The Conflict in Eastern DRC: Actors, Causes and Peace Efforts

The eastern DRC conflict is the longest-running major emergency in the world, and one of the least understood. Fighting in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo has continued, in shifting configurations, since the mid-1990s. The International Rescue Committee estimated 5.4 million excess deaths between 1998 and 2007 alone, and by the mid-2020s the UN refugee agency counted around seven million people displaced inside the country, most of them in the east.

Thirty years of peace deals, peacekeepers and summits have not ended it. That is not because the conflict is incomprehensible. It is because it runs on three engines at once: a regional security rivalry left over from the Rwandan genocide, a war economy anchored in minerals, and a Congolese state too hollow to govern its own periphery. Any account that leaves one of them out will misread the other two.

How the war began: 1994 and its aftershocks

The starting gun was fired outside the country. After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, more than a million Hutu refugees, including defeated soldiers and Interahamwe militia, crossed into eastern Zaire and regrouped in camps along the border. Rwanda’s new government saw an existential threat rebuilding itself next door. In 1996 it backed a Congolese rebellion under Laurent-Désiré Kabila that swept Mobutu Sese Seko from power; in 1998, after Kabila broke with his sponsors, Rwanda and Uganda backed new rebellions against him. The Second Congo War drew in armies from at least seven African states and partitioned the country into rival zones until the Lusaka ceasefire of 1999 and the Sun City settlement of 2002.

The wars formally ended. Their eastern residue did not. The Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), built around remnants of the genocidal regime, stayed in the Kivu provinces. Congolese Tutsi commanders repeatedly took up arms, citing the FDLR threat and discrimination against their communities: Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP from 2004 to 2009, then the M23 from 2012. Scholars studying Ituri, where a separate ethnic war killed tens of thousands, reached a conclusion that applies across the east:

The root causes of the armed conflict are the result of the exploitation, by local and regional actors, of a deeply rooted local conflict over access to land, economic opportunities and political power.

That formula, from the political scientists Koen Vlassenroot and Timothy Raeymaekers writing in the journal African Affairs in 2004, remains the most economical description of the conflict system: local disputes over land and citizenship, harvested by national and regional players for their own ends.

The war economy

Eastern DRC holds world-class deposits of gold, tin ore, coltan and tungsten. A UN Security Council panel of experts concluded as far back as 2002 that mineral exploitation was financing the belligerents, and the successor Group of Experts on the DRC has documented the same pattern in annual reports ever since: armed groups and army units taxing mines, controlling trade routes and exporting through neighbouring countries.

Research on regional trade carried out for the European Commission in 2008 found that formal exports made up only 25 to 30 percent of the DRC’s total, with the rest moving through informal and illicit channels, and that those who profited most from a trade route usually also controlled the means of violence along it. The economics explain the conflict’s durability better than any ideology. For a commander taxing a gold mine, peace is a pay cut.

A state that cannot reach its own east

The third engine is the weakness of the Congolese state itself. The 2006 constitution promised a decentralised republic: provinces with free administration, their number rising from 11 to 26, and a constitutional entitlement for provinces to retain 40 percent of nationally collected revenue. Congolese civil society organisations that examined the process in 2009, in workshops convened in Kinshasa with international peacebuilding partners, documented how far practice fell short. Transfers to provinces arrived sporadically or not at all; in the city of Kinshasa the amounts actually remitted came to between 10 and 14 percent of the constitutional share, and officials reportedly demanded commissions of 25 to 30 percent to release funds at all. South Kivu executed just 13 percent of its 2008 provincial budget.

The consequences in the east are direct. Unpaid soldiers extort civilians. Unfunded provinces cannot deliver courts, roads or land registries, so land disputes are settled by militias. Border taxes are collected by whoever holds the crossing. Where the state is absent, armed groups are not an aberration; they are the local government. This journal’s analysis of security system reform in the DRC traces how the same hollowness runs through the army and police.

Peacekeepers and peace deals

The UN has been on the ground since 1999, first as MONUC, then from 2010 as MONUSCO, for years the largest peacekeeping operation in the world. Its record includes real achievements, above all the protection of hundreds of thousands of civilians and logistical backing for elections, and one striking military success: in 2013 its Force Intervention Brigade, authorised by Security Council Resolution 2098 with an unprecedented offensive mandate, helped the Congolese army defeat the first M23 rebellion.

The diplomatic ledger is longer and thinner. The 2008 Goma conference, the 2009 integration of the CNDP into the army, and the 2013 Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework signed in Addis Ababa by eleven countries each promised a structural fix. Each unravelled on the same reef: commitments by the DRC to reform its state and army, and by neighbours to stop backing proxies, were signed but not enforced. Regional bodies fared no better, as this journal’s study of regional cooperation in the Great Lakes region sets out in detail.

The M23 war and the fall of Goma

The current phase began in November 2021, when the M23, dormant since 2013, resumed fighting in North Kivu. It took the border town of Bunagana in June 2022 and expanded steadily despite an East African Community regional force, a Southern African deployment and successive ceasefires negotiated in the Luanda and Nairobi processes. UN Group of Experts reports documented direct Rwandan military support to the M23, including troops on Congolese soil, findings Kigali rejected while citing Congolese cooperation with the FDLR. In January 2025 the M23 captured Goma, a city of over a million people, and took Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu, weeks later.

Diplomacy shifted outside the region. In June 2025 the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington committing Rwanda to end support for the M23 and the DRC to act against the FDLR, and in July 2025 Kinshasa and the M23 signed a declaration of principles in Doha under Qatari mediation. The International Crisis Group’s DRC reporting has tracked the halting implementation of both tracks. As of early 2026 the framework holds on paper while control of much of North and South Kivu remains contested on the ground, a dynamic examined province by province in this journal’s companion analysis of North and South Kivu.

What ending the conflict would actually take

The elements of a settlement have been known for years; the difficulty is that each is politically expensive for someone.

• A regional security bargain. Rwanda’s stated concern, the FDLR, and the DRC’s concern, foreign-backed proxies, have to be addressed together and verified, not merely signed.
• Army and police reform with accountability. Integrating rebels into the FARDC without vetting has seeded every rebellion since 2004.
• Fiscal decentralisation that actually happens. Provinces with revenue can govern; provinces without it leave a vacuum armed groups fill.
• Formalising the minerals trade. Traceability schemes have made progress on tin and tantalum, far less on gold, which remains the militia currency of choice.
• Local land and citizenship settlements. The disputes that regional players exploit are, at root, about who may farm, graze and belong. National deals that ignore them decay quickly.

None of this is quick, which is the honest answer to why the eastern DRC conflict is still running after three decades. Cross-border economics could yet help: the same interdependence that funds war, examined in this journal’s essay on peacebuilding around Lake Albert, gives every neighbour a stake in a stable east. Turning that stake into policy is the work the region has repeatedly signed up to and not yet done.

Frequently asked questions

What is the eastern DRC conflict about?

It is a layered conflict combining local disputes over land, citizenship and political power in the eastern provinces, a war economy built on gold, tin and coltan, and a regional rivalry rooted in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Armed groups, the Congolese army and neighbouring states have all exploited these layers, which is why the fighting has outlasted every peace agreement since 1999.

When did the conflict in eastern DRC start?

The current cycle began in 1996, when Rwanda backed a rebellion against Mobutu Sese Seko after Hutu génocidaires regrouped in refugee camps in eastern Zaire. The Second Congo War followed in 1998. Although national peace deals were signed in 1999 and 2002, fighting in the Kivu provinces and Ituri never fully stopped.

What is the M23?

The March 23 Movement is a rebel group founded in 2012 by former CNDP officers who mutinied from the Congolese army, claiming a 2009 peace deal had been violated. Defeated in 2013, it resumed fighting in 2021 and captured Goma in January 2025 and Bukavu shortly after. UN experts have documented Rwandan military support to the group, which Rwanda denies.

What is the FDLR?

The Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda is an armed group formed in eastern DRC around remnants of the forces responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide, later joined by younger recruits. Its continued presence in the Kivus is Rwanda’s stated security grievance and has been used to justify repeated interventions on Congolese soil.

How many people have died in the eastern DRC conflict?

No precise count exists. The most cited estimate, from International Rescue Committee mortality surveys, put excess deaths at 5.4 million between 1998 and 2007, most from disease and hunger caused by the war rather than direct violence. Fighting since then has added an uncounted toll, and displacement reached roughly seven million people by the mid-2020s.

What role do minerals play in the conflict?

Eastern DRC’s gold, tin, coltan and tungsten finance armed groups and corrupt army networks, which tax mines and trade routes and export through neighbouring countries. UN expert panels have documented this since 2002. Minerals did not start the conflict, but they pay for its continuation and give commanders a financial interest in avoiding peace.

What is MONUSCO and has it worked?

MONUSCO is the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC, deployed since 1999 (as MONUC until 2010) and for years the world’s largest. It has protected civilians and supported elections, and its Force Intervention Brigade helped defeat the M23 in 2013. It could not, however, substitute for state authority or a regional political settlement, and its drawdown began in the mid-2020s.

Why did decentralisation fail to stabilise eastern DRC?

The 2006 constitution entitled provinces to 40 percent of national revenue, but Congolese civil society reviews in 2009 found transfers arriving irregularly at a fraction of that share, with heavy informal commissions. Provinces such as South Kivu executed tiny portions of their budgets. Without funded local government, courts and services, armed groups filled the vacuum.

What happened when Goma fell in 2025?

The M23 captured Goma, the largest city in eastern DRC, in January 2025, and took Bukavu in February. The offensive displaced hundreds of thousands of people and triggered emergency diplomacy that produced a DRC-Rwanda agreement in Washington in June 2025 and a DRC-M23 declaration of principles in Doha in July 2025.

Is there a peace process now?

Yes, two linked tracks: the Washington agreement between the DRC and Rwanda, addressing Rwandan support to the M23 and Congolese action against the FDLR, and the Doha track between Kinshasa and the M23. Both remained only partially implemented as of early 2026, with contested control on the ground in North and South Kivu.

Which armed groups operate in eastern DRC besides the M23?

Over a hundred groups have been active, including the FDLR, the Allied Democratic Forces (an insurgency of Ugandan origin that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State), CODECO in Ituri, and numerous local Mai-Mai militias. Many function as community defence forces, protection rackets or mining enterprises, and several have been co-opted as proxies by larger players.

Why has no peace agreement ended the conflict?

Because agreements have consistently traded amnesty and army integration for short-term calm while leaving the underlying engines untouched: unverified regional commitments, an unreformed army, unfunded provinces and an illicit mineral economy. Each deal postponed the same reckoning, and each postponement produced the next rebellion.