The architects of this murder are many.

– Kwame Nkrumah

HUD explores humanitarian design dilemmas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The DRC has suffered one of the most severe and protracted periods of humanitarian crisis in history. Since the Rwandan Genocide, repeated armed conflict – both national and international – has caused millions of excess deaths. In January and February 2025, the situation deterioated as rebel groups sized control of almost the entire Eastern provinces of the country, supported by Rwanda. Yet humanitarian need in the DRC runs deeper than any immediate crisis. The lack of development across the country – with a severe absence of transport, technological, health, agricultural, industrial, or other infrastructure – generates a perpetual or, rather, structural crisis of mass everyday suffering. Equally, the DRC’s geopolitical value has prompted repeated and ongoing international interference in its affairs, leading not only to armed conflict but also the de facto pillaging of its natural and human resources. But the Congo is more than crisis. It is one of the centres of artistic production across sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a symbolic lynchpin of dreams for the pan-Africanist development of the continent. Research on the Congo is led by a hidden but indespensable network of expert centres and univerisities across the country who have advocated for change across each and every crisis the country has suffered. Its civil society networks do the same. In this, they are architects for a different Congo, seeking not simply redress for the mass violence that the country has witnessed across its history, but equally designing a different future body politic for the Congo.

K E Y
‎‎‎F I G U R E S

+ 7.0 million internally displaced persons;
+ 1 million refugees and asylum seekers;
+ 25 million persons in food insecurity;
+ 6 million violent deaths since 1997;
Some prisons at 1000% over-capacity.