Paul Kagame Refuses to Implement the Washington Accords and UN Resolution 2773:  Deep Analysis and Implications .

 

In an exclusive interview published on 3 April 2026, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda openly confirmed that his forces are deployed in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, rejected the demand that they withdraw, dismissed US sanctions as illegitimate, and declared himself comfortable with the military status quo. This briefing analyses what Kagame said, what it means for the Washington Accords, and what concrete steps the United States must now take to restore credibility to its Great Lakes diplomacy.

 

 

Introduction: A Confession Wrapped in Grievance

The interview, conducted by François Soudan and published in Jeune Afrique on 3 April 2026, is one of the most candid statements Paul Kagame has ever made about Rwanda's military role in the DRC. What makes it analytically significant is not that it reveals something previously unknown — the presence of Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) in eastern Congo has been documented in successive UN Group of Experts reports — but that it eliminates all remaining room for diplomatic ambiguity. Kagame did not merely hint at Rwanda's involvement. He confirmed it, justified it, and refused to end it.

For the United States, which brokered the Washington Accords of December 2024 and has since imposed sanctions on the RDF and four of its senior commanders, this interview constitutes a direct challenge. Kagame has, in effect, told Washington that its diplomacy is one-sided, its sanctions are without legitimate basis, and that Rwanda will not withdraw from eastern Congo until conditions of Rwanda's own choosing are met. The question this briefing addresses is straightforward: what should the United States do now?

 

Kagame's Own Words — On Withdrawal "We refuse to remove defensive measures. Whether it means troops or troops and whatever else, we call it defensive measures. And in your logic, why would a threat be against me? And you are asking me to remove my defensive measures, but you're not dealing with the threat. What is the logic?"

 

What Kagame Actually Said: The Key Admissions

The interview contains several statements that individually would be noteworthy and that, taken together, amount to a comprehensive rejection of the Washington framework and of UN Security Council Resolution 2773. Each deserves close examination.

Admission One: Troops Are on the Ground

When asked whether Rwanda's 'defensive measures' meant a physical presence in eastern Congo, Kagame answered without equivocation. He stated that defensive measures could involve equipment and troops on the ground to defend Rwandan territory, and that moving five, ten, or twenty kilometres across the border in pursuit of a threat was not a contradiction. His ambassador in Washington had already told the US administration on 22 January 2025 that Rwanda engages in 'security coordination with RDF/M23'. Kagame, in this interview, went further: he confirmed that troops, equipment, and territorial penetration are all encompassed within what Rwanda calls defensive measures.

Yet just two months earlier, on 3 February 2025, Kagame told CNN's Larry Madowo that he did not know whether Rwandan troops were inside the DRC — despite being commander-in-chief of the Rwanda Defence Force. When pressed repeatedly, he declined to confirm or deny a military presence, saying only that Rwanda would do 'anything to protect itself' and telling the journalist to 'read whatever you want to read from what I'm telling you.' The contrast between that denial and his open confirmation of troop deployments in the Jeune Afrique interview of 3 April 2026 is not a matter of evolving circumstances. It is a record of deliberate deception. A head of state who is also supreme commander of his country's armed forces does not not know whether his troops are deployed in a neighbouring country. He chooses what to say — and when — based on the political consequences of saying it.

 

Kagame's Own Words — On Troops "It means you may use equipment. You may use troops on the ground, which means to defend that territory... If I'm defending my border one morning, I mean five kilometres or ten or twenty because of what I identified as a threat — what is the contradiction?"

 

Admission Two: Rwanda Is Comfortable With the M23 Zone

Kagame was asked whether Rwanda's strategic objective in eastern Congo was to maintain a zone of political, economic, and security influence until an agreement was reached with a Congolese government that Rwanda did not consider hostile. His answer was a qualified but clear affirmative. He said that the zone controlled by RDF/M23 was 'not an immediate danger' to Rwanda and that Rwanda was, to some extent, 'comfortable' with the current situation, while acknowledging it was not the end of the road.

This is a decisive admission. It means that Rwanda has no strategic incentive to implement the Washington Accords and UN Security Council Resolution 2773 unless and until it extracts political guarantees from Kinshasa. The ceasefire and withdrawal provisions of the Accords are, for Rwanda, instruments of negotiation rather than obligations.

Admission Three: The Uvira Lie — Why Pre-Existing Fighting Makes Rwanda's Conduct Worse, Not Better

Of all the arguments Kagame advanced in the Jeune Afrique interview, his account of the fall of Uvira is the most revealing — not because it is persuasive, but because of what it inadvertently concedes. Kagame argued that fighting around Uvira had been ongoing for weeks before the signing of the Washington Accords on 4 December 2024, that the United States had been informed of developments almost daily, and that the American outrage was therefore 'selective' — a wilful misreading of events that had been in motion long before the ceremony took place.

This argument is constructed to sound reasonable. It does not survive elementary scrutiny. It is, in fact, a self-refuting claim that proves the very bad faith it attempts to deny.

Consider the logic Kagame is advancing. He is saying: fighting was already under way before the signing. The United States knew about it. Therefore, the subsequent fall of Uvira cannot be attributed to Rwandan bad faith toward the Accords. But this reasoning, if accepted, leads to only one conclusion: Rwanda signed the Washington Accords on 4 December 2024 while its allied forces were actively advancing on Uvira — and without any intention of halting that advance. A state acting in good faith at a peace ceremony does not allow its allied military forces to continue offensive operations during and after the signing. It stops them. At minimum, it stops them on the day of signing. The most elementary standard of ceasefire discipline requires that active military operations be frozen at the moment an agreement enters into force — not paused, not wound down gradually, not allowed to reach their tactical objective first.

If, as Kagame claims, the military situation around Uvira had been developing for weeks and Washington had been kept informed daily, then Rwanda had every opportunity and every obligation to freeze RDF/M23's advance before sitting down at the signing table. The fact that it did not — that Rwandan-coordinated forces continued their advance through the signing ceremony and beyond — demonstrates that the Washington Accords were signed in bad faith from the first moment. Rwanda used the ceremony as diplomatic cover for a military operation that was already in progress and that it had no intention of stopping.

This is not an ambiguous interpretation. It is the only logical reading of the facts Kagame himself presented. By confirming that fighting was already under way before 4 December, Kagame has not exculpated Rwanda. He has provided the clearest possible evidence that the signing was a calculated deception — a performance of diplomacy staged while the military objective it was meant to prevent was being completed on the ground.

 

The Inescapable Logic Kagame's own argument — that fighting around Uvira was already under way before the signing, and that the US had been informed daily — proves the opposite of what he intends. It establishes that Rwanda signed the Washington Accords on 4 December 2024 while knowingly allowing its allied forces to continue an active military offensive. That is not a ceasefire. It is a deception conducted at a diplomatic ceremony. Kagame's logic, stripped to its core, is this: fighting that started before the signing of the Accords was not covered by the Accords and could therefore continue uninterrupted even after the signing. This is not an interpretation of a peace agreement. It is its deliberate negation.

 

There is a further dimension to this argument that deserves direct statement. Even accepting Kagame's scenario entirely — even granting, for the sake of argument, that fighting had been ongoing for weeks, that momentum was building, and that the situation was difficult to halt instantly — the correct course of action for a party signing a peace agreement is to communicate that difficulty honestly to the mediating party, to request a brief delay in the signing until military operations could be frozen, or to sign with explicit reservations and a stated timetable for halting operations. None of these things happened. Rwanda signed. The advance continued. Fighting intensified. Uvira fell. And Kagame's explanation, delivered seventeen months later to a French journalist, is that everyone should have understood the context.

This is the logic of a party that never intended to comply. It is consistent with every other agreement Rwanda has signed and not implemented over the past thirty years. And it should be treated, in all future diplomatic contexts, as the definitive answer to the question of whether Rwanda negotiates in good faith. It does not. It negotiates in order to create the appearance of good faith while pursuing its military objectives without interruption.

Admission Four: The FDLR Framing Is a Condition, Not a Concern

Throughout the interview, Kagame returned repeatedly to the FDLR — the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Hutu armed group operating in eastern DRC — as the justification for Rwanda's presence. He insisted that Rwanda cannot be asked to withdraw until the FDLR threat is eliminated. However, the FDLR has functioned as a Rwandan justification for military involvement in the DRC since 1996. The group's actual military capacity has been significantly degraded over decades of operations involving both the Congolese army and previous Rwandan incursions. The UN Mapping Report of 2010 documented that Rwandan forces conducted mass atrocities in eastern Congo during the same operations purportedly aimed at the FDLR.

The FDLR framing is not a sincere security assessment. It is a permanent condition that, by design, can never be fully satisfied, because the FDLR's existence — even in diminished form — provides Rwanda with an open-ended licence for military intervention in a neighbouring sovereign state. It is also worth noting that the FDLR itself has claimed that its continued existence is driven by the need to defend Hutu refugees who have been repeatedly targeted and massacred in joint operations conducted by Rwandan and Congolese forces over three decades. The UN Mapping Report of 2010 documented those massacres extensively. The FDLR's membership includes the orphaned children of families killed in those documented operations — a dimension of the conflict that Rwanda's security framing consistently and deliberately omits.

 

Kagame's Own Words — On Sanctions "You don't have to have done anything wrong. But because they are in support of somebody who has done something wrong, who is doing something wrong, they apply it. If it is based on interest and they don't have interest in me, how am I going to stop that?"

 

The Washington Accords: What Was Agreed and What Has Collapsed

The Washington Accords of 4 December 2024, brokered by the United States following months of shuttle diplomacy, required both the DRC and Rwanda to take specific steps toward de-escalation. Rwanda was expected to cease its support for RDF/M23, facilitate the withdrawal of Rwandan forces from Congolese territory, and participate in a joint monitoring mechanism. The DRC was required to take steps to address Rwanda's stated security concerns, including engaging with the question of armed groups operating near the Rwandan border.

Within days of the signing, RDF/M23 forces — coordinated by the RDF — seized Uvira, a major commercial hub in South Kivu. By January 2025, Goma and Bukavu had fallen. The Accords had, in practice, collapsed before their ink was dry. The US Treasury's designation of the RDF and four commanders in March 2025 — including General James Kabarebe — was an acknowledgement that Rwanda had not complied and showed no intention of doing so.

Kagame's response to the question of whether he would comply with the US demand for immediate withdrawal was revealing. He did not say no directly. Instead, he argued that all parties have obligations, that the DRC has never respected previous agreements, and that the United States must apply pressure evenhandedly. This is a negotiating posture, not a withdrawal plan. But there is a fundamental asymmetry that Kagame's framing deliberately obscures: it is not the DRC that is occupying Rwandan territory. It is Rwanda that is occupying DRC territory. This distinction is not a procedural detail. It is the central legal and moral fact of the conflict, and it determines how any obligation under the Washington Accords must be interpreted. The party in occupation is the party that must withdraw. That is Rwanda.

 

A Thirty-Year Pattern: Rwanda's History of Signing Agreements It Does Not Intend to Honour

Kagame's refusal to implement the Washington Accords is not an aberration. It is the continuation of a pattern that stretches back to the earliest days of his political and military career. Understanding this pattern is essential to any honest assessment of current diplomacy, because it reveals that the problem is not the design of the agreements — it is the fundamental unwillingness of Rwanda's leadership to be bound by commitments that constrain its strategic objectives. Treating each broken agreement as a fresh failure of process, rather than as evidence of a settled disposition, has been the defining error of three decades of international engagement with Kigali.

The Arusha Accords, 1993: The Original Template

The Arusha Peace Accords, signed on 4 August 1993 between the government of President Juvénal Habyarimana and the Rwandan Patriotic Front, were the most ambitious peace framework Rwanda had seen. Brokered by Tanzania with international support, they provided for a transitional government, the integration of RPF forces into a unified national army, the return of refugees, and the establishment of democratic institutions. The international community received them as a landmark achievement.

They were never implemented. On the night of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying President Habyarimana — and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira — was shot down as it approached Kigali's Kanombe airport. Both presidents were killed. Within hours, the genocide began. The destruction of the Arusha framework was not incidental to what followed. It was its precondition.

The question of who shot down Habyarimana's plane has been the subject of judicial investigations spanning three decades. French investigating judge Jean-Louis Bruguière, after a nine-year inquiry, issued international arrest warrants in 2006 for nine senior RPF commanders, concluding that the attack was carried out by the RPF on the orders of Paul Kagame. A Spanish judge, Fernando Andreu Merelles, reached similar conclusions in 2008 following an investigation into the deaths of Spanish nationals in the DRC and Rwanda, issuing indictments against forty RPF commanders. The Rwandan government has consistently denied these findings and prosecuted Rwandan journalists and researchers who have raised the question domestically.

The significance for the present analysis is direct. The Arusha Accords represented a genuine power-sharing arrangement that would have constrained the RPF's ability to seize unilateral control of Rwanda. The assassination of Habyarimana — if carried out by the RPF, as these judicial investigations concluded — was the means by which that constraint was eliminated. The pattern established in 1994 is the same pattern visible today: agreements are signed when they serve as tactical instruments; they are discarded, or made impossible, when they threaten to constrain the strategic objective of unchallenged power.

 

The Historical Parallel In 1993, the RPF signed the Arusha Accords with the Habyarimana government. The accords were never implemented. In December 2024, Rwanda signed the Washington Accords with the Tshisekedi government. Within days, RDF/M23 forces seized Uvira. Kagame told Jeune Afrique on 3 April 2026 that he is comfortable with the status quo. The interval is thirty years. The logic is identical.

 

The Luanda Process: Refusing to Appear While Demanding Compliance

The Luanda peace process, facilitated by Angola under President João Lourenço, has provided the principal African diplomatic framework for the DRC-Rwanda conflict since 2022. It has produced communiqués, agreed principles, and roadmaps. It has not produced a ceasefire, a withdrawal, or a functioning monitoring mechanism — because Rwanda has consistently failed to implement what it has agreed to.

Most tellingly, Kagame refused to attend the signing of the Luanda peace deal in person, even as President Tshisekedi participated — a contrast documented by the Institute for Security Studies and widely reported at the time. Kagame's stated justification for his absence was that Tshisekedi should first negotiate directly with M23 before any presidential-level meeting could take place. This is a circular position designed to ensure that no meeting ever occurs: by requiring the DRC to legitimise an armed group that Rwanda itself created and commands as a precondition for Kagame's appearance, Rwanda makes dialogue permanently conditional on a concession Kinshasa cannot and should not make. This asymmetry is not a scheduling matter. It is a deliberate signal. By declining to appear at the table while requiring the DRC to attend and make commitments, Rwanda extracts the political benefit of being seen as engaged in diplomacy without assuming the obligations that direct participation entails. It is a negotiating technique, not a peace process.

The contrast in attendance is also a contrast in accountability. Tshisekedi's presence at Luanda created political and diplomatic obligations for the DRC government that Congolese civil society and international observers could measure against subsequent conduct. Kagame's absence from those same sessions insulated him from equivalent accountability. When agreements were subsequently not implemented, Rwanda could point to the DRC's failures while having made fewer verifiable commitments of its own. This asymmetry has been one of the most consistent features of Rwandan diplomatic conduct over the past decade.

A Consistent Strategic Logic

Viewed across thirty years — from Arusha in 1993 through the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement of 1999, the Sun City Agreement of 2002, the Nairobi Communiqué of 2013, the Nairobi Process of 2022, and the Washington Accords of 2024 — a consistent strategic logic emerges. Rwanda engages in peace processes when engagement provides tactical advantage: when it legitimises its position, delays international pressure, or creates a framework it can later accuse the DRC of violating. Rwanda disengages, stalls, or acts in direct contradiction of agreed terms when implementation would require it to cede military or territorial positions it considers strategically valuable.

The international community's repeated failure to name this pattern explicitly — to say, in official statements and diplomatic exchanges, that Rwanda has a documented history of agreement non-compliance stretching back to the founding moment of the current government — is itself a political choice. It is a choice that has served Rwanda's interests and harmed the DRC's civilians for three decades. The Kagame interview of 3 April 2026 should serve as the moment that choice is finally reconsidered. A government whose president publicly declares himself comfortable with a military status quo created in defiance of a recently signed agreement, while blaming all parties but himself, is not a government engaged in good-faith diplomacy. It is a government that has learned, through experience, that the international community will continue to treat each broken agreement as the first.

 

The Minerals Dimension: Economic Interests and Strategic Calculation

Kagame addressed the accusation that Rwanda's strategic objective in eastern DRC includes control of mineral resources. He was unapologetic. He acknowledged that Rwanda has developed into a regional financial and processing hub, that Rwandan minerals and those from 'outside' are both welcome, and that Rwanda can certify the origin of minerals passing through its territory. He framed this not as exploitation but as a legitimate regional economic role.

This framing deserves scrutiny. Successive UN Group of Experts reports have documented that coltan, gold, cassiterite, and wolframite extracted from mines in North and South Kivu — areas under RDF/M23 control or influence — are routed through Rwanda and exported under Rwandan certificates of origin. The economic value of this trade is substantial. Rwanda's mineral exports have increased dramatically since 2021 in inverse proportion to security improvements in eastern DRC. This is not coincidence.

For Washington, this dimension matters because it means Rwanda has strong financial incentives to maintain its presence in eastern Congo that are entirely separate from any security argument. A purely security-focused diplomatic approach — offering Rwanda guarantees about the FDLR — will not resolve a situation that is partly driven by resource extraction at scale.

 

Kabila, Proxy Governance, and the Violation of International Law

Two statements in the Jeune Afrique interview, taken together, constitute a public admission of conduct that violates the foundational principles of international law. The first is Kagame's endorsement of former DRC President Joseph Kabila's presence in Goma under RDF/M23 administration. The second is his declaration that he would welcome anyone who wants to confront the situation in the DRC and participate in the struggle for a stable Congo. These are not expressions of humanitarian concern. They are statements of policy: Rwanda will support political and armed actors working against the government of the DRC.

On Kabila, Kagame was explicit. He said he would not refuse passage to Kabila or to anyone who wanted to be part of eastern Congo. He acknowledged that Kabila has his own problems with the current Congolese government — including prosecution, asset seizure, and political persecution — and framed his own openness to Kabila as a logical response to that persecution. This framing is deliberately sympathetic. But what it describes, in substance, is Rwanda facilitating the presence of a former head of state — one whose relationship with RDF/M23 has been documented — in territory under the military administration of a Rwandan-backed insurgency. This is not passage. It is political sponsorship.

The International Law Dimension: What Rwanda Is Doing and Why It Is Unlawful

Under international law, the prohibition on the use of force established by Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter is among the most fundamental norms of the international order. It prohibits not only direct military aggression but also the threat of force and the indirect use of force through proxy actors. The International Court of Justice, in its 2005 judgment in the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda, established clearly that a state violates international law when it provides support — in the form of training, financing, weapons, or political backing — to armed groups operating on the territory of another state without that state's consent.

Rwanda's conduct in the DRC satisfies every element of this prohibition. The RDF has provided troops, weapons, logistics, and command coordination to RDF/M23 — confirmed by Kagame himself in this interview. Rwanda has done so without the consent of the DRC government, in direct violation of the DRC's territorial integrity, and in pursuit of political and economic objectives on Congolese soil. No security argument — including the FDLR — provides a legal basis for this conduct under international law. The right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter applies to armed attacks against a state's own territory, not to pre-emptive military occupation of a neighbour's territory on the grounds of a potential threat.

Kagame's statement that he would support anyone working against the DRC government goes further still. It is a public declaration of intent to sponsor opposition actors — political and potentially armed — against a recognised sovereign government. Under UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 of 1970, which codifies the principle of non-intervention, every state has a duty to refrain from organising, instigating, assisting or participating in acts of civil strife or terrorist acts in another state and from acquiescing in organised activities within its territory directed towards the commission of such acts. Rwanda's conduct — and now Kagame's public statements — fall squarely within the conduct that Resolution 2625 prohibits.

The hypocrisy of Kagame's position is made starker by his simultaneous complaints about Jean-Luc Habyarimana's visit to Kinshasa. While openly declaring his willingness to sponsor Kabila and any other actor prepared to confront the DRC government — using Rwandan territory as a base of operations against a neighbouring sovereign state — Kagame has expressed alarm that Jean-Luc Habyarimana, a Rwandan opposition figure, reportedly visited Kinshasa and allegedly held talks with President Tshisekedi. There is no verified evidence that any such meeting took place, let alone that it involved any coordination directed against Rwanda. But even if it had occurred, President Tshisekedi has every sovereign right to meet whomever he chooses on Congolese or international soil. That is a fundamental attribute of sovereignty. Kagame's anxiety about this unverified visit — weighed against his own public endorsement of Kabila's presence in RDF/M23-administered Goma — exposes a position of breathtaking double standards: Rwanda may interfere freely in Congolese internal affairs, but the DRC may not receive visitors of whom Kigali disapproves.

This is not merely a moral inconsistency. It is a legal one. The Washington Accords, which both Rwanda and the DRC signed on 4 December 2024, contain a mutual non-interference commitment: both parties agreed not to interfere in the internal affairs of the other. Rwanda's sponsorship of Kabila in RDF/M23-controlled Goma, its declared openness to any actor working against the Tshisekedi government, and its public complaint about a DRC head of state's alleged meeting with a Rwandan opposition figure together constitute a comprehensive violation of that commitment — by one party, Rwanda, while the DRC is criticised for exercising its sovereign prerogatives.

 

Kagame's Own Words — On Supporting Opposition Against the DRC Government Kagame declared openly that he would welcome anyone wanting to confront the situation in the DRC and be part of the struggle for eastern Congo, including Kabila. He asked: how does this person say he wants to confront this situation in his country and I refuse him passage? What sense would it make?

 

Rwanda's Armed Groups in the DRC: A Three-Decade Record

The current RDF/M23 is not a spontaneous insurgency that Rwanda has reluctantly been drawn into supporting. It is the latest iteration of a series of armed groups that Rwanda has created, financed, armed, and directed in the DRC since 1996. Each group has been presented, at the moment of its creation, as a response to a specific security threat. Each has, in practice, served as an instrument of Rwandan strategic and economic penetration of eastern Congo. The following is a documented record of those groups.

1. The Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation du Congo-Zaire (AFDL), 1996 to 1997

The AFDL was created in October 1996 as a coalition of Congolese rebel factions under the nominal leadership of Laurent-Desire Kabila, father of the former president. In practice, it was organised, funded, and militarily directed by Rwanda and Uganda. Its stated purpose was to pursue Hutu armed groups, including remnants of the Interahamwe, who had fled into then-Zaire after the genocide. Its actual effect was the overthrow of President Mobutu Sese Seko and the installation of Laurent-Desire Kabila as president of the renamed Democratic Republic of Congo in May 1997. The UN Mapping Report of 2010 documented that AFDL forces, under Rwandan command, committed systematic massacres of Hutu refugees and Congolese civilians during the advance — crimes that the Mapping Report said may constitute genocide.

2. The Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD), 1998 to 2003

When Laurent-Desire Kabila moved to assert independence from Rwanda and Uganda in 1998, Rwanda responded by creating the RCD — a new rebel movement launched from Goma in August 1998, at the start of what became known as Africa's World War. The RCD was organised and sustained by Kigali, occupied large parts of eastern and northern DRC, and was responsible for systematic human rights violations including massacres, sexual violence, and the forced extraction of natural resources. The RCD subsequently fragmented into multiple factions — RCD-Goma (backed by Rwanda), RCD-Kisangani and RCD-Mouvement de Liberation (backed at various points by Uganda) — reflecting the competing interests of Kigali and Kampala on Congolese soil.

3. The Congrès National pour la Defense du Peuple (CNDP), 2006 to 2009

Following the formal end of the RCD and the Congolese peace process, Rwanda created the CNDP in 2006 under the command of General Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi officer with deep ties to the RDF. The CNDP fought the FARDC across North Kivu between 2006 and 2008, came within striking distance of Goma in October 2008, and was only halted after intense international pressure. UN Group of Experts reports documented Rwandan military support for the CNDP in detail. Nkunda was eventually placed under house arrest in Rwanda in January 2009 — not prosecuted, not extradited — and the CNDP was nominally integrated into the FARDC through the 23 March 2009 peace agreement. That agreement gave its name to the next armed group Rwanda created when the arrangement collapsed.

4. The Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23), 2012 to 2013 and 2021 to Present

The M23 was formed in April 2012 when former CNDP commanders, led by General Bosco Ntaganda and Colonel Sultani Makenga, mutinied from the FARDC claiming that the terms of the 23 March 2009 agreement had not been implemented. UN Group of Experts reports between 2012 and 2013 documented in extensive detail that Rwanda provided the M23 with troops, weapons, ammunition, military equipment, and command direction. The M23 seized Goma in November 2012 and held it for eleven days before withdrawing under international pressure. It was militarily defeated by FARDC forces supported by the UN Force Intervention Brigade in late 2013 and its commanders fled to Rwanda and Uganda. Rwanda denied all involvement throughout — a position comprehensively contradicted by the UN Group of Experts findings.

The M23 was reconstituted in eastern DRC in late 2021, again with documented Rwandan military support. By 2024, operating under the broader political umbrella of the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) — led by former Congolese electoral commission president Corneille Nangaa — it had seized Goma, Bukavu, Uvira, and large swathes of North and South Kivu. Kagame's interview of 3 April 2026 constitutes the most senior public confirmation of Rwandan coordination with this force in its current iteration.

5. Red Tabara, 2015 to Present

Red Tabara — formally the Forces Populaires du Burundi — is a Burundian Tutsi rebel movement that has operated from bases in eastern DRC, principally in the South Kivu highlands, since approximately 2015. It emerged in the context of the political crisis triggered by President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek a third term in Burundi, which produced mass protests, a failed coup, and the flight of tens of thousands of Burundians — including military and political figures — across the border into Rwanda and the DRC.

The Burundian government has consistently accused Rwanda of creating, training, arming, and directing Red Tabara as a destabilisation instrument against Bujumbura. UN Group of Experts reports on the DRC have documented Red Tabara's presence in South Kivu and noted the group's links to Rwanda. Red Tabara has claimed responsibility for attacks inside Burundi and has been accused of human rights violations against Burundian civilians in the border areas of South Kivu. Its presence in eastern DRC — territory now increasingly under Rwandan-backed RDF/M23 control — gives it a degree of operational security and freedom of movement that would be impossible without Rwandan acquiescence and, according to multiple investigations, active Rwandan support.

Red Tabara represents a significant expansion of Rwanda's proxy strategy beyond the DRC conflict itself. By hosting and supporting a rebel movement directed against the Burundian state, Rwanda has extended its destabilisation architecture to a second neighbour — using Congolese territory as the operational base from which to threaten Bujumbura. This is not defensive conduct. It is the projection of Rwandan state power into two sovereign countries simultaneously, with eastern DRC serving as the strategic platform for both.

6. Twirwaneho, 2020 to Present

Twirwaneho — meaning 'let us defend ourselves' in Kinyarwanda — is a predominantly Banyamulenge self-defence militia operating in the high plateaux of South Kivu, particularly in and around the Minembwe area. It emerged around 2020 in the context of intercommunal violence between the Banyamulenge — Congolese Tutsi pastoralists whose presence in eastern DRC predates colonisation but whose belonging has been systematically contested — and other armed communities in the plateau zone, including Mai-Mai factions and groups affiliated with the FDLR.

Twirwaneho is significant for several reasons. First, it occupies the ideological and ethnic space that Rwanda has consistently instrumentalised: the claim to be protecting Congolese Tutsi communities from genocidal violence, an argument that resonates internationally and that Rwanda deploys to frame all its military interventions as acts of protection rather than aggression. Second, UN Group of Experts reports have documented operational coordination between Twirwaneho and M23 forces in South Kivu, including joint operations and shared logistics. Third, Twirwaneho has been accused of serious human rights violations against other communities in the plateau, including killings, displacement, and the destruction of property — undermining the self-defence framing entirely.

The presence of Twirwaneho alongside RDF/M23 in South Kivu reflects Rwanda's layered proxy strategy: a conventional military force (RDF elements embedded in RDF/M23) operating alongside an ethnically framed militia (Twirwaneho) that provides local intelligence, territorial presence in areas the main force does not fully control, and political cover in the form of the protection narrative. This is not a coincidence of parallel mobilisation. It is a coordinated architecture of control, documented in UN reports and confirmed by the pattern of joint operations between the two formations.

7. Various Integrated and Proxy Structures

Beyond these principal formations, Rwanda has at various points provided support to, or exercised influence over, a range of additional armed structures in eastern DRC, including elements of the former Forces Armees du Rwanda (ex-FAR) that it sought to co-opt, local self-defence networks in Rutshuru and Masisi territories, and political-military networks among Congolese Tutsi communities more broadly. The instrumentalisation of ethnic identity — presenting Rwandan military intervention as the protection of Congolese Tutsi communities from genocidal threat — has been the consistent ideological frame across all these iterations, designed to appeal to international guilt about the 1994 genocide and to make criticism of Rwandan conduct appear morally suspect.

The Pattern and Its Significance

What is striking about this thirty-year record is its consistency of method. Each armed group has been created or reconstituted when a previous instrument was destroyed or neutralised. Each has been presented as a defensive response to a security threat — the FDLR, the persecution of Tutsi communities, instability in neighbouring states. Each has been denied by Kigali until the evidence became undeniable — at which point the group was either dissolved into a peace process or reconstituted under a new name. The network now operating in eastern DRC — RDF/M23 as the main conventional force, Twirwaneho as the local ethnic militia, Red Tabara as the cross-border destabilisation instrument against Burundi — is the most mature and geographically extensive iteration of this strategy to date. Kagame's public statements in the Jeune Afrique interview of 3 April 2026 — his comfort with the M23 zone, his welcome of Kabila, his declared openness to anyone willing to confront the DRC government — confirm that this architecture is not the product of reactive security decisions. It is a deliberate strategic design, three decades in the making.

 

Kagame, Mozambique, and the Limits of Rwanda's Leverage

Kagame also used the interview to issue a thinly veiled threat to the European Union over its funding of Rwanda's military deployment in Mozambique. Rwanda has deployed approximately 5,000 troops to Cabo Delgado province since 2021, providing security for natural gas extraction operations — including those of TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil — against the insurgency of Ansar al-Sunna (locally known as Al-Shabaab, though unrelated to the Somali group). The EU has contributed approximately 20 million dollars to this mission. Kagame said Rwanda spends four to five times that amount and that if EU funding was suspended, Rwanda would simply withdraw.

Kagame's claim to be spending four to five times the EU's contribution also warrants direct scrutiny. The EU does not set its contribution to Rwanda's Mozambique mission arbitrarily. The 20 million dollar figure was almost certainly determined on the basis of a budget presented by Rwanda itself and agreed with Kigali before the mission commenced. If Kagame accepted that funding envelope at the outset, then his subsequent complaint that it represents only a fraction of Rwanda's actual costs is either an admission that Rwanda negotiated poorly on its own behalf, or an indication that the agreed figure was always a partial contribution supplemented by other funding streams — from TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, and the Mozambican government whose assets Rwanda is protecting — that are not publicly disclosed. Either way, the argument that Rwanda is generously subsidising Mozambique's security out of its own modest defence budget does not hold. Rwanda is not so economically strong that it can afford to finance large expeditionary operations for other countries as an act of altruism. Kagame's posture of financial independence is designed to project strength and leverage over the EU. It is not an accurate account of how the mission is funded.

This matters for the United States because the Mozambique deployment has been one of Rwanda's most effective arguments for its status as a responsible regional security actor — the argument that its military is a force for stability, not destabilisation. If Kagame is prepared to treat that deployment as a financial negotiating chip rather than a security commitment, then its value as evidence of Rwandan good faith is zero. A government that provides security services for payment and withdraws them when payment is disputed is not a strategic partner. It is a contractor.

 

What Kagame's Framing Gets Wrong: The Victim-Perpetrator Inversion

Kagame repeatedly characterised Rwanda as the victim of diplomatic pressure, describing sanctions and criticism as 'insults' heaped on a country that has done nothing other than defend itself. He said that critics are 'blaming the victim and praising the perpetrator'. This is a carefully constructed narrative that inverts the documented reality.

Rwanda is not a victim of the DRC conflict. Rwanda is a party to it. The UN Group of Experts, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the US Treasury Department have all documented, with specific evidence, that the RDF provides command, logistics, troops, and equipment to RDF/M23 — a force that has occupied Congolese territory, committed human rights violations including forced recruitment, and displaced millions of civilians. Kagame's own interview confirmed the military presence.

The FDLR does exist, and some of its older members — the survivors of a generation that carried out the genocide over thirty years ago — did participate in those crimes. But Kagame was asked directly in this interview to specify the current number of FDLR fighters. He could not. A president who is supreme commander of a military intelligence apparatus, who claims that the FDLR constitutes an existential threat justifying the occupation of a neighbouring country, should be able to state the size of that threat with precision. His inability — or refusal — to do so is itself evidence that the FDLR framing is political rather than operational. The threat Rwanda faces from the FDLR is exaggerated. According to available evidence, FDLR elements are presumed — without verified proof — to be present in five areas that are themselves under RDF/M23 control, and in one area under FARDC administration. This means that even by Rwanda's own implied geography, the FDLR operates in territory that Rwanda's allied forces already dominate. The FDLR is not occupying Rwandan territory. It has no artillery, no air assets, and no documented capacity to project force across the Rwandan border at meaningful scale. Reports of violence attributed to the FDLR in eastern DRC come from areas where multiple armed groups operate simultaneously, making attribution contested and unverifiable. By contrast, the documented human consequences of RDF/M23 operations — mass displacement, sexual violence, forced recruitment, looting, and the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure — are extensive, specific, and unambiguous. The response Rwanda has chosen is disproportionate, illegal under international law, and catastrophic for the civilian population of eastern Congo.

 

Kagame's Own Words — On the Status Quo Kagame stated: I am comfortable with the status quo. The zone controlled by RDF/M23 is not an immediate danger to us. So to some extent we are comfortable with that — but we know that that is not the end of the road. This statement must be read for exactly what it means. When Kagame says the situation in areas controlled by RDF/M23 is better than before, he means that he controls those areas and intends them to remain under his control. That is why a parallel Rwandan administration is being progressively established in those areas — with its own taxation systems, governance structures, courts, and security arrangements that substitute for Congolese state authority and are designed to create facts on the ground that entrench Rwandan influence regardless of any future diplomatic settlement. This is not the language of a temporary defensive deployment. It is the language of territorial annexation by other means. Each day the status quo continues is a day Rwanda extracts more Congolese resources, extends its administrative reach further into sovereign Congolese territory, and makes its presence harder to reverse without a major military confrontation. Kagame does not want the status quo to change because the status quo is delivering his strategic objectives — mineral pillage, military occupation, and parallel administrative consolidation — simultaneously and without cost. This is in direct and explicit violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2773 and of every principle of sovereign territorial integrity that the international order is built upon.

 

What the United States and the United Nations Should Do: An Eight-Point Policy Framework

The interview makes clear that Kagame does not fear the current level of American pressure. Sanctions on the RDF have been imposed; Kagame has dismissed them as politically motivated. Diplomatic statements have been issued; Kagame has dismissed them as one-sided. The Washington Accords have been signed; Kagame has watched his allied forces advance while citing procedural compliance. The United States now faces a credibility problem. If it does not escalate its response in meaningful and strategic ways, its Great Lakes diplomacy will have demonstrated only that agreements with Rwanda are not worth the paper they are signed on. The following five measures constitute a coherent policy framework.

Measure One: Full Implementation of the March 2025 Sanctions Regime

The US Treasury designations of March 2025 targeted the RDF as an entity and four senior commanders, including General James Kabarebe. These designations must now be fully operationalised. This means ensuring that third-country financial institutions with exposure to RDF-linked entities are aware of their secondary sanctions obligations. It means the State Department engaging allies in the Gulf, Europe, and East Africa — all of whom have financial relationships with Kigali — to ensure that the designations produce real economic pressure rather than cosmetic restrictions.

Measure Two: Targeted Sanctions on Rwanda's Mineral Export Chain

Sanctions on military commanders, while symbolically important, do not address the economic architecture that sustains Rwanda's presence in eastern Congo. The United States should impose targeted sanctions on Rwandan mineral export companies, processing facilities, and certification bodies that are involved in the laundering of Congolese minerals through Rwandan provenance documentation. The Dodd-Frank Act's Section 1502 — concerning conflict minerals — already provides a legislative framework. What is needed is a more aggressive enforcement posture directed specifically at Rwanda's role in the conflict mineral supply chain.

Measure Three: Conditions on US Security Cooperation

Rwanda receives substantial benefits from its security relationship with the United States, including International Military Education and Training (IMET) funding, access to AFRICOM channels, and intelligence-sharing arrangements. None of this should be unconditional while Rwanda is in material breach of a US-brokered agreement and while RDF forces are operating in a neighbouring country in violation of international law. The United States should formally suspend all security cooperation with Rwanda pending verifiable withdrawal from eastern DRC, and should make clear to Kigali that restoration of that relationship is contingent on compliance.

Measure Four: Ensure the Full Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2773

UN Security Council Resolution 2773 already demands Rwanda's withdrawal from the DRC and the cessation of support for RDF/M23. The issue is no longer the absence of a UN mandate. It is the absence of enforcement. The United States, which co-sponsored Resolution 2773, must now lead efforts to operationalise its provisions. This means pressing for a formal review mechanism with specific timelines and consequences for non-compliance, supporting the referral of documented human rights violations by RDF-coordinated RDF/M23 forces to the International Criminal Court, and ending the practice of shielding Rwanda from accountability measures at the Council table. A resolution without enforcement is a declaration without consequence. The United States must ensure that Resolution 2773 is not added to the long list of agreements Rwanda has signed or accepted and then ignored.

A concrete and immediately actionable dimension of Measure Four concerns MONUSCO's failure, across more than two decades of presence in the DRC, to produce a formal, published assessment of the actual threat level that the FDLR poses to Rwanda. This omission is not incidental. Rwanda has used the FDLR threat as the primary legal and political justification for its military presence in eastern DRC since 1996. MONUSCO has the mandate, the personnel, the intelligence capacity, and the access to assess whether this threat is genuine, quantifiable, and proportionate to Rwanda's military response. It has not done so. The result is a situation in which Rwanda invokes an unverified threat to justify a verified illegal occupation, and the international community lacks a credible, independent assessment to contest or confirm the claim. This must change. On 5 March 2026, the Secretary-General appointed James Swan of the United States as his Special Representative in the DRC and Head of MONUSCO. This appointment creates a direct opportunity. The United States, as MONUSCO's new leadership, should direct the mission to conduct and publish a rigorous, independent threat assessment of the FDLR — including its current estimated fighter strength, its weaponry, its documented capacity to project force across the Rwandan border, its operational posture across all areas of eastern DRC, and whether its presence constitutes a credible and imminent military threat to Rwandan territory rather than a political pretext for Rwandan military intervention. If the FDLR threat is genuine and proportionate, that assessment should be published and used to design a verifiable joint neutralisation plan with clear timelines. If the assessment concludes that the FDLR does not pose a credible military threat to Rwanda, that conclusion should be stated publicly and should serve as the definitive answer to Rwanda's thirty-year justification for its presence in the DRC. Either outcome advances clarity. The continued absence of any such assessment serves only Rwanda's interest in maintaining a pretext that cannot be publicly tested.

Measure Five: A Clear Diplomatic Pathway With Specific Benchmarks

Before examining what this pathway should contain, the question of what the United States has actually invested in Rwanda's military capacity deserves a direct answer — because the public record, while incomplete, is more revealing than is generally acknowledged. The US Embassy in Kigali describes the International Military Education and Training programme (IMET) as 'the centrepiece of the US security assistance effort in Rwanda'. Under IMET, the United States has funded military education and training for Rwandan military and civilian personnel, sent Rwandan cadets to earn officer commissions at West Point and the United States Air Force Academy, and enabled senior RDF officers to attend professional military education courses alongside American officers. The State Department's FY2024 budget requested 500,000 dollars in IMET for Rwanda — a figure that is modest in isolation but that represents the visible portion of a much broader relationship. The Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative (GPOI) separately provides funds to train and equip Rwandan forces for peacekeeping deployments. Total US foreign assistance to Rwanda in recent years has run at approximately 185 to 188 million dollars annually — the vast majority through health, development, and humanitarian channels — but the military relationship cannot be valued by IMET figures alone. Intelligence sharing on FDLR movements, access to AFRICOM planning and logistics channels, and direct bilateral security cooperation have no published dollar value. What is known is that Rwanda appeared on the US Child Soldiers Prevention Act list in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2023, and 2024 — each time because of documented RDF support for armed groups in the DRC — and that the Obama administration waived aid restrictions on two of those occasions, allowing military assistance to flow despite the prohibitions. The pattern is one of sustained partnership interrupted only by the most visible episodes of Rwandan misconduct, and resumed as soon as political convenience allowed. The cumulative value of this relationship — in training, equipment access, intelligence, and diplomatic cover — has been substantial, and it has directly shaped the capability and confidence of the force that is now operating illegally in eastern DRC.

Pressure without a pathway is coercion without strategy. The starting point for any honest assessment of this pathway must be an uncomfortable question: the United States has provided military support to Rwanda's armed forces for thirty-two years — training in Rwanda and the United States, intelligence sharing on FDLR movements, and bilateral security cooperation — on the stated basis that Rwanda faced genuine and imminent security threats from the FDLR and from instability in the DRC. After thirty-two years of that support, including multiple joint operations between Rwanda and the DRC against the FDLR, the FDLR threat has not been neutralised. The question that demands an answer is why. If the FDLR genuinely represented the existential threat Rwanda claims, three decades of American intelligence sharing and military cooperation should have produced a very different outcome. The persistence of the FDLR pretext, across three decades and seven successive Rwandan-backed armed groups, suggests one of two conclusions: either the United States has concluded, based on its own intelligence assessments, that the FDLR does not represent a genuine threat to Rwanda — in which case the decision to sanction the RDF in March 2025 is the definitive American strategic verdict — or the FDLR threat is real and American support has failed to address it, in which case Rwanda's military conduct in the DRC is an admission that thirty-two years of American military partnership have not produced security. Neither conclusion supports the continuation of current arrangements. If the United States believes Rwanda faces a legitimate FDLR-related security concern that it cannot resolve unilaterally, it should present Rwanda with a specific, time-bound diplomatic offer: a bilateral security guarantee in exchange for verifiable and complete RDF withdrawal from Congolese territory within a defined timeframe. This guarantee should include enhanced US-Rwanda intelligence sharing on verified FDLR positions, US support for an internationally mandated joint border monitoring force, and a formal commitment to press Kinshasa to engage with Rwanda's stated concerns through the appropriate multilateral mechanisms. Alternatively, the United States should provide direct support to the DRC to neutralise the FDLR on Congolese territory, and demonstrate to Rwanda through verifiable results that Washington is committed to addressing the security concern it has cited for three decades. If neither of these options is pursued, the conclusion is straightforward: the FDLR does not, in the assessment of the United States government, present a genuine threat to Rwanda, and Rwanda's continued military occupation of eastern DRC is without legal or security justification.

This offer should be made once, with a clear deadline. If Rwanda refuses, the United States should proceed to full implementation of all other measures. Kagame told this interviewer that he is 'comfortable with the status quo'. American policy must ensure that the status quo becomes deeply uncomfortable — not through punitive escalation alone, but through a combination of escalating costs and a genuine diplomatic exit that Rwanda's leadership would be irrational to refuse.

Measure Six: Targeted Visa Restrictions on Rwanda's Political and Military Elite

The United States should impose travel bans on senior Rwandan political and military figures who bear command responsibility for operations in the DRC. This includes members of the Rwandan cabinet, senior RDF commanders not yet individually designated, and figures within the RPF's political and business networks who benefit from the conflict mineral trade. Visa restrictions are a relatively low-cost but high-visibility instrument of pressure that are felt personally by the individuals concerned and that signal to Rwanda's governing elite — not just its military — that their conduct carries personal consequences.

Measure Seven: Sanctions on RPF-Linked Commercial Entities, Including Crystal Ventures

Crystal Ventures Limited and its associates — the commercial holding company network of the Rwandan Patriotic Front — control a substantial share of Rwanda's formal economy, with investments spanning construction, food production, real estate, security services, and financial services. It is the RPF's primary vehicle for converting political power into private wealth. Its revenues help fund the party, the state apparatus, and by extension the military operations that the RPF directs. The United States should designate Crystal Ventures and its principal subsidiaries under existing sanctions authorities, on the grounds that the RPF is the controlling political entity behind the RDF's designated conduct. Sanctioning the party's commercial empire — rather than only its military commanders — would create genuinely systemic pressure on the governing network that sustains Kagame's hold on power and Rwanda's military adventurism in the DRC.

Measure Eight: An Arms Embargo on Rwanda

The United States, acting through the UN Security Council and in coordination with European allies, should pursue a comprehensive arms embargo on Rwanda — prohibiting both the sale of arms to Rwanda and the purchase of arms or military equipment from Rwanda — pending verifiable and complete withdrawal of RDF forces from the DRC. The rationale is straightforward: military equipment supplied to Rwanda through normal bilateral or commercial channels is available to the RDF, and the RDF is using that capacity to conduct illegal military operations in a neighbouring sovereign state. An arms embargo would deny Rwanda the material replenishment it needs to sustain its expeditionary posture in eastern DRC. It would also strip one of Rwanda's most effective diplomatic arguments — that it is a valued security partner — of its practical content. A partner whose forces are under sanctions for conduct in a neighbouring country and whose military is subject to an international arms embargo is not a partner. It is a problem to be resolved. Rwanda's peacekeeping contributions in Mozambique and elsewhere should not exempt it from this measure; the argument that Rwanda is a responsible contributor to international security is precisely the cover under which its illegal military operations in the DRC have been politically tolerated for three decades.

 

Implications of Continued Inaction

If the United States fails to implement a coherent and comprehensive response to Kagame's public defiance, the consequences are predictable and severe. They are already visible in the humanitarian and political situation in eastern DRC, and they will deepen with each month that Rwanda's military presence continues without meaningful cost.

•         Kagame will continue to illegally exploit and export minerals from the DRC under Rwandan certificates of origin, generating revenues that fund the military operations the United States has sanctioned.

•         Rwanda will continue to consolidate a parallel administration in eastern DRC, installing governance structures, taxation systems, and security arrangements that make its presence progressively harder to reverse without a major military confrontation.

•         Human rights abuses and atrocities will continue and will remain underdocumented, as humanitarian organisations face access restrictions in RDF/M23-controlled territory and as journalists and researchers are prevented from operating freely.

•         Goma international airport will remain closed indefinitely under RDF/M23 control, cutting off eastern Congo's principal air link for humanitarian supply, medical evacuation, and economic activity. Rwanda benefits directly from this closure: by disrupting Goma's connectivity, it weakens the DRC government's administrative and commercial presence in its own eastern territory while reinforcing the practical dependency of the region on supply routes through Rwanda.

•         Eastern Congo will remain economically paralysed. Millions of displaced people cannot farm, trade, or contribute labour to local economies. Children displaced from their homes are out of school. Malnutrition, disease, and preventable death will continue at mass scale.

•         The DRC will have no choice but to strengthen its military capabilities by whatever means available — with or without US support — to recover control of its territory. A military escalation that the United States could have prevented through timely diplomatic and economic pressure will instead occur under conditions of American diplomatic absence.

•         Impunity will continue and deepen. Members of the RDF and RDF/M23 forces who have committed human rights abuses and war crimes in eastern DRC — including mass displacement, sexual violence, forced recruitment, looting, and the targeting of civilian infrastructure — will not be held accountable for their actions. The absence of accountability is itself an incentive for continued atrocity. Without referral to the International Criminal Court or a credible international tribunal, the victims of these crimes will have no prospect of justice and perpetrators will have no reason to stop.

•         The DRC government must urgently explain to the Congolese people and its Parliament why it abandoned the condition it had publicly set before signing the Washington Accords. Kinshasa had stated explicitly that it would not travel to Washington to sign any agreement before the RDF had withdrawn from eastern DRC. Weeks later, it went and signed — without that withdrawal having occurred. The Parliament of the DRC should pause the ratification process of the Washington Accords until Rwanda demonstrates verifiable compliance with its obligations, and the government owes the Congolese people a transparent account of what changed between that public condition and the signing ceremony.

 

Sanctions Without Coherence: Why Washington Cannot Punish and Partner Simultaneously

There is a structural contradiction at the heart of current American policy toward Rwanda that no amount of diplomatic language can resolve. The United States has designated the Rwanda Defence Forces as a sanctioned entity, named four of its senior commanders as individuals subject to asset freezes and transaction prohibitions, and publicly stated that Rwanda's military conduct in the DRC is unacceptable. At the same time, Washington continues to cooperate with Kigali across health, migration, and mineral supply chains — sectors that provide Rwanda with financial resources, international legitimacy, and strategic cover. This contradiction does not merely complicate American diplomacy. It destroys it.

Sanctions are instruments of coercive diplomacy. Their logic depends entirely on the credibility of the signal they send: that a government's conduct is so contrary to the sanctioning state's interests and values that normal relations cannot continue until behaviour changes. The moment the sanctioning state continues normal — or even expanded — relations in adjacent sectors, that signal collapses. Rwanda's leadership, and every other government watching the situation, draws the obvious conclusion: the sanctions are a performative gesture, not a strategic commitment.

The Health Cooperation Contradiction

The United States remains one of Rwanda's largest bilateral health partners, channelling substantial funding through PEPFAR, the President's Malaria Initiative, and USAID health programmes. Rwanda has developed a well-documented and genuinely effective health system, and American investment in that system has produced real public health outcomes. None of this is in dispute. What is in dispute is whether this cooperation can continue unchanged while the RDF — funded in part by the Rwandan government that administers these health programmes — is simultaneously conducting military operations in the DRC that have displaced millions of civilians and created one of the world's largest acute humanitarian crises.

Displacement itself is a health catastrophe. The millions of Congolese civilians uprooted from their homes by RDF-backed RDF/M23 operations face acute malnutrition, cholera, sexual violence, and the collapse of healthcare infrastructure. The United States is, in effect, funding Rwandan health development with one hand while the forces of the same Rwandan state generate mass health emergencies across the border with the other. This is not a sustainable or morally coherent position, and it is one that Kagame's government exploits precisely because it demonstrates that Washington's commitment to accountability has limits defined by programme continuity rather than principle.

The Migration Agreement: Rewarding Non-Compliance

The migration agreement concluded between the Trump administration and Rwanda in August 2025 — under which Rwanda agreed to receive up to 250 third-country migrants in exchange for an undisclosed grant — is the single most damaging blow to the credibility of US sanctions policy. It was concluded after the RDF designations of March 2025. It was concluded after Goma and Bukavu had fallen. It was concluded after Kagame had publicly dismissed the Washington Accords and declared himself comfortable with the military status quo.

The message the migration deal sends to Kigali is unambiguous: Rwanda can violate a US-brokered peace agreement, defy US sanctions, and still extract financial concessions from Washington through a separate bilateral arrangement. This is not merely a failure of policy coordination within the US government. It is an active incentive for continued non-compliance. If defiance of American demands produces a financial grant, the rational calculation for any government in Rwanda's position is to defy more, not less.

The undisclosed nature of the grant compounds the problem. The American public, the Congolese government, and the international community cannot assess what Rwanda received, what was expected in return, and whether any conditions were attached. Opacity in the context of sanctioned conduct is not a neutral administrative choice. It is an accountability failure.

The Minerals Dimension: Strategic Interest as Impunity

As Western governments — including the United States — pursue supply chain security for critical minerals essential to the electronics and electric vehicle industries, Rwanda has positioned itself as an indispensable processing and transit hub. Kagame confirmed this explicitly in the Jeune Afrique interview, acknowledging that minerals from outside — meaning the DRC — are routed through Rwanda and that Rwanda can certify their origin. This is a direct reference to the conflict mineral supply chain that has been documented in successive UN Group of Experts reports.

American companies and their supply chains have an interest in continued access to minerals processed through Rwanda. American government agencies responsible for critical mineral security have an interest in Rwanda's stability as a regional hub. These interests do not disappear because the RDF has been sanctioned. They create institutional constituencies within the US government that actively resist the full implementation of sanctions because full implementation would disrupt supply chains that other parts of the US government are trying to secure.

This is precisely how sanctions lose credibility from within. The Treasury Department designates; the Commerce Department and the National Security Council calculate the strategic cost; the result is a sanctions regime that is announced but not operationalised, visible but not felt. Kagame's confidence in this interview — his comfort with the status quo, his dismissal of sanctions as lacking legitimate basis — reflects a government that has correctly read the limitations of American resolve.

 

The Core Contradiction The United States cannot simultaneously designate the Rwanda Defence Forces as a sanctioned entity, conclude a migration deal that pays Rwanda an undisclosed grant, continue bilateral health cooperation that enhances Rwanda's international standing, and tolerate the routing of conflict minerals through Rwandan certification systems — and expect any of these signals to be taken seriously in Kigali or anywhere else.

 

What Policy Coherence Requires

Restoring the credibility of US sanctions policy toward Rwanda requires a fundamental shift from sectoral to comprehensive conditionality. This does not mean ending all cooperation with Rwanda across all sectors immediately — that would be disproportionate and would harm Rwandan civilians who depend on health programmes. It means establishing a clear, public, and enforceable framework under which the continuation of cooperation in each sector is explicitly conditional on measurable progress toward RDF withdrawal from the DRC.

Concretely, this means the migration agreement should be suspended pending compliance with the Washington Accords. Any new financial arrangements with the Rwandan government — whether grants, development assistance, or security cooperation funding — should be formally blocked under the existing sanctions regime. Health programme funding should be maintained at the civilian level but restructured so that government-to-government financial transfers to Rwandan health ministries are conditioned on compliance benchmarks.

Most critically, the United States must close the minerals loophole. American companies sourcing minerals through Rwanda should be required to demonstrate, through independent verification, that those minerals do not originate from areas under RDF or RDF/M23 control. The existing Dodd-Frank Section 1502 framework provides the legislative basis for this; what is lacking is the political will to apply it specifically and rigorously to Rwanda's role in the conflict mineral supply chain.

The principle is straightforward and should be stated plainly: a government whose military forces are under sanctions for conduct in a neighbouring country cannot simultaneously be a preferred partner in health, migration, and minerals. Until that principle is applied consistently, Paul Kagame will continue to read American sanctions exactly as he did in this interview — as a cost he can absorb, a signal he can dismiss, and an inconvenience he can outlast.

 

Challenges and Competing Interests

Any honest analysis must acknowledge the obstacles to the policy framework outlined above. Rwanda retains diplomatic connections built over decades, including relationships cultivated during the Clinton administration — an administration that failed to intervene to prevent the 1994 genocide and subsequently failed to hold the RPF accountable for the documented massacres of Hutu refugees in the DRC that followed. That administration developed a policy of alignment with Kigali that has never been critically re-examined in proportion to the harm it has enabled. Under Democratic administrations, the pattern has been one of passive observation of atrocities in the DRC rather than meaningful accountability. A particularly revealing episode is the intervention by senior American officials to prevent former International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda prosecutor Carla Del Ponte from initiating investigations into the RPF's own crimes — investigations she had opened based on the same evidentiary standards applied to génocidaires. That political intervention to shield Kagame and the RPF from international justice set a precedent of impunity that has persisted to the present. Rwanda's diplomatic standing in Washington rests partly on a genocide reconstruction record that is presented one-sidedly — omitting the RPF's own documented atrocities during and after 1994, as recorded in the UN Mapping Report — and partly on a sophisticated, well-funded lobbying operation that has been highly effective at shaping Congressional and executive branch perceptions. Some members of Congress remain sympathetic to Kigali. But no principled foreign policy can remain sympathetic to a country that destabilises a sovereign neighbour, supports seven documented armed proxy groups across two countries, and commits or enables atrocities against civilian populations at scale. The Trump administration has demonstrated a preference for bilateral deal-making over multilateral pressure, and the migration agreement concluded between Washington and Kigali in August 2025 — under which Rwanda agreed to receive up to 250 third-country migrants in exchange for an undisclosed grant — suggests an ongoing transactional relationship that complicates any confrontational posture.

There is also the question of regional dynamics. Uganda, Burundi, and Tanzania all have stakes in the eastern DRC conflict that are not identical to Rwanda's but are not uniformly aligned with the DRC government either. A US and UN policy that focuses exclusively on Rwanda without engaging the broader regional architecture will be insufficient. Burundi in particular should have been integrated into the Washington Accords framework from the outset. Burundi has its own troops deployed in eastern DRC and faces its own threat from armed groups operating from that territory — principally Red Tabara, which Rwanda supports and which uses eastern DRC as its operational base against Bujumbura. The threat that the FDLR poses to Rwanda is structurally no different from the threat that Red Tabara poses to Burundi. If Rwanda's security concerns justify international diplomatic attention, so do Burundi's — and a framework that addresses only one side of this equation is incomplete by design. Any durable peace architecture for eastern DRC must include Burundi as a party with reciprocal obligations and reciprocal protections.

Nonetheless, these complications are arguments for sophistication in implementation, not for inaction. The United States cannot claim to be a credible broker of peace agreements that its own sanctions documents confirm are being violated by a party it has spent three decades supporting.

 

Future Trends and Outlook

The credibility of the United States as a peacemaker in Africa will ultimately be measured not by the agreements it brokers but by what happens when those agreements are violated. The Washington Accords and UN Security Council Resolution 2773 are already violated. How Washington responds — with coherent pressure or continued ambiguity — will define whether American diplomacy in the Great Lakes region retains any meaning. Several developments in the coming months will test whether Washington moves beyond symbolic pressure. The trajectory of peace negotiations under the Luanda and Nairobi processes — both of which have stalled — will indicate whether a diplomatic framework independent of US brokerage can gain traction. The question of whether Rwanda's RDF entity designations affect its eligibility for UN peacekeeping reimbursements remains unresolved and may become a point of leverage if legal advice confirms that designated entities are disqualified from UN compensation mechanisms.

The humanitarian situation in eastern DRC continues to deteriorate. The fall of Goma and Bukavu has created one of the largest displacement crises in the world, with millions of Congolese civilians uprooted from their homes. Kagame's claim in this interview that conditions in Goma are better under M23 than they were before is directly contradicted by the assessments of every major humanitarian organisation operating in the area. The United Nations, Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and multiple human rights bodies have documented ongoing displacement, food insecurity, sexual violence, and the systematic looting of humanitarian assets since the fall of Goma. The claim is not a matter of disputed interpretation. It is false.

Globally, the critical minerals dimension will grow in strategic importance. Eastern Congo contains the world's largest known deposits of coltan, essential for the electronics and electric vehicle industries. As Western governments seek to secure supply chains for these materials, the question of whether they do so by accommodating Rwanda's extraction of Congolese resources — or by insisting on supply chains rooted in Congolese sovereignty — will be a defining test of whether their Africa policy is grounded in principles or convenience.

 

Conclusion

Paul Kagame's interview is a gift to analysts and a problem for diplomats. It removes the ambiguity that has allowed Western governments to maintain relations with Kigali while professing concern about the DRC conflict. Rwanda's President has confirmed, in his own words and on record, that his forces are in eastern Congo, that he is comfortable with the military status quo, that he will not withdraw until conditions of his choosing are met, and that he regards US sanctions as illegitimate and politically motivated.

The Washington Accords are not merely stalled. They have been publicly and explicitly rejected by one of the two parties that signed them. The United States, as the agreement's architect and guarantor, now has a choice: it can allow this rejection to stand, effectively ratifying the principle that agreements brokered by Washington can be discarded with impunity, or it can respond with the combination of escalating pressure and genuine diplomatic engagement that the situation demands.

The peoples of the eastern DRC have endured three decades of conflict in which their sovereignty, their lives, and their resources have been treated as variables in other countries' strategic calculations. The United States has the tools, the leverage, and — after this interview — the unambiguous evidence to change the calculus. Kagame's declarations in the Jeune Afrique interview of 3 April 2026 are not a diplomatic inconvenience. They are a direct repudiation of the Washington Accords, of UN Security Council Resolution 2773, and of the premise that American engagement in the Great Lakes can produce results. A Rwanda that publicly rejects an agreement brokered in Washington, dismisses US sanctions as lacking legitimacy, and declares comfort with an illegal military occupation of a sovereign neighbour's territory is not a country that respects American diplomatic investment. Cooperation with Rwanda and sanctions against Rwanda cannot run in parallel. The choice the United States faces is no longer between engagement and confrontation. It is between credibility and complicity.

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Has Rwanda officially admitted it has troops in eastern DRC?

Yes. President Kagame confirmed in this interview that Rwanda's 'defensive measures' include troops on the ground and the use of equipment inside Congolese territory. Rwanda's ambassador to Washington had previously acknowledged 'security coordination with RDF/M23' on 22 January 2025. These statements corroborate findings in multiple UN Group of Experts reports.

What are the Washington Accords and why do they matter?

The Washington Accords of 4 December 2024, brokered by the United States, required both the DRC and Rwanda to take concrete steps toward de-escalation, including cessation of RDF support for RDF/M23 and the withdrawal of Rwandan forces from Congolese territory. They matter because they represent the most recent internationally brokered framework for ending the conflict. Their collapse — confirmed by RDF/M23's seizure of Uvira days after signing — tests the credibility of US diplomacy in the region.

What sanctions has the United States imposed on Rwanda?

In March 2025, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Rwanda Defence Forces as an entity and sanctioned four senior RDF commanders, including General James Kabarebe, for their roles in supporting RDF/M23 and its operations in the DRC. These designations freeze US-based assets and prohibit American persons from conducting transactions with the designated individuals and entity.

Do the US sanctions affect Rwandan students travelling to the United States?

No. The sanctions designations are targeted measures directed at specific military entities and individuals. They contain no provisions affecting Rwandan citizens, including students, who wish to travel to or study in the United States.

What is the FDLR and is it a genuine security threat to Rwanda?

The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) is a Hutu armed group that has operated in eastern DRC since the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. Some of its members were perpetrators of the genocide. However, the group's military capacity has been significantly degraded over three decades of operations. Rwanda's intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States means Washington would have access to assessments of the FDLR's actual capabilities — making the US decision to sanction the RDF a significant strategic assessment in itself.

What is Rwanda's role in the conflict minerals trade?

UN Group of Experts reports have documented that minerals extracted from mines in eastern DRC under RDF/M23 influence — including coltan, gold, cassiterite, and wolframite — are routed through Rwanda and exported under Rwandan certificates of origin. Rwanda's mineral exports have increased substantially since 2021. Kagame confirmed in this interview that Rwanda functions as a regional mineral processing hub and that minerals from 'outside' are welcome.

Does Rwanda's military presence in the DRC violate international law?

Yes. Under Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, states are prohibited from using force against the territorial integrity of another state, including through proxy armed groups. The International Court of Justice confirmed in DRC v. Uganda (2005) that supporting, training, and financing armed groups on another state's territory constitutes a violation of this prohibition. Rwanda has provided the RDF, CNDP, M23, and now RDF/M23 with troops, weapons, logistics, and command direction — all confirmed by UN Group of Experts reports and by Kagame's own interview. No FDLR security argument provides a legal basis for this conduct under international law.

What armed groups has Rwanda created or supported in the DRC?

Since 1996, Rwanda has created or provided decisive support to seven principal armed formations operating in or from the DRC. The AFDL (1996 to 1997) overthrew Mobutu with Rwandan command; its forces committed mass atrocities documented in the UN Mapping Report. The RCD (1998 to 2003) was created when Laurent-Desire Kabila sought independence from Kigali. The CNDP (2006 to 2009), commanded by Laurent Nkunda with documented RDF backing, came within reach of Goma in 2008. The M23 (2012 to 2013 and 2021 to present) was comprehensively documented by the UN Group of Experts. The RDF/M23 (2024 to present) was confirmed by Kagame himself in the Jeune Afrique interview of 3 April 2026. Additionally, Red Tabara — a Burundian rebel movement based in South Kivu — has been documented by UN experts as operating with Rwandan support, representing the extension of Rwanda's proxy strategy against a second neighbour. Twirwaneho, a Banyamulenge self-defence militia in the South Kivu highlands, has been documented by UN experts as coordinating operationally with M23/RDF forces, providing ethnic cover and local intelligence for the broader Rwandan military architecture.

Is Kagame's public support for Kabila's presence in Goma a violation of international law?

Yes. Under UN General Assembly Resolution 2625 (1970), every state has a duty to refrain from organising, assisting, or acquiescing in activities directed against another state's government. Kagame's statement that he would welcome anyone willing to confront the situation in the DRC — including former President Kabila, who is under prosecution by the Tshisekedi government — is a public declaration of intent to sponsor opposition actors against a recognised sovereign government. This goes beyond military support and constitutes a violation of the non-intervention principle in its political dimension.

Does Kagame's argument that fighting around Uvira pre-dated the Washington Accords signing hold up?

No. Kagame's argument — that fighting was already under way before 4 December 2024 and that the US had been informed daily — does not exculpate Rwanda. It proves the opposite. If military operations were ongoing as Rwanda's delegation sat at the signing table in Washington, then Rwanda signed the Accords while knowingly allowing its allied forces to continue an active offensive. A state acting in good faith freezes military operations at the moment of signing, not after its forces have reached their tactical objective. Kagame's explanation is not a defence. It is a confession that the signing was conducted in bad faith.

Has Rwanda broken peace agreements before the Washington Accords?

Yes. Rwanda has a documented history of engaging in peace processes without implementing their outcomes. The most consequential example is the Arusha Accords of August 1993, signed between the RPF and the Habyarimana government, which provided for power-sharing and democratic transition. They were never implemented. The assassination of President Habyarimana on 6 April 1994 — for which French and Spanish judicial investigations issued warrants and indictments against RPF commanders under Kagame's authority — destroyed the framework and triggered the genocide. Subsequent agreements including the Lusaka Ceasefire of 1999, the Sun City Agreement of 2002, and the Nairobi Communiqué of 2013 followed a similar pattern of signature without compliance.

Why did Kagame refuse to attend the Luanda peace talks in person?

Kagame's absence from key sessions of the Luanda process, while President Tshisekedi attended, reflects a deliberate negotiating posture rather than a logistical matter. By declining to appear, Rwanda extracts the political benefit of being seen as diplomatically engaged without assuming the verifiable obligations that direct participation creates. It also allows Rwanda to hold the DRC to commitments made in person while retaining greater flexibility over its own compliance.

Is a diplomatic solution still possible?

Yes. Kagame indicated in the interview that a compromise solution is possible and that the framework for such a compromise is already outlined in existing agreements. The obstacle is not the absence of a framework but the absence of sufficient incentive for Rwanda to comply. A combination of escalating economic pressure and a credible security guarantee addressing Rwanda's legitimate border concerns could create the conditions for genuine compliance.

What happened to the US-Rwanda migration agreement?

In August 2025, the Trump administration concluded a migration agreement with Rwanda under which Rwanda agreed to receive up to 250 third-country migrants — with the first seven arriving that month — in exchange for an undisclosed grant paid to Kigali. This arrangement creates a transactional relationship that complicates any US posture of confrontation with Rwanda over the DRC conflict.

 

 

 

References and Sources

Primary Source

Soudan, F. (2026) Rwanda/RDC: Interview exclusive de Paul Kagame. Jeune Afrique. Published 3 April 2026. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBTZKT2uTe4 [Accessed 4 April 2026].

 

Historical Agreements and Judicial Investigations

Arusha Peace Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Rwanda and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (1993). Signed 4 August 1993, Arusha, Tanzania. United Nations Peacemaker. Available at: https://peacemaker.un.org [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Bruguiere, J-L. (2006) Requete aux fins de delivrance de mandats d'arret internationaux. Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris. Paris: Ministry of Justice. [International arrest warrants issued for nine RPF commanders, 17 November 2006].

Andreu Merelles, F. (2008) Auto de procesamiento — Diligencias Previas 3/2008. Audiencia Nacional, Madrid. [Indictments issued against forty RPF commanders in connection with crimes in Rwanda and the DRC].

Des Forges, A. (1999) Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch.

International Court of Justice (2005) Case Concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda). Judgment of 19 December 2005. The Hague: ICJ Reports.

United Nations General Assembly (1970) Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States. Resolution 2625 (XXV). New York: United Nations.

United Nations (2010) Report of the Mapping Exercise Documenting the Most Serious Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Committed within the Territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003 [The UN Mapping Report]. Geneva: OHCHR. [Documents AFDL/RDF atrocities during 1996-1997 campaign].

Stearns, J. (2011) Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. New York: PublicAffairs.

Reyntjens, F. (2009) The Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 1996-2006. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 

Peace Agreements Referenced

Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement (1999). Signed 10 July 1999, Lusaka, Zambia. United Nations Peacemaker. Available at: https://peacemaker.un.org [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Global and Inclusive Agreement on the Transition in the DRC — Sun City Agreement (2002). Signed 19 April 2002, Sun City, South Africa. United Nations Peacemaker. Available at: https://peacemaker.un.org [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Nairobi Communique between the Government of the DRC and the CNDP (2013). Signed 24 February 2013, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework). United Nations Peacemaker. Available at: https://peacemaker.un.org [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Nairobi Process Communiques (2022). Series of communiques issued under the East African Community-mediated Nairobi Process on the situation in eastern DRC. Available at: https://www.eac.int [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Washington Declaration on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda (2024). Signed 4 December 2024, Washington DC, United States. US Department of State.

 

United Nations and International Bodies

United Nations Group of Experts on the DRC (2025) Final Report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. United Nations Security Council. New York: United Nations.

United Nations (2010) Report of the Mapping Exercise Documenting the Most Serious Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Committed within the Territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003. Geneva: OHCHR.

United Nations Security Council (2024) Resolution 2773. S/RES/2773. New York: United Nations.

 

United States Government

US Department of the Treasury (2025) Treasury Sanctions Commanders and Entities for Their Support of the M23 Rebel Group in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Office of Foreign Assets Control. Washington DC: US Treasury. [March 2025].

US Department of State (2025) Washington Declaration on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, December 2024. Washington DC: Department of State.

 

Human Rights and Research Organisations

Human Rights Watch (2025) Democratic Republic of Congo: Events of 2024. New York: Human Rights Watch.

International Crisis Group (2025) Eastern Congo: Anatomy of a Crisis. Africa Report No. 318. Brussels: International Crisis Group.

Himbara, D. (2025) Rwanda's economic model and the DRC conflict. Available at: https://davidhimbara.medium.com [Accessed 4 April 2026].

 

Media

US Embassy in Rwanda (2025) US Mission Agencies and Offices — Security Assistance. Available at: https://rw.usembassy.gov/u-s-mission-agencies-and-offices/ [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Stimson Center (2024) Rwanda CSPA Country Profile. Child Soldiers Prevention Act Implementation Tracker. Available at: https://www.stimson.org/project/child-soldiers/cspa-implementation-tracker/country-profiles/rwanda/ [Accessed 4 April 2026].

USAFacts (2025) How much foreign aid does the US provide to Rwanda? Available at: https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-foreign-aid-does-the-us-provide/countries/rwanda/ [Accessed 4 April 2026].

United Nations (2026) Secretary-General appoints James Swan of the United States as Special Representative for the DRC and Head of MONUSCO, 5 March 2026. New York: United Nations.

Security Council Report (2026) Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 2026 Monthly Forecast. Available at: https://www.securitycouncilreport.org [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Madowo, L., Nicholls, C., Princewill, N. and Dean, S. (2025) Rwanda's president says he doesn't know if his country's troops are in DRC. CNN. 3 February 2025. Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/03/africa/rwanda-kigame-troops-dr-congo-intl [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Institute for Security Studies (2025) Tshisekedi, Kagame to meet on crucial eastern DRC peace deal. ISS Today. Available at: https://issafrica.org/iss-today/tshisekedi-kagame-to-meet-on-crucial-eastern-drc-peace-deal [Accessed 4 April 2026].

Del Ponte, C. and Sudetic, C. (2008) Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity's Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity. New York: Other Press. [Documents political interference in ICTR investigations into RPF crimes].

Reuters (2025) 'US imposes sanctions on Rwanda military over Congo conflict'. Reuters. March 2025.

Financial Times (2025) 'Rwanda's M23 allies take Uvira as peace deal unravels'. Financial Times. December 2024.

The Africa Report (2025) 'Kagame interview: Rwanda will not withdraw from eastern Congo'. The Africa Report. March 2025.

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE AFRICAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN London, United Kingdom africanrightscampaign@gmail.com For the Peoples of the African Great Lakes Region