116,452,000 people
Source: Tyranny Tracker
HRF classifies the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
The DRC is a unitary state with a semi-presidential political system with a bicameral parliament. The Head of State, Felix Tshisekedi, came to power in the fraudulent December 2018 elections and secured re-election in the flawed and discredited 2023 elections. Since gaining independence from Belgium in 1960, the DRC has experienced recurrent internal political turmoil and the effects of global and regional powers’ competition over its immense geostrategic natural resources. The giant country the size of Western Europe has thus experienced 32 years of dictatorship—including a quarter of a century of totalitarian rule—cyclical rebellions, forceful power grabs, political assassinations, and the two bloodiest wars since World War II. Since the restoration of a constitutional, multi-party system in 2006, the country has experienced four flawed elections and its first-ever peaceful handover of power, but also degenerating violent instability and humanitarian catastrophes in the mineral-rich east. With an entrenched political culture of patronage, cross-carpeting, corruption, and impunity, successive regimes have followed authoritarian power consolidation via the capture of government institutions and repression. Since January 2025, the central government has lost authority over large swaths of North Kivu and South Kivu–including the two largest eastern DRC cities of Goma and Bukavu–as a result of a military offensive by M23 rebels and Rwandan troops.
National elections are a sham, to the point where the real, mainstream political opposition does not have a realistic chance to meaningfully compete and possibly win. The regime systematically curtails the opposition’s ability to campaign, engages in significant voting irregularities or electoral fraud, and undermines electoral oversight.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public face overt and systematic retaliation if they openly criticize or challenge the regime. The regime systematically targets political opponents, independent journalists, and critics through arbitrary arrests and lawfare, and violently suppresses protests. Through the capture of the media regulatory institutions and the national public broadcaster, co-option of private news outlets, and crackdown on independent journalists, the regime constrains the press, and fear of retribution causes journalists to self-censor media outlets.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. With its supermajority in the legislature and extensive presidential powers of appointment of top judges, Tshisekedi’s ruling Sacred Union of the Nation (USN) coalition has negated the separation of powers and turned the other two branches of government into subordinate extensions of a disproportionately powerful executive. The courts routinely rule in favor of the executive.
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