A newly released United Nations report concludes that all sides involved in the deteriorating conflict in eastern Congo are breaking the terms of a peace agreement and committing serious abuses, according to a document reviewed by the Associated Press on Thursday.
U.N. experts say the Congolese army, the M23 rebel group, and M23’s Rwandan supporters have all failed to follow through on a peace deal reached in December — an agreement that was initiated by the Trump administration with the goal of ending a conflict that has dragged on for decades.
Among the violations cited, the experts noted that the Congolese army has continued to work alongside a Hutu rebel group known by the acronym FDLR. That group includes fighters who took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and later fled to Congo. The government in Kinshasa had specifically pledged to end that cooperation as part of the December agreement.
Rwanda has repeatedly sent military forces into eastern Congo, claiming it was necessary to neutralize Hutu fighters and protect its own national security. However, both Congo and the U.S. government have accused Rwanda of using those rebel groups as a cover to gain control over the region’s valuable mineral resources.
The report also found that the Rwandan-backed M23 group — which captured the city of Goma and other eastern cities in a rapid offensive earlier last year — has not pulled back as it agreed to do. Instead, M23 has strategically repositioned its forces and continues to pursue its goal of overthrowing the government in Kinshasa.
M23 now controls large portions of territory in eastern Congo and has been identified as the primary perpetrator of conflict-related sexual violence in the region, the report stated.
Rwanda maintains substantial influence over M23, and by late 2025, Rwandan troops inside Congo were “conservatively estimated at 8,000 to 10,000 elements in South Kivu and 6,000 to 8,000 in North Kivu, with no evidence of significant withdrawals thereafter,” the panel of experts reported — a direct violation of the peace agreement.
The United Nations has described the situation in eastern Congo as “one of the most protracted, complex, serious humanitarian crises on Earth.”
Just last week, Congo announced it had filed a case against Rwanda at the International Court of Justice, accusing its neighbor of bearing legal responsibility for the devastation caused by the ongoing violence.
The U.N. experts also reported that minerals from Rubaya and other mining operations in the Masisi region of eastern Congo are being smuggled into Rwanda by M23, which is building a parallel economy in the areas it controls. That economy is largely dominated by Rwandan-linked companies that export minerals extracted from Congolese soil.
Also last week, the United States imposed sanctions on a gold refinery based in Rwanda, describing it as part of “a network working in coordination” with M23 in eastern Congo. The sanctions against Gasabo Gold Refinery were described as part of broader U.S. and Qatari peace efforts in the region.
