Constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2006 (rev. 2011), Article 31 (Privacy and secrecy of correspondence, telecommunications and communications)

The Constitution of the Democratic Republic of the Congo of 18 February 2006 (as revised in 2011) sets out the constitutional protections relevant to digital rights. Article 31 guarantees every person the right to respect for their private life and the secrecy of correspondence, of telecommunications and of any other form of communication, subject to interference only in the cases provided by law. The Constitution also guarantees freedom of expression and of information. Article 31's express reference to 'telecommunications' and to 'any other form of communication' gives it a communications-technology dimension that extends to electronic and online communications, and it forms the constitutional backdrop to the DRC's Digital Code (Ordonnance-Loi No. 23/010 of 13 March 2023), which consolidates data protection, cybersecurity, electronic transactions and content offences in a single instrument. The provision is not expressly digital, it does not refer to the internet or to personal-data processing as such, and there is no developed constitutional case law applying it to the digital sphere; the entry is therefore recorded in line with the Library's established practice of capturing the constitutional privacy-and-expression layer for each jurisdiction, a basis flagged for the reviewer. In practice, the protective force of Article 31 is qualified by documented internet disruptions in the DRC and by the false-information and content provisions of the Digital Code, which civil-society observers have flagged as risks to online expression. Original language: French.

1. 1Article 31, right to respect for private life and the secrecy of correspondence, telecommunications and any other form of communication, save as provided by law
2. 2Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and information
3. 3Constitutional backdrop to the 2023 Digital Code (Ordonnance-Loi 23/010), consolidating data protection, cybersecurity and content offences
4. 4'Telecommunications' / 'any other form of communication' reference extends to electronic communications, but no express internet/data-processing language
5. 5Included per the Library's cross-jurisdiction practice (flagged for reviewer); practical force qualified by internet disruptions and Digital Code content offences