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The eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have not known peace for thirty years. The present war is between Congo's government and M23, an armed movement led by Congolese Tutsi which United Nations experts say is armed and reinforced by Rwanda's army. Rwanda denies directing it. In early 2025 M23 took Goma and Bukavu, the two largest cities of the east, and it now administers a territory of several million people. The ground it holds is rich in coltan, gold and tin. The United States and Qatar have mediated two sets of agreements, tied on the American side to access to Congo's minerals. The fighting has slowed and has not stopped.
In September 2026 the UN Security Council was told that peace deals for the DRC have not halted the fighting, as an Ebola crisis deepens. Amnesty International accused M23 of abuses at mines in eastern Congo amounting to war crimes. The government and M23 had agreed in Switzerland on 23 August to a roadmap for talks, and Qatar announced the first joint verification of the truce days later. M23 still governs Goma and Bukavu.
Rwanda's part. Successive United Nations reports describe thousands of Rwandan soldiers operating inside Congo with M23. Rwanda speaks only of defensive measures against the FDLR, a militia founded by men who carried out the genocide of 1994 and fled into Congo.
Who is Congolese. Congolese Tutsi have been told for decades that they are foreigners. M23 says it fights for their safety and their right to return. Many other Congolese see a Rwandan army in local dress.
Minerals. Coltan from mines in M23's area is exported through Rwanda, according to United Nations experts. Kinshasa has offered the United States mining rights in return for security. Each side says the other is fighting for the mines.
Congo is the victim of aggression by a neighbour that has invaded or sponsored rebellions four times since 1996 to loot its minerals. M23 is an instrument of Rwanda's army and would not last a month without it. Congo negotiates because it wants peace, but the first condition of any settlement is the withdrawal of Rwandan troops and the restoration of the state's authority in Goma and Bukavu.
M23 says it is a Congolese movement, fighting a government that broke its past agreements, persecutes Tutsi and other Kinyarwanda speakers, and has left the east to militias and thieves; where it rules, it says, there is order. Rwanda says the men who killed a million of its people in 1994 regrouped across the border, that Congo's army fights alongside them and its leaders have threatened to carry the war to Kigali, and that no state would tolerate that.
For the first time both tracks are covered: an agreement between Congo and Rwanda signed in Washington, and a framework between Congo and M23 negotiated in Doha, with prisoner exchanges, a verification mechanism and a roadmap. American investment in mining and transport gives every party a reason to keep the peace. Front lines that moved by the week in early 2025 have mostly held since.
The government's leaves out that its army fights beside the FDLR and local militias whose abuses are as well documented as M23's; that it used drones in populated areas and hired European mercenaries; that the state was absent from the east long before M23 returned; and that it has sentenced its own former president to death in his absence.
M23's and Rwanda's leaves out the reports of United Nations experts, accepted by the United States and the European Union, that Rwandan troops fight inside Congo and that minerals from the captured mines leave through Rwanda; the summary killings and forced recruitment recorded in Goma, Bukavu and Uvira; and that the FDLR, by the estimate of the same experts, is reduced to a few thousand men who have not attacked Rwanda's territory in years.
The mediators' leaves out that M23 took Uvira days after the presidents signed in Washington; that the American interest is openly in cobalt, copper and coltan; and that the many other armed groups of the east are party to none of it.
Civil society's leaves out that earlier peace deals which promised justice delivered neither justice nor peace, and that the people who can stop the shooting are the ones at the table.
Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.
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The agreements were made between those with guns and those who want the minerals. They contain no justice for killings and rapes documented on all sides, reward the capture of cities with a seat at the table, and trade the country's subsoil for protection. Around seven million people are displaced, the aid they lived on has been cut, and an Ebola outbreak has spread through provinces where health workers cannot travel.
Seven million displaced, and rule by whichever armed group holds the road.