Democratic Republic of the Congo Conflict: Timeline & Latest Developments

This page tracks the latest and most severe phase of a conflict that has run, with pauses, across eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo since the mid-1990s. It does not attempt to cover that full multi-decade history, the First and Second Congo Wars, the mortality crisis that followed, or the two decades of MONUSCO peacekeeping in between. It tracks the current phase: the resurgence of the March 23 Movement (M23), a mostly Congolese Tutsi rebel group, from November 2021 through mid-2026.

M23 first formed in 2012 from former fighters of the CNDP, another Rwandan-linked rebel group, and was militarily defeated in 2013 after briefly seizing Goma. It stayed largely dormant until November 7, 2021, when its fighters attacked Congolese army (FARDC) positions in North Kivu, killing four people. A fuller offensive followed in March 2022, and by June 2022 M23 had captured the strategic border town of Bunagana. The DRC accused Rwanda of arming and reorganizing the group; Rwanda denied direct involvement, though a subsequent UN Group of Experts report substantiated the arming claim. By November 2022, MONUSCO had documented the killing of at least 171 civilians by M23 fighters in Rutshuru territory, an early sign of the mass-casualty pattern that would recur through the rest of the war.

The conflict escalated sharply in January 2025. M23 captured Sake on January 23, then Goma itself on January 27, a city of roughly two million people. Casualty estimates for the Goma offensive alone range from the UN’s figure of about 900 killed to the Congolese government’s estimate of up to 2,000; DRC’s prime minister separately said roughly 7,000 people had been killed nationwide since the start of the year, an unverified government figure. Twenty peacekeepers died, over 2,000 FARDC soldiers and police surrendered, and thousands of prisoners escaped a burning jail amid reports of atrocities against female inmates. Anger over Goma’s fall triggered riots in Kinshasa, where crowds attacked the French, Rwandan, and Belgian embassies. M23 took Bukavu on February 15 and Walikale, extending into North Kivu’s mining belt, on March 20. SADC’s SAMIDRC peacekeeping force, having lost 20 troops defending Goma, announced its withdrawal in March and completed a phased pullout by mid-2025.

Two parallel diplomatic tracks emerged through 2025. A bilateral DRC-Rwanda process, mediated by the United States, produced a Declaration of Principles in April, then the Washington Accord for Peace and Prosperity in June, addressing Rwandan troop withdrawal and a regional critical-minerals framework. A separate, Qatari-mediated DRC-M23 track produced its own Declaration of Principles in Doha in July and, after missed deadlines and a stalled autumn, an eight-protocol framework agreement in November. Neither track stopped the fighting: a July 2025 UN Group of Experts report found Rwanda’s military in “de facto direction and effective control” of M23 operations, a finding Rwanda has consistently rejected, framing its posture as defensive against the FDLR, a Hutu militia rooted in the 1994 genocide. That same month, Human Rights Watch documented the summary execution of more than 140 civilians, most ethnic Hutu, by M23 fighters near Virunga National Park.

The Washington Accords reached their highest-profile moment on December 4, 2025, when Presidents Tshisekedi and Kagame signed a joint declaration at the US Institute of Peace with President Trump presiding. The peace did not hold: M23, reinforced by Rwandan troops per the US Treasury, captured Uvira six days later, an assault Washington later called a blatant violation of the accords. Human Rights Watch documented the summary execution of more than 53 civilians, the rape of at least 8 women, and the forced disappearance of at least 12 people during the roughly month-long occupation that followed. When M23 announced a unilateral withdrawal in late December, FARDC’s spokesman dismissed it as a “media diversion,” and Congolese forces, backed by Wazalendo militias, did not retake the city until January 2026, reportedly after direct US pressure on M23 to leave. Fighting continued into February around Minembwe, a stronghold of the M23-aligned Twirwaneho militia, with an Angola-brokered ceasefire undercut within days by continued offensive operations and drone strikes affecting Banyamulenge civilians.

By mid-2026, accountability measures had begun catching up with the fighting without ending it. The US Treasury sanctioned the Rwandan military and four senior officers in March, and Human Rights Watch reported in June that M23 and Rwandan forces had operated detention camps involving forced labor, child soldiers, and hundreds of deaths through 2025. The UN’s Special Representative told the Security Council in June that AFC/M23 continued fighting while consolidating its own parallel administration in occupied territory, and noted the Allied Democratic Forces, an unrelated Islamist insurgency, remained active in Ituri, a reminder M23 is not the only armed group operating in eastern Congo. By July 2026, the UN’s rights chief was still describing drone and artillery strikes on populated areas in South Kivu and appealing for a Rwandan withdrawal and a Congolese demobilization of the FDLR, while the broader displacement toll, in a conflict now tracing back nearly five years, had surpassed 8 million people.

None of these figures are uncontested. UN, Congolese government, Rwandan, and M23 accounts of casualties, territorial control, and responsibility for specific attacks diverge, sometimes sharply, and are attributed to their sources throughout this page rather than presented as settled fact. What is not contested is the scale of the humanitarian toll and the fact that, as of this writing, no side has ended the fighting despite two separate internationally brokered peace processes bearing its name.