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The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda agreed Wednesday to a series of coordinated measures aimed at reducing military tensions in eastern Congo, following two days of U.S.-hosted talks in Washington that represented the first direct engagement between the parties since the United States sanctioned the Rwandan military and four of its senior officers for supporting the M23 rebel group earlier this month.
A joint statement released by the U.S. State Department on Wednesday confirmed that representatives of the DRC and Rwanda had met in Washington on March 17 and 18 and agreed to concrete steps to advance implementation of the Washington Peace Agreement, which the two countries signed in December 2025 under U.S. facilitation.
The commitments outlined in the statement include mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, a scheduled disengagement of Rwandan forces and the lifting of what Kigali describes as “defensive measures” in defined areas inside Congolese territory, and a time-bound, intensified campaign by the DRC to neutralize the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda — the FDLR — an armed group whose continued presence in eastern Congo has been cited by Rwanda as the primary justification for its military involvement across the border.
The talks and the resulting statement mark a diplomatic advance in a peace process that has struggled to produce results on the ground since the December agreement was signed. M23 staged a major advance into Uvira, a key eastern Congolese city near the Burundian border, just days after the Washington signing ceremony — the single largest escalation in the conflict in months. The rebels subsequently withdrew under U.S. pressure, but M23 continues to control large portions of eastern Congo, including the regional capitals of Goma and Bukavu, the provincial capitals of North and South Kivu.
The March talks were the most significant diplomatic effort since the December accords and took place against a backdrop of renewed military hostilities and the fresh U.S. Treasury sanctions targeting senior Rwandan officers for alleged violations of previous ceasefire commitments. Congolese officials used the sessions to press for the immediate withdrawal of what they characterize as Rwandan occupation forces, while Rwanda’s delegation maintained that its security concerns regarding militia groups along its border had to be addressed before any change in its military posture.
The FDLR’s role in the dispute is both genuine and contested. The group was founded by Rwandan ethnic Hutus who fled across the border after participating in the 1994 genocide that killed close to one million Tutsi and moderate Hutu Rwandans. It has remained active in eastern Congo for more than three decades and continues to operate in territory close to Rwanda’s frontier. Kigali characterizes it as a “genocidal militia” whose presence constitutes a direct security threat, and has used it as the principal public justification for stationing troops inside the DRC and for its support of M23, which Rwanda frames as a counter-militia defense operation.
The DRC and international monitors dispute the characterization, noting that Rwanda’s engagement goes well beyond any plausible defensive response to the FDLR.
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The UN Group of Experts on the DRC previously documented that Rwanda deployed as many as 4,000 troops to assist M23 in its campaign against Congolese government forces, and that M23 maintained advanced weaponry and coordinated military movements inconsistent with an autonomous insurgency. Rwanda has consistently denied providing direct support to M23.
The U.S. sanctions imposed on March 2 represented Washington’s most pointed public acknowledgment to date that it accepted those findings. The Treasury Department’s action sanctioned the Rwanda Defence Force as an institution and named four senior officers individually, blaming Rwandan support for M23 for the continued violence and warning that the combination of M23’s presence near Burundi’s border and Rwandan military backing carried the risk of escalating the conflict into a broader regional war.
Rwanda rejected those characterizations at the time, saying the sanctions had targeted only one party to the conflict and “misrepresent the reality and distort the facts.” It separately accused the DRC of violating the Washington Accords through drone attacks and ground offensives against M23 positions, a charge Kinshasa disputes.
The humanitarian consequences of the conflict’s continued trajectory are severe. More than seven million people are internally displaced across the DRC, making it one of the world’s largest displacement crises.
The World Food Programme has warned that more than 25 million people across the country face food insecurity, and sexual violence and child recruitment remain widespread risks in conflict-affected communities. Entire populations have been displaced multiple times as control of towns and territory has shifted repeatedly between armed factions.
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The DRC’s mineral resources remain a central undercurrent of the conflict and of Washington’s engagement. Eastern Congo holds some of the world’s largest reserves of cobalt, coltan, and other critical minerals essential to battery manufacturing and advanced electronics. The Washington Accords included commitments to build a regional economic integration framework and promises of U.S. investment in the mineral sector — an incentive structure that critics have said creates ambiguity about whether Washington’s primary interest is peace or resource access.
M23 leader Corneille Nangaa has not been a formal party to any of the Washington talks, which have focused on the state-to-state relationship between Kigali and Kinshasa. M23 rejected calls for an immediate ceasefire following an earlier meeting between DRC President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Doha, hosted by Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani — the first in-person meeting between the two leaders since the conflict escalated. The exclusion of M23 from direct negotiations has been identified by analysts as a structural weakness in the Washington process, since the group’s cooperation is ultimately required for any disengagement to hold on the ground.
The joint statement Wednesday reaffirmed both governments’ commitment to the Washington Accords and pledged the protection of all civilians.
No timeline was given for the specific disengagement steps or the FDLR neutralization campaign beyond describing them as “time-bound.”
No U.S. official was named in the statement as the designated mediator or monitor for implementation. A follow-up meeting has not been publicly scheduled, and no mechanism for verifying compliance with Wednesday’s commitments has been announced.
