NEWS
The DRC takes Rwanda to the International Court of Justice
June 2026
The fact
On 26 June 2026 the Democratic Republic of the Congo filed an application against Rwanda before the International Court of Justice, asking it to declare Rwanda responsible for three decades of violence in the country's east — massacres, extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement — and to order its cessation, guarantees of non-repetition and reparations to the State and the victims. At the centre is the M23 armed group, which in early 2025 seized Goma and Bukavu, the capitals of North and South Kivu, installing parallel administrations. The UN Group of Experts, the United States and several Western governments find that Rwanda militarily backs M23, with troops on the ground; Kigali denies this and justifies its presence as self-defence against the FDLR, a Hutu militia descended from the 1994 genocide that it accuses Kinshasa of tolerating. The war has produced more than 7 million displaced people and is fuelled by minerals — the coltan and tantalum of the Rubaya site. The Washington Agreements (DRC-Rwanda, December 2025) and the Doha Framework (DRC-M23, November 2025) have not halted the fighting; in March 2026 the United States sanctioned the Rwandan army.
Legal commentary
At the core is State responsibility for backing an armed force operating on another State's territory: the prohibition on the use of force and on intervention (Charter of the United Nations, art. 2(4)), together with violations of humanitarian law (Fourth Geneva Convention) and crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute; the DRC situation has been open for years). There is a direct precedent: in DRC v. Uganda the International Court of Justice held in 2005 that Kampala had violated the prohibition on the use of force by supporting irregular forces and occupying Ituri, and in 2022 ordered it to pay 325 million dollars in reparations, the final instalment of which falls in September 2026. The law, then, exists and has already been applied — to another State, for the same conduct. The 26 June application is the DRC's third attempt to bring Rwanda before the Court, and it also invokes the conventions on genocide, racial discrimination, CEDAW and torture. As an action only just filed, there is no judgment: responsibility is alleged, not adjudicated.
Implications
This is the test of symmetry. If one State's incursion and its backing of a proxy to seize a neighbour's cities and resources are unlawful in one case, they are unlawful in all. The same measure must apply to Kinshasa too, which in turn supports the FDLR and Wazalendo militias responsible for abuses, and to the global minerals chain: Congolese coltan ends up in much of the world's electronics, and the very States mediating peace are negotiating access to those resources. Yet, with more than seven million displaced, this is one of the least-watched wars on the planet — precisely the gap between gravity and attention that this platform exists to document. The law applies to everyone, or it applies to no one.
Sources: Al Jazeera · International Crisis Group · AP · ICJ (DRC v. Uganda)