Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are expected to sign a United States-mediated peace deal on Friday following several months of conflict that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions in resource-rich eastern DRC.
Neither country is formally at war, but the DRC accuses its neighbour, Rwanda, of backing the M23 rebel group, which is waging war in eastern DRC. Rwanda denies this charge.
In January, a deadly offensive by the rebels – aided by Rwandan forces, according to a United Nations expert panel – escalated a decades-long conflict in eastern DRC. The M23 has since seized the strategic cities of Goma and Bukavu, and its attacks have raised fears of a regional war.
The peace agreement comes amid reports that the US is considering investments in the mineral-rich region in return for security and calm in an area where dozens of militias vying for resource control have operated since the mid-1990s.
Here’s what we know about the peace agreement to be announced:
What’s the background to the crisis?
The DRC and Rwanda conflict dates back to the Rwandan genocide of Tutsis and centrist Hutus in 1994.
Following the overthrow of the genocidal government by the Rwandan Defence Forces, Hutu genocidaires fled into the neighbouring DRC’s poorly governed eastern region. They hid among civilian refugees and continued to launch attacks on Rwanda.
Kigali’s attempts to attack those forces led to the First and Second Congo Wars (1996-1997 and 1998-2003). Rwanda and Uganda were accused of targeting Hutu civilians, and looting and smuggling the DRC’s coffee, diamonds, timber, coltan and gold. Other neighbours similarly interfered, choosing Rwanda or the DRC’s side.
Eastern DRC has been in the throes of low-level conflict since then. More than six million people have been killed, and millions have been displaced. At least 100 armed groups taking advantage of a security vacuum operate in the area and control lucrative mines. The DRC has one of the world’s largest reserves of coltan and cobalt. It is also rich in gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten, which are critical for tech gadgets.
M23, which first emerged in 2012, is one of those forces. The group mostly comprises Congolese Tutsi soldiers who fought in the war and were to be integrated into the army. In 2011, they revolted, claiming ethnic discrimination in the force. M23 now says it is defending the rights of Congolese Tutsis. However, critics accuse the group of being a front for Rwanda’s ambitions to control the region – a charge that Kigali rejects. President Felix Tshisekedi has also accused longtime Rwandan leader Paul Kagame of backing the group.
A 2022 United Nations expert report noted that Rwanda is actively backing the M23 and that about 3,000 to 4000 Rwandan troops are on the ground in the DRC. The US has also said that Rwanda backs the group. Rwanda counters the allegations by accusing the DRC of working with other armed groups like the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu rebel outfit. Kinshasa insists that it does not work with the group.
Why did the conflict resurface?
M23, which was initially pushed back with the help of a UN force, resurfaced in 2022 with a series of violent, sporadic attacks. In January 2025, it launched a lightning offensive, armed with heavy artillery, seizing towns in quick succession and promising to march on Kinshasa.
An alliance of the Congolese Defence Forces, the FLDR, and a force from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) attempted to push the group back. In May, the SADC forces withdrew.
African Union-led mediation attempts like the Luanda Peace Process (2022) and the Nairobi Peace Process (2023) have failed to end the violence, as each side blames the other for violating ceasefires. In March, President Joao Lourenco of Angola, who attempted to strike a deal for months, stepped down as official mediator.
Meanwhile, the European Union has cut military aid to Rwanda and the United States has imposed sanctions on key Rwandan army officials for their involvement in the conflict.
In April, US Secretary of Defence Marco Rubio began negotiations with DRC Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner and her Rwandan counterpart, Olivier Nduhungirehe.
Qatar is also involved in the mediation. Tshisekedi and Kagame met Qatar’s emir in Doha in rare first face-to-face talks in March.
What’s in the peace agreement?
A full draft of the agreement to be signed on Wednesday has not been made available.
Earlier drafts during the negotiation process included standard provisions like:
- Either side’s respect for territorial integrity and a cessation of hostilities.
- Disengagement, disarmament and conditional integration of non-state armed groups.
- The return of refugees and displaced persons.
Earlier in April, the US Department of State released conditions that would guide the negotiations, although it is not confirmed if they were included in the final agreement. They were categorised as such:
- Sovereignty: Both sides agreed to recognise and respect each other’s territorial borders.
- Security: Both committed to not supporting any armed groups and to establishing a joint security mechanism to target militias.
- Economic issues: Both countries agreed to use existing regional framework structures, such as the East African Community, to expand transparent trade and investment opportunities, including those to be facilitated by “the US government or US investors” in mineral supply chains, hydropower development and national park management.
Is the deal a bargaining chip for DRC’s minerals?
Some critics have raised fears that the US could use the deal as leverage for greater access to the DRC’s minerals. Such a scenario, they warn, could cause a replay of the violence of past decades, when the DRC’s minerals were a major draw for interfering foreign governments.
These fears are rooted in a February pitch from the Tshikekedi government to the US. The DRC offered a minerals-for-security deal to Washington, essentially asking the US government to oversee the stability of eastern DRC in exchange for minerals.
US envoy to Africa Massad Boulos confirmed on a trip to DRC in April that Washington was interested in a mineral deal. Talks have been ongoing in parallel with the Rwanda-DRC peace deal, according to some reports, although there are no details yet.
Under President Donald Trump, Washington is racing to secure supplies of minerals used to manufacture high-tech gadgets and weapons.
“The intertwining of peace and mineral interests is deeply alarming, echoing a tragic and persistent pattern in the DRC’s history,” analyst Lindani Zungu wrote in an opinion piece for Al Jazeera, recalling how colonial rulers exploited the DRC’s resources, and how its neighbours did the same during the Congo wars.
“This ‘peace deal’ risks becoming another instrument of neo-colonialism,” Zungu warned. “In this context, foreign capital is used not to build, but to extract – deepening the divide between resource-rich African nations and wealthy consumer economies.”
Will this fix the DRC crisis?
Questions remain over how this deal will fix myriad tensions in the DRC. The draft agreements do not mention remediation or resolution processes.
Chief among the issues, analysts say, is the overall weak governance and justice system in the country that historically sees corrupt officials and perpetrators of injustice go scot-free. Analysts point to some politicians in the country who were part of the Congo wars and who did not face trials.
Both the M23 and the Congolese armed forces have been accused of atrocities, including extrajudicial killings and sexual assault. One M23 rebel leader, Corneille Nangaa, was the head of the country’s elections commission before he fell out with President Tshisekedi over alleged “backroom deals” related to contested 2018 general elections. In December 2023, he announced that his Congo River Alliance was joining M23.
Another cause of tension is the discrimination that Congolese Tutsis say they face in the DRC, in the form of ethnic killings and workplace discrimination, among others. The minority group is largely associated with Rwanda, and hate speech by politicians canvassing for votes often inflames tensions with local Congolese. The M23 claims to be fighting for this group, although critics say that’s a pretext to justify its violence.
