A year ago, there was a glimmer of hope among diplomats regarding eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
A US-facilitated deal between Kinshasa and Kigali, signed in Washington in June 2025, was soon followed by a Doha-mediated Declaration of Principles between the Congolese government and the AFC/M23 rebel coalition.
For a region that has almost always been at war since the mid-1990s, seeing both governments and a rebel group put pen to paper felt like a real turning point.
Yet, 12 months later, that hope has faded into a sense of tired scepticism. Fighting persists in North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri, ceasefire violations happen almost every week, and the deep-rooted political issues that sparked the conflict remain unresolved.
Where the Talks Currently Stand
The peace process architecture, on paper, is more advanced than it has been at any recent point in the conflict.
There’s the Washington Accord between the DRC and Rwanda, the Doha Framework connecting Kinshasa and the M23-led AFC coalition, and a parallel mediation track involving the African Union, the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), with Angola and Qatar stepping in as lead facilitators at different stages.
James Swan, the new head of the UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO, told the Security Council in June that these efforts together create what he called an “agreed pathway” toward resolving the eastern conflict.
Swan urged all parties to stay committed to the promises they’ve already made. However, the Doha Framework itself shows how much work remains. Experts tracking the negotiations predict that both sides will spend much of 2026 still debating the framework’s six remaining peace pillars since neither side has much reason to move away from their maximalist opening positions.
The Congolese government’s initial stance has been to demand full rebel withdrawal, arguing that M23 doesn’t pose a direct existential threat to Kinshasa; meanwhile, the rebels have kept expanding their territorial control, even as talks continue. This contradiction is at the core of why the peace process often feels more like a war with occasional handshakes than an actual resolution.
There have been times when talks didn’t even happen where planned. A tripartite summit scheduled for Luanda, Angola, in December 2024, fell apart at the last minute after Rwanda’s delegation refused to attend, insisting that Kinshasa first hold direct talks with M23, something the Congolese government had resisted until then.
More recently, the venues for negotiations have shifted due to regional crises. A round of talks originally set for Doha was moved to Switzerland in April 2026 because the wider Middle East conflict disrupted travel and logistics in Qatar.
Why Optimism has Waned
First, persistent violence on the ground continues despite ongoing talks. In April, the Congolese army accused AFC/M23 fighters and allied Rwandan forces of drone strikes on military positions in South Kivu’s Mikenge and Kakenge areas.
These attacks reportedly also hit civilian zones at Point Zero, killing four people and injuring eight, most of whom were women and children. Nearly simultaneously, an M23 spokesperson accused Kinshasa’s forces of bombing civilian neighbourhoods around Masisi using a Chinese-made CH-4 drone.
This pattern, where talks end with hopeful statements about prisoner releases and humanitarian access, only to be followed days later by renewed violence and accusations, has repeated throughout 2025 and into 2026, undermining any trust that either side is negotiating in good faith.
Stewart Muhindo, a researcher and activist with La Lucha, a Congolese civil rights movement, said the players are signing commitments but don’t implement them. “This divergence alone shows that they are signing commitments they never intended to implement,” The New Humanitarian quoted Muhindo.
The Mediators and Their Challenges
The group of mediators involved has steadily become more crowded, which itself speaks volumes. Angola kicked off the earliest phase of shuttle diplomacy, hosting talks that initially excluded M23 and focused instead on the Rwanda-DRC bilateral relationship.
When that approach proved insufficient, Qatar stepped in to facilitate direct talks between the DRC and the M23, a role it has maintained even as regional stability around it has worsened amid conflicts elsewhere in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the African Union has established a parallel, complementary track, and the East African Community, along with SADC, which traditionally rivals for influence in this area, has also contributed its own mediation efforts, partly because of their overlapping troop deployments in the region. The United States has also become directly involved, brokering the Washington Accord between Kinshasa and Kigali in June 2025.
What makes this agreement particularly notable is the way it links security commitments to economic incentives, especially regarding American access to vital Congolese minerals like cobalt, coltan, tin, and gold, key resources in the global battery and electronics supply. Critics argue that using mineral access as a bargaining chip risks deepening the resource competition that has long fuelled the conflict rather than helping to resolve it.
Supporters, on the other hand, believe that tying Washington’s commercial interests to Congolese stability ensures sustained American attention, something that might otherwise be lacking. Having multiple mediators offers certain advantages: more forums mean more opportunities for the parties involved to find common ground.
However, it also allows both Kinshasa and the rebel coalition to shop around between different processes, engaging seriously with whichever track offers the most favourable terms while dragging their feet on others. Researchers focusing on Congo have observed that international pressure on Rwanda, in particular, has been inconsistent. This is partly because the United States, historically the most willing actor to push Kigali, has at various times been distracted by its own domestic and foreign policy priorities.
Kinshasa, Kigali, and M23 Each Tell Very Different Stories
At the core of the diplomatic mess is a disagreement over what actually caused the conflict, something neither side has really managed to fix.
Kinshasa’s view is clear: Rwanda supplies weapons, money, and even directly controls some M23 fighters, making the group’s rebellion a proxy war on Congolese land. Congo has taken this dispute beyond diplomacy into legal battles, filing a case against Rwanda at the International Court of Justice, accusing it of violating the Genocide Convention.
UN experts have previously estimated that thousands of Rwandan troops are operating inside Congo, effectively controlling M23’s military actions, a claim Kigali denies.
Rwanda’s side argues that the presence of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a group whose senior members include those involved in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis, is still a threat. Kigali claims that Kinshasa has tolerated or even helped FDLR fighters as a counterbalance to M23. MONUSCO’s own reports support this, citing instances where Congolese troops have fought alongside the FDLR against rebels.
Rwanda sees its involvement in eastern Congo as defensive, protecting Tutsi communities in Congo and Rwandan territory from what it calls a genocidal militia that Kinshasa has failed to dismantle. M23, on the other hand, insists it is fighting for the political rights of marginalised Congolese communities. Human rights groups remain sceptical, pointing to credible allegations of war crimes, such as civilian killings and forced recruitment even during peace negotiations.
In 2023, the rebel group expanded by absorbing the broader Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC). Today, M23 controls significant territory, including the provincial capitals of Goma and Bukavu, which they seized in early 2025. This gives them a bargaining chip that goes beyond mere rhetoric, making them a more formidable player at the negotiating table.
Minerals, Governance, and the Fuel for Ongoing Conflict
In eastern Congo, mineral wealth isn’t just a side note in the violence; it’s a driving force behind it. The Rubaya coltan mines in North Kivu, controlled by M23, bring in funds that support their military efforts.
Meanwhile, gold, tin, and cobalt deposits scattered throughout the Kivus and Ituri provide armed groups, from M23 to militia factions like Wazalendo and even the FDLR, with enough incentive to keep fighting rather than disarm. Adding to this, there’s a persistent vacuum in governance. Decades of weak state presence in the east have allowed armed groups to set up their own administrative systems, collect taxes, and in some areas, even govern more effectively than the central government in Kinshasa, according to UN reports.
Even after M23 has pulled back from some areas under the Doha process, MONUSCO observed that they continue to build these shadow administrations rather than fully relinquish control. Local tensions only make things worse. Land disputes, ethnic rivalries, particularly concerning the Congolese Tutsi and Hutu populations and competition among dozens of smaller armed groups vying for control of mining sites mean that even a broad agreement between Kinshasa, M23, and Rwanda wouldn’t address much of the deeper instability.
A glimmer of hope can be seen in Aru territory in Ituri. MONUSCO has supported local dialogue among armed groups there, which has shown some promising progress. This suggests that community-level mediation, though often overlooked, can be just as crucial as high-level diplomacy in resolving these conflicts.
The Human Toll
The impact of this war on civilians is devastating by nearly every measure. According to MONUSCO, between March and June 2026 alone, 632 civilians lost their lives due to the conflict in North Kivu and Ituri. During the same period, there were 1,221 documented human rights violations affecting nearly 3,000 individuals, including acts of sexual violence related to the conflict.
The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist-affiliated armed group operating largely independently of the M23, has also been responsible for killing hundreds of civilians in Ituri and Beni territories over this period. Nearly 27 million people, more than a quarter of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s population, are now facing food insecurity. Unfortunately, the humanitarian response plan for 2026 remains less than half funded.
Adding to the suffering, an Ebola outbreak declared in May 2026 continues to spread through already unstable areas, further strained by ongoing fighting. Health care services are overwhelmed and struggling to contain the virus.
Earlier estimates indicated that over 1.9 million people had been displaced from their homes, and this number has almost certainly increased as the crisis continues.
Can Diplomacy and Warfare Really go Hand in Hand?
One of the most uncomfortable questions hanging over this whole process is whether genuine negotiations can succeed while fighting continues almost unchecked. History doesn’t offer much reassurance. Past peace agreements in the Congo, from the Sun City accords in the early 2000s to the various Nairobi and Luanda talks over the past 20 years, have often been signed but failed to bring lasting peace.
That’s because they mostly addressed surface issues rather than the deeper struggles over land, resources, and political power. Experts warn that unless the current talks start tackling these core issues seriously, moving beyond confidence-building measures, they risk ending up in the same failed archive of agreements.
Speaking to DW, Nkere Ntanda, a political scientist from the University of Kinshasa, said, “Nobody is meeting the demands of the other. One would have expected a great deal of flexibility on the Congolese side in trying to respond to the demands of the M23.”
Still, there’s reason for cautious hope instead of outright despair. The ceasefire monitoring group under the Doha process, despite a slow start, now has office space and logistical support in Goma.
Diplomatic efforts, though sometimes frustrating, haven’t completely fallen apart. MONUSCO continues to help demobilise foreign fighters, some of whom have been repatriated in recent months. Whether this little progress can outpace the region’s tendency to relapse into violence remains an open question.
Eastern DRC finds itself at a fragile crossroads: too committed to diplomacy to abandon it entirely, yet far from the political agreement needed to ensure lasting ceasefires. Both military action and negotiations are moving forward side by side. Still, neither side seems ready to make the difficult concessions on disarmament of the FDLR, withdrawal of M23 fighters from contested areas, or power-sharing mechanisms that a true peace would require.
Until such compromises are made, the pattern of recent times will likely continue: talks that end with signed papers and a countryside still mourning its dead.
