Kinshasa takes Kigali to UN’s prime courtroom over 30 years of alleged massacres, sexual violence, and compelled displacement.
Revealed On 26 Jun 2026
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is taking Rwanda to the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice (ICJ) for its position in three decades of alleged “abuses” within the nation’s east.
The Congolese authorities filed the applying with the ICJ – the United Nations’s principal courtroom for disputes between states – on Friday, accusing Kigali of bearing direct duty for years of massacres, displacement and atrocities in jap DRC, which borders Rwanda.
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The dispute issues “abuses attributable to Rwanda over a interval extending from 1996 to the current day”, the ICJ mentioned in a press release, confirming it had obtained DRC’s utility to begin a case.
The Congolese utility said that the abuses “have primarily focused Hutus current on Zairian, and subsequently Congolese, territory following the genocide towards the Tutsi in 1994” in Rwanda.
Nonetheless, the submitting added that different Congolese ethnic teams, together with the Nyindu, Bembe, Lega, Nande, Hunde and Bashi, have additionally been focused.
“The civilian populations of jap DRC have been victims of massacres, extrajudicial executions, acts of torture, sexual violence, pressured displacement, and discrimination,” the Congolese authorities mentioned in its assertion, describing struggling of “distinctive magnitude”.
The submitting alleges that Rwandan armed forces, alongside proxy teams together with the M23/AFC alliance, and Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL), have carried out illegal army operations throughout jap DRC for the reason that 1994 Rwandan genocide. These operations have focused refugee camps, villages, and concrete centres, persevering with via the First and Second Congo Wars and into the current day, it added.
M23, probably the most distinguished of the named teams, captured the strategic Congolese cities of Goma and Bukavu in early 2025, displacing lots of of 1000’s and reversing a long time of fragile peace constructing.
The battle has uncovered the failure of latest diplomatic efforts, together with a US-brokered peace deal signed in June 2025 and a subsequent Qatari-mediated ceasefire declaration, each of which have did not halt the violence.
Rwanda has consistently denied backing M23, as a substitute justifying its army presence in jap DRC as self-defence towards the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu militia fashioned from remnants of the forces that perpetrated the 1994 genocide. Kigali accuses Kinshasa of harbouring the group, a declare DRC rejects.
United Nations experts and Western governments have largely accepted DRC’s place on Kigali’s position within the east, discovering substantial proof of Rwandan assist for M23.
DRC is asking the ICJ to order Rwanda to stop all alleged “violations” and award full reparations to each the state and its victims.
There was no instant response from Kigali, which has persistently denied backing any armed teams working in DRC.
That is the third time DRC has sought ICJ motion towards Rwanda. A earlier try in 2006 was dismissed after the courtroom discovered it lacked jurisdiction.
