Kinshasa, April 3rd, 2025 (CPA) – A proposal for a law introducing obligatory military service in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been submitted to the National Assembly for consideration during the March 2025 parliamentary session, has learnt CPA on Wednesday from a parliamentary source.
‘Our proposal introducing obligatory military service, which has been submitted to the office of the President of the National Assembly, proposes two types of training, lasting a maximum of six months’, has reported Claude Misare, national deputy. ‘During these six months, the conscripts will have to undergo civic, patriotic and ideological training, during which they will learn the values and principles of the Republic, the military history of the Congo, military psychology and military ethics and deontology. The second military training course will last three months’, has added the elected member of the Union for the Congolese nation (UNC). According to the deputy for Uvira in Sud-Kivu, this legal framework is in line with the Congolese government’s efforts to enable its citizens to play an active role in defending their country. The proposal for a law refers to the need to make such participation obligatory, given the external threats to the country, particularly in its eastern part. The deputy has said he hoped that active conscripts could be requisitioned by the government of the Republic in the event of aggression or a persistent security crisis.
‘If all young Congolese aged between 25 and 30 were equipped with military knowledge, I don’t think that Rwanda could continue to threaten us and occupy certain parts of Congolese territory. It is therefore time for the integrity of our country’s national territory to be defended militarily by its sons and daughters’, he has concluded.