The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) hosts 5.6 million dispossessed and internally displaced people with more than 4 million in the eastern provinces of South Kivu, North Kivu, and Ituri, alongside over 990,000 refugees and asylum-seekers from DRC sheltered across the African continent.
With this statement, we, Member organizations of the Habitat International Coalition (HIC), express our solidarity with the Congolese people, especially in North and South Kivu, and with the thousands of children, women and men displaced by decades of conflict there. The situation in eastern Congo looms as yet another contemporary example of the utter failure of states to fulfill their duty to maintain international peace and uphold the rule of law. Today, more than ever, the people and of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) need our support.
We acknowledge that that the Rwandan army is recognized as exercising ”de facto control of M23 operations,” and the Republic of Rwanda, therefore, bears the principal responsibility for the crimes its army and allied militias are perpetrating against the state and people of DRC.
On 26 January 2025, Rwandan soldiers, the M23 militia and other allied militias entered the City of Goma, killing and wounding thousands of Congolese citizens. A day later, Rwandan forces bombed two hospitals, killing and wounding many patients, including women and children. M23 also has bombed electricity transmission towers that enable the supply of water to the civilian population.
We also realize that Rwanda has long been serving as a proxy for the interests of Western states and corporations in the mineral-rich Great Lakes Region. Rwanda’s military is armed by the United States, United Kingdom, France, the European Union (EU), and supported by other proxies, including Uganda. Rwanda is closely aligned with Israel, while its intelligence apparatus and military are equipped with Israeli-made spyware and weapons. Meanwhile, these entities have distinguished themselves as serial violators of the most fundamental norms of international law.
Consistent with the behavior of such rogue actors, Rwanda bears direct liability for having already displaced seven million Congolese, forcibly expel more than 400,000 people from their homes and lands in this new year alone. Among heinous crimes of Rwanda-backed forces is the gruesome machete murder of over 60 mainly Hema internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Djugu Territory, Ituri Province. Since 2017, Rwanda-supported Lendu militias have been attacking Hema, Banyamulenge and Alur communities, repeating a long pattern that evokes the atrocities of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
We stand in solidarity also with the tens of thousands of people who have publicly protested the foreign invasion of their country, urging an end to the violence and expressing their outrage at the brutalization of their compatriots by imperial powers, including at those very states responsible for supporting Rwanda military and criminal militias in order to plunder the Congolese people’s mineral wealth.
We join other civil society groups who have likewise condemned the violent crimes of Rwanda’s government and its allies. We endorse the appeal by the Bishop of Goma to all parties involved to demonstrate absolute respect and protection of human rights, in particular, the human rights to life and adequate housing. Forced eviction is recognized as a ‘gross violation’ of human rights, entitling the victims to reparation under international law. We also call for accountability of all individual perpetrators and their commanders committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including rape, sexual violence and starvation of the people of Congo.
HIC welcomes the recent resolution of the UN Human Rights Council’s 37th special session, adopted by acclamation, establishing an independent mandate to investigate and report on grave rights violations and abuses being committed by all parties to the conflict in eastern DRC. We urge further efforts to bring perpetrators to account. However, we take note in the meantime that the United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) peacekeepers have failed in their mandate to protect civilians, including IDPs.
We appeal to the international community to intervene effective measures to bring an end to the illegal situation in eastern DRC. In particular, we urge:
1. All relevant agencies to deliver humanitarian aid to Goma’s population.
2. MONUSCO, the Congolese government, and the DRC national army (FARDC) to reverse the failed ‘state of siege’ in Ituri and North Kivu, as well as do their duty to provide adequate protection of IDP camps in the eastern DRC.
3. The Congolese government and FARDC to provide substantially strengthened security for vulnerable IDP camps and civilian populations, as well as facilitate the provision of increased humanitarian aid in Djugu Territory by relief organizations.
4. The European Union, UN Member States, and the African Union to expand current sanctions against individuals and businesses involved in current atrocities in the DRC, including those specifically targeting the Hema, Alur and Banyamulenge.
5. Local authorities, municipalities and public institutions, as organs of treaty-bound states and subjects of peremptory norms in international law, to desist from patronizing, transacting or otherwise cooperating with corporations, individuals and other parties trafficking in raw materials and other goods derived from the illegal actors operating in DRC.
6. All states to increase support for the International Criminal Court to investigate prosecute and punish perpetrators of these serious crimes in DRC.
Photo: War-displaced persons in eastern Congo, 22 February 2022. Source: Moses Sawasaw/AP.
