The Transnational Justice Initiative (TJI) is partnering with 9BR Chambers in London to launch strategic litigation to take a class action before the United Nations Working Group Against Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) to challenge the illegal practice of medical detention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). 

What is medical detention? This is where individuals are detained on hospital premises, with security guards in place to ensure they remain until their medical bills are paid. Detention practices are frequently heavy-handed, with guards monitoring patients and, in some cases, using violence against those who attempt to escape. 

Tragically, the practice of medical detention extends even after death. Hospitals retain the bodies of deceased patients until outstanding bills are settled. Families who cannot afford to cover these costs are denied the ability to bury their loved ones, and in some cases, hospitals resort to burying bodies in undignified mass graves on hospital grounds.

Across the Democratic Republic of Congo, patients who are medically fit for discharge are routinely prevented from leaving healthcare facilities until their bills are paid in full. They are detained without legal basis and incur additional daily charges for their continued occupancy, causing debts to escalate rapidly, trapping individuals in a cycle of deepening financial hardship and prolonged confinement.

The practice disproportionately affects the most vulnerable - individuals in extreme poverty, women who have given birth and their newborns, women and girls who have been subjected to rape and other forms of gender-based violence, as well as individuals with disabilities.

TJI is a small team of human rights practitioners working with international lawyers at 9BR Chambers to bring a class action before the UNWGAD, currently representing over 100 individuals who are being illegally detained in hospitals in the DRC for non-payment of their medical bills. 

Together, we have developed the Stop Arbitrary Detention Initiative (SADI) to challenge the legal basis of detention and petition for the release of all those who are illegally detained for non-payment of their medical bills in the DRC.

Despite its scale and severity, this issue has received remarkably little attention, and to date, no legal challenge has been brought to challenge it. Through trusted local partnerships in the DRC, SADI has already documented the identity of over 100 individuals in need of urgent release—the overwhelming majority of whom are babies, women, and girls—and this number is growing daily.

SADI is preparing to launch strategic class action litigation to challenge the practice systemically and bring it to an end. The objective is not only to secure the immediate release of those detained but also to drive lasting policy change in the DRC, to ensure the practice does not continue. This class action will ensure not only that the cases of hundreds of individuals are heard, but that the practice is challenged as a violation of international law. 

The broader aim is also to increase global awareness of the issue and establish a legal precedent to support advocacy efforts to end medical detention in other countries.

This litigation strategy involves navigating complex policy issues, verifying and documenting hundreds of cases, and preparing legal submissions addressing a wide range of human rights violations across multiple human rights fora. 
  
Your support will fund the preparation of our work, investigations and submission of the legal petitions. 

It will also support the preparation of additional individual petitions before the UNWGAD to seek the release of up to fifty other named individuals who have been arbitrarily detained as a result of their political activities, for exercising their freedom of expression and right to protest, and as a result of the criminalisation of LGBTQIA+ individuals across South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda.
  
By bringing attention to these illegal practices and by demanding accountability before international legal institutions to challenge arbitrary detention, we can start to effect change to ensure the release of as many individuals as possible from arbitrary detention. 
  
 Thank you for supporting this important initiative.