At the end of a three-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a delegation from the UN Security Council called for negotiations on Sunday March 12 to end the violence that is increasingly bloodying the country. he east of the country, plagued by an outbreak of violence since the militia of the March 23 Movement (M23) took up arms again at the end of 2021 and seized entire swaths of the territory.

M23 fighters have also advanced in recent days, now threatening to block all access roads to Goma, the main city in eastern DRC, very close to Rwanda and with more than 1 million inhabitants. Fighting between Congolese forces and the M23, which the DRC and other countries say is backed by Rwanda, has so far displaced more than 800,000 people, according to the UN.

The delegation of ambassadors sent by the UN Security Council, which arrived in the DRC on Tuesday, March 7, notably met President Félix Tshisekedi there and went to Goma on Saturday, where it met local officials and visited a displaced persons camp. She was to leave the country on Sunday.

Failure of the ceasefire

Member of this delegation, the French ambassador to the UN, Nicolas de Rivière, told the press on Sunday that the M23 should withdraw from the territories it occupies, adding that “there is no more to demonstrate that Rwanda supports the M23” and that Rwandan elements regularly make incursions into the Congolese province of North Kivu, of which Goma is the capital. Only dialogue can resolve this conflict, he added. “The way out of this conflict can only be political and can only be achieved through negotiations,” he stressed. Another delegate, the Gabonese ambassador to the UN, Michel Xavier Biang, agreed, saying that “diplomacy must prevail”.

This visit comes just after the failure of a ceasefire negotiated with the mediation of Angola and broken on Tuesday, the same day that it was to come into force. Other similar peace initiatives have failed in the past. On Saturday, five civilians were killed by shelling during clashes between Congolese forces and the M23 in Kahumiro, 120 km north of Goma, according to security officials and residents.

The DRC, but also UN experts, the United States, France and several other countries believe that Rwanda directly supports the M23, which Kigali formally denies.