Cyclical violence and abuse in the Congo initially began partly as an offshoot of spillover from the four-year civil war that erupted in Rwanda in October 1990. During this period, the then-rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and its armed wing launched its first attack against former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s government and the Rwandan Armed Forces. On 6 April 1994, unknown gunmen shot down President Habyarimana’s plane while it was landing at Kigali International Airport. He was killed alongside his Burundian counterpart—President Cyprien Ntaryamira—together with several other officials and crew members. The shooting down of the plane carrying the Rwandan president is believed to have triggered the Rwandan Genocide. The Rwandan Genocide is believed to be one of the world’s fastest genocides and lasted 100 days—in which hundreds of thousands of people died, particularly the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus. The RPF’s capture of Kigali in July 1994 drove members of the Rwandan interim government (under the leadership of President Théodore Sindikubwabo and Prime Minister Jean Kambanda), remnants of the regular army and Interahamwe militia, and around two million civilians, to the DRC.

Since this exodus, the Rwandan government has regarded former members of its armed forces with suspicion; engaging in intricate regional alliances featuring Uganda, Burundi and others, that have intersected in complex ways with the movements of over 120 armed groups in the DRC. The Rwandan government has notably actively supported rebel movements in North Kivu and Ituri to counter the capacities of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)—a Rwandan rebel movement fighting Kigali with an established rear base. Uganda has also perceivably been making incursions in the DRC while targeting the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel movement that seems to have pledged allegiance to ISIS and appears involved in local illicit economies and informal trans-border trade. The group has moreover been establishing military alliances in the Rwenzori region rebellions, which have deep-rooted historical grievances against President Yoweri Museveni’s regime. They also serve as a proxy armed group for regional rivalries and geopolitical agendas, including those of the Sudanese and Congolese governments against President Museveni’s administration for alleged support of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. Two armed groups also originate from Burundi—the RED Tabara and National Forces of Liberation (Forces Nationales de Liberation)—who use eastern DRC as a safe haven and launch sporadic attacks against Burundian targets. The government of Burundi has resultantly concluded a bilateral agreement with Kinshasa enabling Burundian troops to conduct joint operations with the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo) in Congolese territory.

Yet efforts to bring peace and stability have not yet yielded the expected results. The UN mission in the DRC has been present in the country since 1999, but has become increasingly unpopular 25 years after deployment and has been asked to withdraw by the close of 2024. Following the resurgence of the rebel group, M23, the East African Community—which the DRC joined in 2022—deployed a regional force with a mandate to support stabilization efforts and promoted a ceasefire. Yet conflicting interpretations of the regional force’s mandate only heightened tensions between Kinshasa and the regional bloc, leading the initiative to halt activity after just one year. Despite the formulation of a strategic framework to harmonize interventions, competing interests, institutional incoherence, and fragmentation among the cacophony of external actors continue to impede tangible progress. Most concerningly, the conflict in the DRC remains relatively low on the international agenda, with Ukraine and Gaza dominating attention.