NEWS
DR Congo: the Washington peace deal hasn't stopped the killing of civilians in the east
July 2026
The facts
On 27 June 2025 the DRC and Rwanda signed a bilateral peace agreement in Washington, brokered by the United States. On 19 July 2025 the Congolese government and the M23 rebel leadership signed a ceasefire commitment in Doha. On 4 December 2025 the Washington Accords formalised the agreement (Amnesty International, HRW World Report 2026, accessed July 2026). On 10 December 2025 — six days later — Rwandan forces and M23 launched an offensive in South Kivu, capturing the city of Uvira; M23 withdrew only in January 2026, after a US diplomatic request (Global Centre for R2P, accessed July 2026).
In the same period, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) documented that between 9 and 21 July 2025 at least 319 civilians were killed by M23, backed by members of the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF), in Rutshuru territory — among the victims 48 women and 19 children, mostly farmers caught in their fields during planting season (UN News, OHCHR, accessed July 2026). Human Rights Watch separately documented the summary execution of over 140 civilians, mostly ethnic Hutu, in at least 14 villages in July 2025, as part of an M23 campaign against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR — a Rwandan Hutu armed group, some of whose historic members took part in the 1994 genocide) (HRW, accessed July 2026). An HRW report of 10 June 2026 further documents forced recruitment and arbitrary detention of thousands of civilians — including children as young as 12 — at the Rumangabo and Tshanzu training camps, run by M23 and the RDF between 2024 and December 2025, with summary executions of those who tried to escape (HRW, accessed July 2026).
The violations are not one-sided. The UN Fact-Finding Mission itself, established by the Human Rights Council in February 2025, concluded that all parties — M23, the RDF, the Congolese army (FARDC) and the pro-government Wazalendo coalition — committed violations that may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity. Amnesty International documents gang rape committed by both M23 and Wazalendo in North and South Kivu; Human Rights Watch documents abuses by FARDC and Wazalendo against the Banyamulenge Tutsi minority — killings, attacks on villages, extortion — while the Congolese army continued to supply weapons and financial support to the same Wazalendo militias (HRW World Report 2026, Amnesty International, accessed July 2026). As of 10 July 2026, according to the think tank Critical Threats, fighting continues along the Masisi-Walikale border despite the peace agreements formally in force.
Rwanda repeatedly denies the involvement of its own armed forces in the killings documented by the UN (statement of 11 August 2025); the Alliance Fleuve Congo, the political-military coalition M23 belongs to, rejected the UN allegations on 7 August 2025. Rwanda justifies its support for M23 by citing the presence of the FDLR on Congolese territory.
Legal commentary
The conflict falls under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions; the documented involvement of Rwandan armed forces (RDF) alongside M23 also raises questions of international, not merely internal, armed-conflict law. The recruitment of children as young as 12, documented by HRW, falls within the scope of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocol on child soldiers. The International Criminal Court opened a preliminary examination into crimes in North Kivu since January 2022, at the DRC government's own request, in June 2023 — an examination still open with no recent public developments.
Implications — the symmetry test
Here the test doesn't require reconstruction: it holds by construction, because it isn't this site making the finding but the UN Fact-Finding Mission, which attributed possible war crimes to every party involved — M23 and the Rwandan forces backing it, but also the Congolese army and the Wazalendo militias that Kinshasa's government arms and funds. No party comes out clean, and it's the UN itself saying so, not a reconstruction made by this site.
Sources: Global Centre for R2P · Human Rights Watch · Amnesty International · UN News / OHCHR · Critical Threats