While the Ukrainian army and people continue to resist, the costs of Russia's invasion in human terms are mounting. As of March 15, the United Nations (UN) had verified 1,900 civilian casualties, including 726 deaths (fifty of them children), as Russia intensifies its assault on civilian targets, seizes the Zaporizhzhia nuclear site, lays siege to Mariupol which is without food, energy, or water in freezing temperatures, continues to threaten Kyiv, begins a push on Odesa and assaults Kharkiv with heavy and indiscriminate shelling.

Kasaï is one of the regions most affected by customary conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Between 2002 and 2015, local civil society counted more than a thousand occurrences of conflict in the region. In 2016, the Kamuina Nsapu affair also revealed the manipulation of customary power and the violence that followed.