The regional, military and humanitarian dimensions of the DRC crisis

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is facing one of the worst humanitarian crises of our time. Since the beginning of 2025, the DRC has become the second largest internally displaced people’s crisis globally: as a direct consequence of armed conflicts, 7.3 million people are currently displaced, of which more than half are children. One in four people in dire need of humanitarian support, human rights violations and food insecurity are daily occurrences, especially in the east of the country – the areas of North and South Kivu, and Ituri.

Several factors and many interests at stake paint a complex scenario, where tracing back to root causes of the conflict is not an easy task.

 

Background

The eastern part of the DRC – bordering with half a dozen countries – has always been a source of tension between the different ethnolinguistic communities. The region is very ethnically diverse with more than 20 different ethnic groups and where Bantu-speaking people, mostly Nande, are predominant. For decades, these tensions have taken the form of armed conflicts, even overflowing national borders and involving neighboring countries.

 

According to international reports, there are more than two hundred armed groups and other armed actors (national or foreign) in eastern DRC. Today, many rebels gravitate around – or are directly part of – one main group, the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC, Alliance for the Congo River), a political and military coalition founded in December 2023 by Corneille Nangaa in Nairobi, Kenya. The AFC gathers several political parties and movements, as well as at least two armed groups, of which the most prominent is the Mouvement du 23 mars (M23, Movement March 23rd). Established in 2012 by former Congolese officials, the M23 is largely composed of Tutsis and claims dissatisfaction with the implementation of a 2009 peace agreement by Kinshasa. In fact, ethnic tensions have been a historic factor in the area, and the M23 opposes the loose policing by the central government, which led to security problems for the Kinyarwanda-speaking communities (most of all of Tutsi origin, but also Hutus) in eastern DRC, especially when it comes to the unstable protection offered by the regular army against the aggression of local armed groups. The Tutsi are a Bantu-speaking ethnic group native to the Great Lakes region; they predominantly live in Burundi and Rwanda but are also present in significant numbers in eastern RDC, in Uganda and in Tanzania.

At its birth, the main goal of the M23 was to get rid of rival armed groups, protect Tutsis’ rights to land, and eventually integrate the official army (which was foreseen in the 2009 peace agreement, but disregarded by the Congolese governments). Land allocation and community acrimony appear to be the main reason for a multitude of conflicts in the area, ever since the DRC gained its independence in 1960. Mines and minerals play an important role as crucial parts of the local economy and a large source of revenues for armed groups, but are not the main root cause.

 

Current military situation

In December 2024, the M23 began a new, surprisingly quick offensive in North Kivu, which led to the conquest of many strategic routes and territories, including the large city of Goma after a short siege. Control over larger chunks of land is now a key objective of the M23, but it is not the only one. Local authorities keep playing a central role in land management and, with the blessing of Kinshasa, they have excluded more or less systematically Rwandophone communities from land allocation – favoring instead the majority of Swahili-speakers in the region. Now, the M23 has been deliberately targeting – and in some case taking control of – strategic trade routes, replacing local chiefs with their own, and even establishing a complex, additional tax system. Such actions have allowed them to benefit from the local economy, including rents from the DRC’s mineral wealth, without necessarily directly controlling mines.

It is widely acknowledged that Rwanda backs and supports M23 activities inside and outside of the DRC. A UN-appointed group of experts reported that the Rwandese army is currently providing logistical support, military equipment and training to the M23; they also reported the presence of 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandese soldiers fighting alongside the M23 in North Kivu but according to the International Crisis Group, this could be a conservative estimate. Rwanda denies any formal support to the M23.

The Rwandese support has granted the M23 a new political dimension that goes much beyond the regional context within the DRC, and the fact that it integrated the AFC is a further testimony of its renewed political ambitions. Its primary goal is to push Kinshasa into direct negotiations; the government has always refused to do so, and considers the M23 a terrorist organization. In the longer term, its objectives are also to integrate its units into the national army and potentially to participate in the government.

At present, the regular Congolese army is unequipped to stop the advancement of the M23, and it has been for years. Longstanding problems undermine its capacity to face off rebels in the area: underfunding, corruption, and unsuccessful integration of armed groups into the regular army are all factors that pushed the government to try and repel the expansion of the M23 by proxy. As a consequence, Kinshasa is providing military and financial support to a bloc of armed groups to fight off the M23, rather than relying on its own poorly equipped and disjointed army. This is proving to be a short-sighted solution, in that the rearmament of such groups will inevitably affect the morale and capacity of the regular army in the long run.

Political leaders exchanged mutual accusations over the war. Félix Tshisekedi, the DRC President, explicitly accused Paul Kagame, the Rwanda President, of orchestrating a genocide war in the Kivu provinces through the M23; Kagame denied such allegations and instead pointed out that the DRC army is targeting the Congolese Tutsis population in Kivu provinces. It must be noted that Félix Tshisekedi has always played hostile to MONUSCO, the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which consists of around 15,000 soldiers from 49 different countries (with a relative majority from India, Pakistan, Uruguay, and Bangladesh). Instead, he effectively sought and obtained foreign military aid from partner countries: soldiers from Uganda, Malawi, South Africa and Tanzania are currently deployed in the DRC.

 

Impact on the population

The DRC continues to face one of the most stretched out and complex humanitarian emergencies in the world. Decades of conflict, human rights violations, famine, and gender-based violence have led to immense humanitarian needs. Since January 2025, escalating violence in eastern DRC has displaced 7.3 million people internally, an all-time high.

 

In addition, more than 1 million people are long displaced beyond the country’s borders and sought or are currently seeking asylum in countries like Angola, Burundi, Congo, Malawi, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. Burundi received the majority of the outpouring asylum seekers but is now facing resource strain, overcrowding of camps and an enormous stress on the protection systems.

As such, asylum seekers are unable to access basic services such as clean water and sanitation. These countries have kept an open-door policy but face themselves challenging demographic and socioeconomic situations that hinder protection for people forced to flee. The DRC itself keeps hosting more than half a million refugees and asylum seekers from neighboring countries – mostly in areas unaffected by the ongoing conflicts. On top of this, the UN warned of an additional health crisis, citing the risk of massive spread of m-pox, cholera and measles due to the critical lack of medical care in camps.

The humanitarian situation remains exceedingly dreadful: without proper international support, it is destined to worsen. The military side is just as worrisome and promises to escalate quickly. Will armies dictate the finale, or will negotiations gain the upper hand?