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Urgent need for grassroots security reforms in eastern DRC's prolonged conflict

Urgent need for grassroots security reforms in eastern DRC's prolonged conflict
Samuel Igba
By Samuel Igba
27 Jan 2025
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Sub-regional bodies like the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the East African Community are pivotal to the peace process, but are neither capacitated nor neutrally positioned. A neutral regional organisation like the African Union may offer a more balanced mediation platform.

Since the beginning of the year, conflict in the mineral-rich eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has intensified with the Rwandan-backed Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) resuming hostilities following diplomatic failures between Kinshasa and Kigali in December 2024.

By Friday 24 January 2025, 13 peacekeepers — nine South Africans, three Malawians, and one Uruguayan — had been killed while attempting to prevent the rebel group from taking over the region’s provincial capital, Goma. M23 claimed to have captured Goma overnight on Sunday 26 January.

The soldiers killed by M23 were part of the Southern African Development Community Mission in the DRC, and the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (Monusco).

The South Africa National Defence Union (Sandu) has consistently raised concerns over the capacity of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) to operate in such volatile settings. The spiralling violence led to an emergency UN Security Council meeting on Sunday 26 January following the evacuation of non-essential UN staff from the area.

Root causes


Peace talks between the DRC and Rwanda were postponed in December 2024 after Kigali requested that the UN-sanctioned M23 be involved in the negotiations to tackle the root causes of the conflict. DRC president Félix Tshisekedi has been vocal in his refusal to negotiate directly with the rebel group, insisting that dialogue would legitimise them, thereby undermining his country’s sovereignty.

Diplomatic relations between the DRC and Rwanda have soured further with Kinshasa last week recalling its diplomats from Rwanda and expelling Kigali’s diplomats, saying that Paul Kagame’s government continues to support the M23 rebels.

Rwanda in turn insists that the DRC is backing the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda – a UN-sanctioned rebel group with a history of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. According to Rwanda’s foreign ministry, the group’s operations along its border with the DRC threaten Kigali’s security and territorial integrity, necessitating Rwanda’s sustained defensive posture. 

Since the beginning of the year, about 400,000 people have been forced to flee the fighting as the conflict spirals beyond regional peacebuilding capacity. SADC is the subregional body leading international mediation with Angola’s president, João Lourenço, appointed by the African Union (AU) to facilitate talks between the belligerent countries from 2022.

The Luanda-led process resulted in a July 2024 ceasefire agreement. These efforts are complemented by the East African Community through a Nairobi-led process fostering dialogue between Kinshasa and armed groups operating in the region.

Epicentre of conflict in the Great Lakes


The conflict spans decades and involves more than 100 armed groups contesting the mineral-rich territories near the country’s border with Rwanda — making the eastern DRC the epicentre of conflict in the Great Lakes.  

Violence rages on with the UN and EU-sanctioned M23 rebels reportedly supported by the Rwandan Defence Force locking horns with the similarly UN and EU-sanctioned Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda, other armed groups, and the Burundi National Defence Force.

Private military companies, Southern African Development Community and Monusco peacekeepers are also in the region. Burundi’s troop presence and operations against M23 and the Rwandan Defence Force have exacerbated tensions with Rwanda, and continued clashes threaten to destabilise regional stability further.

A series of UN expert reports in 2024 revealed that between 3,000 and 4,000 Rwanda government troops are deployed in the region and are operating alongside M23. UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed fears last week Thursday that the fighting could aggravate “the risk of a regional war”.

Given the history, constant evolution and complexity of the conflict, peacebuilding efforts should prioritise two areas: first, greater emphasis should be placed on dialogue as the only constructive solution.

The war is rooted in historical realities including Belgian King Leopold’s divide-and-conquer approach and its role in creating the Tutsi and Hutu rivalry in the region; the Congo Wars since October 1996; and the Rwandan genocide from April to July 1994.

Deeply political conflict


This indicates that the conflict is deeply political and constructed over centuries, requiring restorative talks.

In this regard, sub-regional bodies are pivotal but neither capacitated nor neutrally positioned to address the issue. For example, the East African Community has closer ties with Kigali, while the Southern African Development Community is closer to Kinshasa — bringing to question Angola’s efforts and suitability as a Southern African Development Community country to mediate, especially from Kigali’s perspective.

A neutral regional organisation may offer a more balanced mediation platform. In this regard, the AU would be supported by other interveners with financial and technical might such as the EU and UN.

This would depend, however, on African leaders adopting a more unified approach to conflict resolution in the Great Lakes. It would ensure that peacebuilding is nuanced, and utilises locally driven solutions to strengthen African agency — allowing external actors to support in ways that amplify rather than overshadow African-led solutions through logistics, funding, and capacity-building without dictating terms.

Security sector reforms


Second, security sector reforms at the grassroots level are pivotal. In conflict-affected settings, security sector reform processes are challenging due to the complexities of such context — there often is a deficit of trust between the security forces underscored by the deposits of small arms and light weapons, large numbers of combatants, governance deficits, and age-old cultures of violence, corruption, and impunity, as is the case with the eastern DRC.

The failure of security sector reform, which involved largely external actors in the country, has been long-standing. For example, the EU Security Sector Reform Advisory Mission to the DRC Armed Forces (2005 to 2014) was affected significantly by the ongoing conflict and widespread corruption in the country.

There were also Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration programmes from 2004 to 2007, 2008 to 2011, and 2014 to the present, which target reintegrating ex-combatants into the armed forces of the DRC. These efforts failed to reform the country’s security sector.

Suggestively, a grassroots-focused security sector reform approach that engages civil society organisations and business communities is crucial for stability in the region. This would help build local agency that addresses people-centred security needs. A bottom-up approach would also mean greater ownership and loyalty from officers. DM

Dr Samuel Igba is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) and Associate Researcher at the Centre for Mediation in Africa (CMA).

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