Draft:Gloria Sengha

• Comment: Please also convert sources to English, and use accessible sources where possible, which will make reviewing much easier. Greenman (talk) 08:55, 29 November 2025 (UTC)

Sengha Lossongu Gloria Patricia, known as Gloria Sengha, is a lawyer and prominent human rights activist in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the founder of the Citizen Vigilance movement (abbreviated as "VICI") and the Tolembi Pasi Citizen Dynamics movements and has been jailed on numerous occasions.

Early Life and Education

Sengha was born on April 20, 1993, in Barumbu, a commune located north of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly the Republic of Zaire). Originally from Kibombo in Maniema Province, on her father's side, and from Sankuru on her mother's, she became involved in activism after the controversial 2011 presidential election. That year, she joined the Faculty of Criminal Law and Criminal Sciences at the University of Kinshasa and created an organization called the Association of Youth for Democracy in Congo.^[1][2]

As a student at the University of Kinshasa, Gloria Sengha was a member of Jeunesse Consciente (a youth organization campaigning for the awakening of consciousness among the people of Kinshasa) and was head of her class before joining the citizen movement Lutte pour le Changement (Fight for Change, abbreviated as "Lucha"), founded in 2012 in Goma, North Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.^[3]

She obtained her university degree in 2016. The following year, Gloria began her career as a lawyer at the Kongo Central Bar and founded the pro-democracy movement Vigilance Citoyenne (abbreviated as "VICI"), where she served as coordinator.

Political Activism

During the January 2015 protests and during the 2016 political crisis, Gloria Sengha initiated several campaigns.^[4][5] In 2016, while Congolese politicians were in the middle of a dialogue, she was abducted and detained for more than a week in the premises of the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) located in the Cité de l'Union Africaine with other Lucha supporters for having launched the "Bye Bye Kabila" campaign.^[6][7]

In 2018, with sixteen other VICI activists, she was arrested for having launched the "Congolese koteka bomoto nayo te pona nzala" campaign.^[8] She was one of the initiators of the campaign opposing sexual slavery of underage girls in Kassaï, for which she was detained for six days at the Kalamu High Court and then an eleven-day pre-trial detention at the Kinshasa Penitentiary and Rehabilitation Center (commonly known as Makala Central Prison), until she was released on bail.^{[9][10][11][12]}

In May 2024, Sengha launched the Tolembi Pasi ("We are tired of suffering") campaign to demand access to clean water, electricity, and passable roads. She was arrested again on May 17, 2024, by the National Intelligence Agency (ANR) and detained for more than 40 days without trial before being released under popular pressure.

Sengha was one of the youngest pro-democracy activists during the January 2015 protests in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She was ranked among the 100 most influential Congolese women in 2017 by the North Kivus magazine Kivuzik for her courage and commitment to civic struggle.^[13] In June 2018, Gloria won the Human Rights Champion Award from the Human Rights Research Institute (IRDH), which recognizes those whose courage advances humanity and promotes democracy.^[14]

She also participated in the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative (IGLI) at the University of Denver (United States), dedicated to women leaders of nonviolent social movements (2018). And she is a Winner of the U.S. Department of State's International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) in 2023.

According to the World Bank, the Democratic Republic of Congo remains one of the five poorest countries in the world despite possessing abundant resources; according to Freedom Foundation, it remains "Not Free".

References