2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

La lucha was created in Goma in March 2012, An anonymous movement at first, it was baptized la LUCHA from its simple slogan to la lucha, the struggle in Spanish by pure necessity of identification. The movement's actions are having a growing social and political influence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. To date, the movement has several thousand activists and supporters scattered across the country and abroad. Throughout the DRC and in the DR Congolese diaspora, more and more Congolese are expressing the wish to join the lucha, to support its actions in one way or another, for a variety of reasons. The aim here is to see a new Congo as dreamed of by the father of independent Congo, Patrice Emery LUMUMBA: a united, peaceful, free, powerful and prosperous nation, thanks to the individual and collective efforts of its own sons and daughters. A Congo proud of its identity, its ancestral traditions and its linguistic and cultural diversity; a Congo champion of political and social Pan-Africanism, of peace, freedom and dignity for all human beings, and of ecology; the lucha also mobilizes citizens to become aware of their true power and responsibilities in a democratic state and to exercise them effectively, in non-violence, in the observance of laws as long as they are just, and in respect for the dignity due to every human being. The lucha does not limit itself to criticizing, denouncing, commenting and protesting. It acts responsibly and constructively; it undertakes and mobilizes citizens to be agents of change in their own communities or at national level, despite arrests, repression and so on.

More information:  www.luchacongo.org (External link)