Rwandan Ambassador to the UN James Ngango at an extraordinary gathering of the Human Rights Council in Geneva rejected the accusations of Rwanda as being liable for instability in the east part of the DRC.
— The current situation is simply a direct threat to Rwanda. After the fall of Goma, evidence of imminent attack appeared. Kinshasa and her allies gathered weapons at the airport in and close Goma," Ngango said.
The British paper “Guardian” reported on Friday that hundreds of Rwandan soldiers were killed in the east DRC, which undermines Kigali's claims of not being active in the fight. According to the intelligence, military and diplomatic sources cited by the journal, many Rwandan soldiers fought side by side with the M23 rebels.
The U.S. threatens with sanctions
The Reuters Agency reported on Friday that the United States had sent a sanction informing to governments in Kigali and Kinshasa if there was an escalation of the conflict in the east of the DRC.
In a diplomatic note sent on Friday by Washington to Kenya, which presides over the East African Community and mediated in the crisis, it was found that stableness in the region requires the Rwandan army to "restrain its forces and advanced weapons" from the DRC. "We will consider imposing sanctions on non-cooperative entities, including military and government officials of both countries", the paper states.
Kigali and Kinshasa blame each another for intensifying the battles in east DRC, where Rwanda-backed M23 rebels occupied the capital of North Kivu Province, Goma, and grow their influences by occupying fresh territories.
30 years of unrest
The conflict in North Kivu state broke out in 1994, just after the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, where Hutu cultural group representatives killed over 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi tribe. Tutsi's counteroffensive, led by Rwanda's current president Paul Kagame, put an end to genocide and allowed them to take control of the country. 2 million Hutu then fled to the DRC, risking retaliatory action by Tutsi groups surviving in that country.
One of these groups is the M23 formed in 2012. The rebels already in the past, in 2012, captured Goma briefly and then attacked the east territories of the country 5 years later. In 2022 they began another siege of Goma, which they captured in January 2025.
Authorities in Kinshasa accuse rebels and supporting their Rwanda of wanting to control the mineral resources of east provinces, rich in gold, diamonds, tin and coltan, among others. M23 leaders keep that they are only afraid with protecting cultural minorities from the government of the DRC, which accuses of fueling hatred between 2 cultural groups.
