'Why are Tensions Rising in Eastern DRC and is Rwanda Backing M23?'

More than 100 armed groups operate in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The conflict has raged for decades in the central African nation, but now the UN accuses neighbouring Rwanda’s Tutsi government of fuelling it.

The conflict is mostly between the Congolese army and the rebel group M23. The militia group of several thousand fighters identifies as Tutsi - an ethnic classification enforced when Belgium controlled the Congo. They have gained a swathe of land in the country’s east.

In 2012, they took control of most of the North-Kivu region, getting as far as the provincial capital, Goma, before DRC forces and UN troops pushed them back. A decade later, in March 2022, the fighting escalated again, close to the Rwandan border.

Tensions between the DRC and Rwanda are smouldering. Rwanda has refuted accusations that they’re supporting M23, who are accused by the UN of carrying out massacres and rapes, something they deny.

It’s believed nearly 8,000 people have been killed in the region since 2017. More than five million have been displaced; most of them are Hutu.

In November, Congo's president Felix Tshisekedi and Rwanda's foreign minister Vincent Biruta declared a ceasefire. But even that could not convince the camp’s occupants to return home.

In November, 131 citizens were massacred by M23, in the villages of Kishishe and Bambo, shot and slashed to death with AK-47s and machetes. 60 more people were kidnapped and at least 22 women and five girls raped. The group denied any involvement, blaming "stray bullets" for the deaths.

The peace process in the DRC remains fragile with armed groups terrorizing civilians and blocking the path to peace. And at the root of the conflict, the same thing that attracted the Belgian colonisers a century ago - the region’s abundance of natural resources.

Report by Sophie Braybrook @sophiebraybrook3101

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