FIELD REPORT: Geneva — DRC–M23 Agreement on Humanitarian Aid and Prisoners: A Fragile Step Forward

Introduction: Montreux, Where Diplomacy Still Means Something

Five Days in Switzerland to Try to Save Lives

From April 13 to 17, 2026, in the troubled tranquility of Montreux, on the shores of Lake Geneva, delegations from the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Alliance Fleuve Congo–Mouvement du 23 mars (AFC/M23) sat around a table. Around them, a dense diplomatic architecture: Qatar as principal mediator, the United States, Switzerland, the African Union Commission, and Togo in the capacity of AU mediator. Five days. Hours of arguments, postures, weighted silences. And at the end: a joint communiqué published on Sunday, April 19 announcing a major humanitarian advance: prisoner releases within ten days, facilitated aid access, a ceasefire verification mechanism finally operationalized.

This is not peace. Nobody claims it is peace. Eastern DRC is still burning — in Minembwe, in the South Kivu highlands, fighting continued during the very week these lines were written, planes were shot down, villages bombed by drones. But Montreux changed something concrete: the language shifted from territory to human bodies, from geopolitics to medicine and food. That is little, and it is enormous.

The Agreement in Its Raw Reality

The joint communiqué signed at Montreux under the framework of the Doha process for a comprehensive peace agreement — itself born from the framework agreement signed on November 15, 2025 in Doha — breaks down into several precise commitments. First, both parties commit to taking no action that compromises the delivery of humanitarian aid in conflict-affected territories. Second, they commit to not targeting civilians, hospitals, schools, water reserves, or telecommunications infrastructure. Third — and this is the most immediately verifiable element — they commit to releasing prisoners within ten days: 311 prisoners held by the Congolese government, 166 prisoners held by the AFC/M23, identified by the International Committee of the Red Cross. In total: 477 detainees who were to regain their freedom before the end of April 2026.

A Thirty-Year Conflict That Has Found a New Configuration

Eastern Congo: Laboratory of the Continent's Worst Demons

To understand why an agreement on humanitarian access can be presented as a "major advance," one must measure the thickness of the Congolese disaster. More than thirty years of armed conflicts in eastern DRC. A mosaic of armed groups — AFC/M23, FDLR, ADF, Wazalendo and dozens of others — overlapping, fighting, realigning. Millions displaced: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees had counted 7.2 million internally displaced people nationwide in 2024, making the DRC one of the planet's largest humanitarian crises. A vast territory — four times the size of France — whose successive governments have never managed to control the east, separated from the capital Kinshasa by thousands of kilometers of jungle and institutional indifference.

The M23 was born in 2012 from a mutiny of Congolese soldiers, mostly Tutsi, who refused integration into the regular army after a previous peace agreement. It took up arms again in November 2021, after several years of dormancy, with logistical, equipment, and troop support from neighboring Rwanda — support that Kigali denies, but which the UN, the United States, Human Rights Watch, and a series of independent investigators document with damning precision. In early 2025, the M23, with the direct support of the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF), captured the provincial capitals of Goma and Bukavu, violently redrawing the map of power in eastern Congo.

The Washington Agreements and the American Role

Donald Trump's intervention in this complex dossier surprised more than one observer. The Trump administration proposed a logic of "peace for minerals" — a formula that says much about Washington's hierarchy of priorities in the region. Eastern Congo is rich in coltan, cobalt, lithium, and other strategic minerals indispensable to American technological supply chains. In June 2025, then in December 2025, two peace agreements were signed under American auspices: first between the DRC and Rwanda, including an economic component and a requirement of Rwandan troop withdrawal, then the Doha framework between Kinshasa and the AFC/M23. These agreements slowed — without stopping — the M23's advance, and opened the way to Montreux negotiations.

The Prisoners: 477 Names Behind the Numbers

The Detainee Release Mechanism, Finally Activated

A detainee release mechanism had been signed as early as September 14, 2025 between the parties. It had remained a dead letter — each side accusing the other of blocking the process. Montreux changed the equation. The ICRC, confirmed in its role as neutral intermediary, provided the lists of identified detainees from each side. According to Benjamin Mbonimpa, permanent secretary of the AFC/M23 and negotiator in the Doha process, the breakdown is as follows: the AFC/M23 officially acknowledged holding 166 prisoners — though the movement claims to actually hold more than 4,000 FARDC soldiers. The Congolese government, for its part, was to release 311 prisoners affiliated with the AFC/M23. The deadline was set for April 27, 2026.

Behind these numbers: families. Mothers like Françoise, whose son Jean-Michel Imani Mafigi — an architecture graduate, arrested on December 27, 2025, accused of being a M23 member — appeared on the lists. And dozens of others, whose fate is suspended on the goodwill of two parties that accuse each other of bad faith. DW documented these cases of indefinite waiting, symptoms of an agreement struggling to transform into concrete reality on the ground.

Minors and the Mechanics of Horror Documented by HRW

On June 10, 2026, Human Rights Watch published a report titled "Death Was Everywhere," based on interviews with 102 former detainees and dozens of other sources. This document gives the measure of what lies beneath Montreux's humanitarian discussions. The M23, with the direct participation of Rwandan soldiers wearing Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) uniforms, proceeded to forcibly recruit thousands of Congolese civilians — civil servants, teachers, students, passersby — from the streets of Goma, churches, schools. Some were 12 years old. The camps of Tshanzu and Rumangabo were theaters of lethal initiation rites: witnesses describe watching fellow detainees die from whipping, exhaustion, and dehydration. Hundreds of bodies buried in mass graves, with limbs protruding from the earth.

Rwandan Support: A Reality the Agreements Do Not Make Disappear

Rwanda and M23: A Documented, Denied, Persistent Complicity

That Rwanda supports the M23 is no longer a hypothesis: it is a conclusion documented by the UN, the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. On March 2, 2026, the Trump administration — itself, despite its good relations with Kagame — imposed sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) and four of their senior commanders, including General Vincent Nyakarundi, chief of staff of the Rwandan army, and General Mubarakh Muganga, defense chief. The US Treasury's decision was unambiguous: "The RDF actively supports, trains, and fights alongside the M23." Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared, on June 3, 2026 before the House of Representatives, that the United States expected the withdrawal of Rwandan troops from eastern Congo before mid-July 2026.

On June 10, 2026, Global Witness published an investigation revealing that hundreds of tons of pillaged coltan by the M23 in eastern DRC — notably at Rubaya, whose mine the M23 has controlled since April 2024 — are laundered in Rwanda before being exported to international markets. Rubaya alone represents approximately 15% of global coltan production. Global brands are probably purchasing this mineral without knowing its origin — or pretending not to. These revenues directly finance the M23's ability to ignore peace agreements.

American Sanctions and Their Limited Reach

The March 2, 2026 sanctions on Rwanda constituted a strong political signal, welcomed by Human Rights Watch. On June 2, 2026, the American administration went further by sanctioning two new commanders: John Imani Nzenze, chief of M23 intelligence, and Gustave Kubwayo (alias "Colonel Sirkoof"), a senior FDLR commander. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented these measures as support for the Washington Agreements and a "peaceful resolution" of the conflict. But on the ground, the pattern is clear: despite sanctions, despite agreements, Rwanda continued providing logistical and military aid to the M23, and fighting continued. The question is therefore not whether these diplomatic tools work — they create pressure, they impose costs. The question is whether they create enough pressure to lastingly modify Kigali's behavior.

Humanitarian Access: What It Means Concretely

Roads, Convoys, Medicine — the Geography of Survival

One of the most important dimensions of the Montreux agreement concerns humanitarian access to conflict zones. Human Rights Watch had stated, in the days preceding the publication of the joint communiqué, that the parties were blocking aid deliveries and preventing civilians from fleeing the South Kivu highlands. Clémentine de Montjoye, senior researcher for the Great Lakes region at HRW, described the situation plainly: "Civilians in the South Kivu highlands face a severe humanitarian crisis and live in fear of abuse by all parties." The agreement now provides that both parties facilitate the rapid, unimpeded, and safe passage of humanitarian personnel, goods, and services, including for populations in need, without distinction of religion, origin, social condition, or ethnic background.

On the ground, in areas like Minembwe in the Fizi highlands, humanitarian access is a daily matter of life and death. The AFC/M23 denounced, on June 18, 2026, a persistent blockade on certain road axes in the highlands, depriving populations of food, medicine, and basic necessities. The NGO Conscience Féminine pour les Droits et le Développement (CFDD-DRC) in turn raised the alarm on June 12, 2026 about arbitrary arrests and illegal detention of humanitarian workers in Masisi territory, including agents of Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium arrested by the M23. This is the reality that underpins the polished wording of diplomatic communiqués.

The Ceasefire Verification Mechanism: An Unprecedented Architecture

At Montreux, in addition to humanitarian commitments, a memorandum of understanding was signed to operationalize the Joint Expanded Verification Mechanism Plus (JEVM+), also known as the Ceasefire Oversight and Verification Mechanism (COVM), provided for in the Doha framework. This mechanism is designed to monitor, verify, and report ceasefire violations. Its central innovation: the equal integration of the AFC/M23 alongside FARDC in the monitoring body — a first, which implicitly acknowledges the rebel movement's territorial control as a reality. MONUSCO is to provide logistical support so that the first verification missions can begin within one week.

Montreux in the Context of the Doha Process

A Ninth Round on a Still-Long Road

The Montreux talks constituted the ninth round of negotiations within the Doha process framework. This process was launched in April 2025 to bring the AFC/M23 and the Congolese government to dialogue directly and address the root causes of the conflict in eastern Congo. Since then, the parties have concluded several partial agreements: a ceasefire, a declaration of principles signed in Doha in July 2025, a final peace agreement in December 2025 under American auspices. But each of these agreements was followed by a resumption or continuation of hostilities, creating a troubling pattern in which diplomacy produces texts and the ground ignores them.

In Montreux, the parties said they wished to "maintain momentum" and "accelerate negotiations on the remaining protocols." According to Africa Intelligence, cited by Critical Threats on June 12, 2026, a tenth round of negotiations was expected in Switzerland in the following weeks, but had been postponed due to a "lack of consensus on the agenda and negotiating timeline." The United States had requested, during Montreux, that both parties make "tangible progress" on the pillars of the November 2025 framework agreement within 45 to 60 days. This deadline has expired at the publication date of this article — without the expected progress materializing.

The Unresolved Points: Everything Montreux Did Not Solve

The Congo Guardian, in an analysis published April 16, 2026, described the Montreux agreement as a "minimum agreement" — and this is not a harsh judgment, it is a precise description. Several essential questions remain unresolved. The reopening of the Goma and Bukavu airports, closed since the M23 takeover, received no timeline commitment, despite being vital for humanitarian aid and economic recovery. Judicial questions — amnesty for M23 members, lifting of death sentences targeting some of its cadres — went unanswered, as Kinshasa rejected the AFC/M23's requests on this point. The absence of an overall and binding timeline, with verifiable milestones, undermines the entire arrangement.

The Ground Situation in June 2026: The War Continues

Minembwe, Microcosm of an Irreducible Conflict

While diplomats were negotiating in Montreux in April and commentators were analyzing the agreement's terms, the war continued with uninterrupted brutality. Critical Threats' Congo War Security Review, in its June 12 and 19, 2026 editions, documents ongoing fighting with cartographic precision. In the South Kivu highlands, around the town of Minembwe, pro-government forces — including FARDC, the Burundian army (FDNB), and Wazalendo militias — launched a major offensive against Twirwaneho fighters allied with the M23. KT-6 drones, Sukhoi-25 aircraft, heavy artillery: the level of military sophistication in this "forgotten" war in Central Africa is startling.

On June 17, 2026, FARDC announced the recapture of several villages around Minembwe, including Ilundu, Kitavi, and Madegu. That same night, pro-M23 sources claimed to have downed an aircraft belonging to Congolese forces — probably an L-39 of Czechoslovak origin based in Kalemie. Videos circulating on social media showed a pilot speaking a Slavic language emerging from the downed aircraft. According to pro-Congolese government sources tracked by Critical Threats, Rwanda reportedly deployed four Turkish-made TB2 attack drones that carried out strikes on Minembwe and its surroundings between June 16 and 19, 2026 — further demonstration that Rwandan involvement has not ceased.

Tshisekedi's Houston Speech and the Crisis of June 18

On June 18, 2026, on the sidelines of a 2026 World Cup match in Houston, President Félix Tshisekedi delivered a speech to the Congolese diaspora that immediately triggered a diplomatic crisis. Corneille Nangaa, political coordinator of the AFC/M23, reacted from Goma by accusing Tshisekedi of having made "a declaration of war" while a negotiation process is underway. "Tonight in Houston, on the soil of the American mediator and before his supporters, Mr. Tshisekedi again made a declaration of war; while a negotiation process is underway and a protocol on the ceasefire has been signed between his regime and the AFC/M23," Nangaa declared. AFC/M23 spokesperson Bertrand Bisimwa added that ceasefire agreements "have been signed but have never been implemented."

The International Dimension: West, Qatar, Africa

The United States, Architects of an Incomplete Peace

The American presence at Montreux is not accidental. Since the June 2025 agreement, the United States has assumed the role of principal guarantor of the Congolese peace process. This involvement is not disinterested — it fits within a strategy of securing access to Congolese critical minerals, especially coltan, cobalt, and lithium, essential to the American energy transition and technology industry. American companies are eyeing Congolese mining assets, according to sources cited by Reuters in April 2026. The DRC and the United States signed an economic and security partnership, which had the side effect of politically strengthening Tshisekedi — which, according to the Critical Threats Project, allowed him to embark on his own constitutional adventure aimed at a third term.

In parallel, Europe has begun coordinating its positions with Washington. The European Union has sanctioned M23 leaders and Rwandan army officers. The United Kingdom announced it would also examine similar measures. Western coherence on the Congolese dossier, long absent, is taking shape — slowly, insufficiently, but it is taking shape. This matters because Kagame calculates costs, and a unified Western front is more dissuasive than a series of isolated national measures.

Qatar and Africa in the Mediation Architecture

The presence of Qatar as principal mediator in the Doha process merits attention. Doha has acquired recognized expertise in mediating African and Middle Eastern conflicts, with a capacity to maintain open channels with actors that Western powers prefer not to contact directly. Togo, as African Union mediator, represents the continental dimension of a process that has long suffered from competition between initiatives — the Luanda process, the Nairobi process, the Doha process — without effective coordination. The AU Commission, whose chairman Mahmoud Ali Youssouf welcomed Montreux's results, seeks to assert itself as a central actor in a process that remains dominated by external powers.

The Voice of Victims in the Interstices of Diplomacy

Witnesses That Diplomatic Communiqués Do Not Name

The Montreux agreements mention no names. They speak of "parties," "affected territories," "populations in need." But behind these abstractions lie precise stories that the Human Rights Watch report had the courage to document. A 25-year-old construction worker, seized in Goma while buying mobile phone credit in March 2025, recounts: "It's a test of how much suffering you can endure. We were 200; ten died. Two were shot, the others beaten to death. We buried them in a mass grave with about fifty others." These accounts do not appear in communiqués. They exist in NGO reports that few decision-makers read to the end.

Children of 12 years old were torn from their families and sent to the camps of Tshanzu and Rumangabo to undergo military training. Boys forced to dig roads, carry ammunition, serve as guards to beat other detainees on the orders of "General" Sultani Makenga. These facts are established through interviews with more than one hundred former detainees. They form the concrete backdrop against which every paragraph of the Montreux agreement is written. And they remind us why justice and accountability — absent from the agreement — cannot remain permanently absent from the broader process.

Humanitarian Workers on the Front Line, Often in Danger

The Montreux agreement commits the parties to "respect, protect, and facilitate" the work of humanitarian actors, including "local first responders." In practice, on June 12, 2026, several Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium agents had been arrested in the rural commune of Masisi and transferred to Goma by the M23, according to the CFDD-DRC report. These incidents occur in a context where the M23 had been accused by the same NGO of arbitrary arrests, illegal detentions, and summary executions of civilians and humanitarian workers in Masisi territory. The gap between the text of the agreement and the ground reality is measurable through these incidents — and it is wide.

Blood Coltan: The War Economy and Its Global Ramifications

Global Witness and the Pipeline of Pillaged Coltan

The investigation published by Global Witness on June 10, 2026 illuminates the Congolese paradox in harsh light: the same resources that make eastern DRC an object of international covetousness are also what finances the M23's war machine and Kigali's indifference to peace agreements. Hundreds of tons of coltan extracted from Rubaya — a mine controlled by the M23 since April 2024 and representing 15% of global production — transit through Rwanda before being exported to international markets under cover of falsified traceability. Global electronics brands are probably implicated in these supply chains without knowing — or by turning a blind eye. Rubaya alone represents a considerable funding source for an armed movement that can therefore afford to sign agreements and not respect them.

Mineral certification mechanisms exist — they have been strengthened by European and American legislation — but they are insufficient in the face of the sophistication of Rwandan laundering. As long as the economic pipeline feeding the war is not cut or radically regulated, diplomatic agreements like Montreux will remain bandages on a hemorrhage. This is the major blind spot of the current peace process: the Washington agreement is strong on security, insufficient on the conflict economy.

Sanctions as an Economic Deterrence Tool

The American sanctions of March 2, 2026 on the Rwanda Defence Forces, followed by the June 2, 2026 sanctions on M23 and FDLR commanders, represent a deliberate escalation. They reflect a will by the Trump administration to signal to Kagame that supporting the M23 now carries a real economic and diplomatic cost for Kigali. The question is one of calibration: are these measures painful enough to modify behavior, or merely sufficient to maintain symbolic pressure? Human Rights Watch recommended that the European Union and the United Kingdom impose similar sanctions and review their cooperation with Rwanda in domains that risk fueling abusive forces. If this Western consensus forms — and it is beginning to form — Kigali's cost-benefit equation could genuinely change.

Implementation: The Decisive Test That Continues

The 477 Prisoners: Were They Released?

The Montreux agreement set a deadline of April 27, 2026 for the release of 477 identified prisoners. In the days that followed, both parties accused each other of not respecting their commitments. The AFC/M23 accused Kinshasa of "lacking the will" to release the 311 prisoners on its side. Kinshasa deflected responsibility onto the M23. Deutsche Welle documented families still waiting in late April — including that of Jean-Michel Imani Mafigi, an architect imprisoned since December 27, 2025. In its Congo War Security Review of June 19, 2026, the Critical Threats Project indicates no significant progress on major political issues. The situation in Minembwe, in the midst of a military offensive, suggests that the parties' operational priority is military, not humanitarian.

MONUSCO, which was to provide logistical support for the first JEVM+ verification missions within a week of Montreux, has had its role confirmed — but effective monitoring missions struggle to deploy given ground realities. The UN Security Council, in its informal consultations of June 5, 2026, expressed deep concern over the continued deterioration of the security and humanitarian situation in eastern DRC, and urged all parties to fully respect their obligations. This type of UN formulation — solemn, impotent — says much about the limits of the international architecture for conflict management.

The Contradictory Signals of June 2026

Between June 13 and 20, 2026, signals were resolutely contradictory. On one side, the fact that negotiations are still expected — the tenth round in Switzerland, even if postponed — indicates that the Doha process is still alive. American pressure remains active, with Rubio demanding concrete results by mid-July. On the other, fighting of sustained intensity in Minembwe, aircraft shot down, drones deployed, villages bombed, humanitarian workers arrested, Tshisekedi's speech triggering a mini-diplomatic crisis. The gulf between drawing-room diplomacy and the reality of the Congolese highlands has never seemed so deep.

The Question of Justice and Impunity

A Central Gap in the Peace Agreements

Human Rights Watch, in its June 2026 analysis, identified what it calls a "major gap" in the peace agreements: the absence of measures guaranteeing justice or accountability for past atrocities. The HRW report is explicit: "Unless those responsible — including commanders like Makenga — face consequences for their horrific crimes in eastern Congo, impunity will continue to fuel abuses." This recommendation is directly in conflict with the AFC/M23's approach, which demanded at Montreux the lifting of death sentences targeting some of its members and the dropping of charges against others — a request Kinshasa rejected.

This tension between justice and peace is one of the oldest and most intractable in conflict resolution. In theory, one can have neither without the other: peace without justice generates impunity that fuels the next cycle of violence; justice without peace is inaccessible while the conflict rages. The international community must navigate between these two imperatives with an intellectual honesty that diplomatic formulations have often tended to avoid. The Montreux agreement wisely avoided addressing these questions — understandable in the short term, but something that will need to be addressed at some point if lasting peace is to be achieved.

Sultani Makenga and the Architecture of Impunity

The case of "General" Sultani Makenga, military commander of the AFC/M23, perfectly illustrates the difficulty. HRW describes him as the commander in whose name thousands of civilians were forcibly recruited, children torn from their families, bodies buried in mass graves. The video record of his address at Tshanzu — where he speaks to thousands of freshly trained recruits — is public testimony to his direct responsibility for documented facts. And yet, he continues to play a military role in an organization that negotiates humanitarian agreements with Washington's support. This reality is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a just peace. It means that behind every diplomatic handshake lie unresolved questions about what price will ultimately be paid for the impunity granted today to buy tomorrow's peace.

What Montreux Achieved, What Remains to Be Done

Balance Sheet of an Agreement That Changes Something Without Changing Everything

Let us return to what Montreux actually accomplished. First, it produced a legally articulated text on humanitarian access, anchored in the parties' obligations under international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international refugee law. This text creates a reference — it defines what the parties committed to do, and it forms a basis for holding each of them accountable for their failures. Second, it operationalized the ceasefire verification mechanism, which had remained a dead letter since November 2025. Third, it produced a concrete and measurable promise: 477 prisoners to be released within ten days.

What Montreux did not accomplish: it did not stop the fighting. It did not resolve the Rwanda question. It did not create a binding timeline for the next steps. It did not address justice and accountability. It did not reopen Goma and Bukavu airports. It did not stop mineral pillaging. It added another layer to an accumulation of imperfect agreements — and this may be the most realistic method in a conflict this complex: advancing step by step, knowing that each step may be erased by the next violation, but advancing nonetheless.

The Future of the Doha Process

The tenth round of negotiations — postponed beyond mid-June 2026 — will be a survival test for the Doha process. If the parties manage to convene and make progress on outstanding protocols — judicial questions, Rwandan withdrawal, airport reopenings — the process will remain alive. If they do not, and if fighting in Minembwe and elsewhere intensifies to the point of making all dialogue impossible, Montreux risks being retrospectively described as the last moment when diplomacy had a chance to work before a new escalation. The United States, which is awaiting results by mid-July, has a window to exert decisive pressure on both parties. The credibility of American engagement in the region will be played out in the coming weeks.

Conclusion: Holding the Thread, Not Releasing the Demand

A Peace That Does Not Yet Exist, but That Diplomacy Must Force Into Existence

The Montreux humanitarian agreement of April 17–18, 2026, reread in light of the events of the week of June 13–20, 2026, appears for what it is: a real but fragile advance, threatened on all sides by the bad faith of the actors, the persistence of Rwandan support for the M23, the fighting that has never stopped, and the political temptations of each camp to put the process on hold when convenient. Congo is not condemned to perpetual war — human history shows that even the most entrenched conflicts can find a way out. But this way out requires sustained political will, credible implementation mechanisms, and an international community that does not merely applaud signatures and look away the next day.

What the West Must Understand and Do

The Western interest in resolving the Congolese conflict is not merely humanitarian — it is strategic. Access to critical minerals from eastern Congo, indispensable to the energy transition, cannot be secured in a context of permanent war. American and European companies wishing to invest in the region need stability. Kigali must understand that the cost of its complicity with the M23 now exceeds its benefits. Europe must accelerate the harmonization of its sanctions with Washington. And the Doha process must find ways to make Montreux's commitments irreversible — not merely symbolic. 477 prisoners were waiting for their release. Millions of displaced people were waiting for aid to reach them. These expectations do not disappear with the signing of an agreement. They demand action.

Sources

Primary Sources

Joint Statement of the US Embassy in Rwanda on Montreux talks, DRC and AFC/M23 — April 18, 2026

Human Rights Watch: "Trump Declared Peace in Congo. This Is the Reality." — June 17, 2026

Human Rights Watch: Report "Death Was Everywhere" — arbitrary detention, killings, and forced recruitment by the M23 — June 10, 2026

Secondary Sources

El-Balad: Switzerland talks place civilians and aid at center of a fragile pause — June 18, 2026

Critical Threats Project: Africa File — Tshisekedi and the constitutional crisis, M23 and Rwanda — June 18, 2026

Critical Threats Project: Congo War Security Review — June 19, 2026

Afrik.com: DRC — agreement with AFC/M23 for humanitarian aid and release of 477 prisoners — April 19, 2026

Le Monde: DRC concludes agreement with M23 to facilitate humanitarian aid and release prisoners within ten days — April 19, 2026