By Andrea Sau - Africa Desk

In April 2025, the Eastern Congo unrest seemed to have shifted timidly toward the end of major conflicts. First, on 23 April 2025, the Democratic Republic of Congo (“DRC”) and, alleged by DRC and some international observers, the Rwanda-backed militia M23 released a joint statement in which they pleaded to cease hostilities that have soared since January 2025. Subsequently, on 25 April 2025, the DRC and Rwanda signed an economic cooperation and peace agreement. The accord was brokered by the United States, which, in return, was promised access to the mineral resources of the country.

At the beginning of April, before the most recent developments, ITSS interviewed Professor Koen Vlassenroot to better understand the possible drivers of the unrest in the region. In this article, a timeline of the events will be drawn from the Rwandan genocide to the recent escalation of 2025. Furthermore, the origin of M23 will be analysed, including what the movement has been in the last 15 years and what motivations have fueled the group. Finally, these insights will be used to infer what the future of the Eastern DRC might look like after the signing of the agreements.

From the Rwandan genocide to the rise of M23

Between April and July 1994, at least 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed by the Hutu majority in Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide has heavily characterised the history of Rwanda and its neighbouring countries for the past 31 years. In July 1994, a coalition of exiled Tutsi called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which had attempted to gain control of Rwanda since 1990, managed to take over the country and put an end to the genocide. The DRC was remarkably affected in the wake of the Rwandan genocide and civil war, as between 1993 and 1996, almost 2 million Hutus emigrated to the neighbouring regions of North and South Kivu in the Eastern Congo.

In 1996, a coalition of countries led by Rwanda, which included Uganda, Burundi, and Angola, launched an invasion into the Eastern DRC, then called Zaire and led by Dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The First Congo War stemmed from two major elements: on one side, the Congolese opposition, led by Laurent Kabila, attempted to overthrow the Mobutu regime, and on the other hand, the surrounding countries wanted to deal with the security concerns generated by the Mobutu-backed militias active in the region. Unfortunately, it is to be noted that most of the victims were civilians and refugees inhabiting North and South Kivu territories.

In the years after he came to power, Laurent Kabila faced a complex conundrum. He needed to gain ground in local Congolese civil society, but to do that, he had to take a distance from the country that helped his accession to power, Rwanda. The Second Congo War was triggered by the decision from Kabila to expel the Rwandan and allied troops from the Eastern Congo. This resulted in support from Rwanda and Uganda to the rebel group Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (“RCD”), composed of various ethnicities part of the macro group of the Banyarwanda. The war was concluded by a lengthy peace process that started in 2001 and ended in 2006 with the election of Joseph Kabila as president of the DRC. Joseph was the son of Laurent Kabila, who died in 2001.

The peace process and the UN peacekeeping mission MONUC (later MONUSCO) were not enough to bring lasting peace in the Eastern DRC.  The process was rejected by the still active Tutsi groups in North and South Kivu, the most prominent example being Congrès national pour la défense du peuple (“CNDP)”. According to CNDP and other military groups, backed by Rwanda, the 2006 election did not guarantee sufficient representation for the Tutsi groups in North and South Kivu. After fights escalated, the civilian death toll increased even further between 2006 and 2009. A new peace process started in 2009, attempting a brassage which was intended to be a progressive integration of the armed groups into the DRC army. The agreement was signed by CNDP and the other groups on 23 March 2009.

The results of this renovated peace process did not fully satisfy part of the CNDP members; therefore, in 2012, the failure to implement the March 23 agreement resulted in mutiny by a group that called itself the March 23 movement, or in short, M23.

M23 drivers and motivation for its accomplishments

The rise of M23 in 2012 was short-lived but somewhat rapid. By November 2012, the movement managed to conquer the city of Goma, North Kivu's major city. International pressure managed to push M23, and especially its allegedly main sponsor, Rwanda, to bring the movement within the Rwandan and Ugandan borders.

The unrest in the DRC, and Eastern Congo especially, did not cease after 2012, but the country experienced in 2018 the first peaceful transition of democratic power as Etienne Tshisekedi took over the presidency. However, M23 apparently claimed that Tshisekedi was not committed to existing peace agreements and decided to return to action in November 2021. In the early 2020s, M23 gained momentum rapidly again, with - according to UN reports and regional observers - the support of Rwanda, even with troops on the ground. M23 managed to defeat the DRC troops several times, both because of external support and due to the Congolese army persistent corruption and structural weakness.

However, the distrust toward Tshisekedi cannot be pinned as the sole or main reason for the return of M23. While their objectives cannot be surely identified, the movement has a plethora of motivations that may have fueled the return to arms. Firstly, M23 had a more grounded approach since 2021, and while still targeting civilians, it aimed at controlling territories in North and South Kivu. In 2012, it was only a question of fighting against the power that the reckon was not respecting the accords. In the 2020s, the motivations had morphed, and since its return, M23 has established outposts, electing majors and administrators, and governed cities and territories. Furthermore, one important element is that M23 is part of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (“AFC”). AFC is a more politically involved movement with large overlaps with M23 in its leadership, and contrary to M23 itself, it has national ambitions. It is under the AFC umbrella that the April 2025 accords have been signed.

According to some sources, the Rwandan support has also changed; it has increased its direct involvement and reportedly has aided in the propaganda and recruitment. Rwandan president Kagame has often justified the involvement of Rwanda in the region and the M23 presence as a way of protecting Tutsi in North and South Kivu. While this claim is often refuted, there is also a general discredit and hate speech towards speakers of Kinyarwanda, Rwanda’s national language, in Eastern Congo, aggravated by decades of conflict.

The control of the mineral wealth of Congo is often cited by international publications as one of the key factors. The Eastern region is rich in gold and coltan, which is key for the sustainable transition. It is worth noting, however, that M23 has, for the most part, only gained from smuggling rather than the mining itself, and only in April 2024 gained direct access to a Coltan mine in Kabaya. During the period between November 2021 and April 2024, M23 conducted a campaign funded by alternative means. Rwanda has, in recent years, widely increased its export of minerals. However, although coltan exports are increasing, gold remains the country's main mineral export. According to multiple independent reports, there are credible concerns that this gold originates from the eastern part of the DRC. Additionally, one factor that needs to be taken into consideration is whether the presence of active conflict benefits or not the gold smuggling and extraction business. Academic studies indicate the opposite: the gold smuggling system does not necessarily benefit from active conflict.

Finally, Congo has the largest reserves of cobalt in the world, also extremely important for tech and clean energy purposes. This stockpile is located in the South of the country, which is, on the contrary, relatively more stable (although the Tigres movement has had some traction over the years). Therefore, it is important to understand that minerals do have an important role in the instability; however, they are not the main drivers of the conflict, but one of the many complex elements that fuel the fights in North and South Kivu.

What now?

The April 2025 agreement is not the first ceasefire attempt signed between M23 and the DRC. In July 2024, they signed a pact, mediated by Angola, that was quickly broken with mutual accusations of not respecting the accord. The aftermath of this fallout resulted in the most successful M23 campaign to date, in terms of territorial gains. What we can observe is however that this time the agreement came a few days after the agreement with Rwanda, and this may limit the option to come back to fighting for M23.

Thus, is this series of agreements going to solve the situation? The main issue, also underlined by Professor Koen Van Klassenroot in the interview with ITSS, is the fragmentation of the movements. The Alliance Fleuve Congo and M23 are only one part of the wider puzzle, Eastern Congo is plagued with smaller and as deadly armed groups. Other active armed factions involved in the increasingly complex fighting in eastern DRC include the DRC army-aligned Nyatura in North Kivu, the Islamic State-backed Allied Democratic Forces, which has recently increased attacks in Uganda, and CODECO and Zaire, who are in dispute in Ituri province.

International interest, such as US corporations have also pushed to access the mineral wealth of the DRC, and they could benefit from a situation more under control, and therefore, spend political capital on the US foreign policy in central Africa. The role of international players is going to be key to understanding how civilian massacres could be mitigated in a region that has been characterised by conflict for a long time.