "While the parties to the peace agreement attend talks in (North Kivu's capital) Goma, their troops continue to kill, rape, and loot civilians," Van Woudenberg said. HRW said all sides, including Congo's army, are guilty of targeting civilians. "They tied us up and demanded all of our money and our pigs," North Kivu resident Jean told HRW following an attack by Mai Mai in April. "My wife refused to show them where she had hidden the pigs and they hit her with a large stick and stomped on her until she died." There are currently more than 1 million internal refugees in the Kivu provinces according to U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. Elections in 2006 had been meant to draw a line under decades of dictatorship and years of conflict. But despite pledges by President Joseph Kabila to reassert state authority, much of Congo's east is a volatile patchwork of rebel fiefdoms and militia controlled zones. (For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com) (Editing by Alistair Thomson and Elizabeth Piper)
Lebanese women hold pictures of their sons, whom they say are held in jails in Syria, during a protest coinciding with Syria's Foreign Affairs Minister Walid Muallem's visit to the Baabda ...
