An M23 fighter looks on as Wazalendo militants surrender weapons to the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group on Dec. 15, 2025, in Uvira, Democratic Republic of Congo.Daniel Buuma/Getty Images
A peace process touted by U.S. President Donald Trump in eastern Congo has been undermined by flagrant violations by the Rwanda-backed M23 militia, including indiscriminate killings and other possible war crimes, a United Nations report says.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed to have ended the war in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where thousands have been killed and millions forced to flee their homes in recent years. But the new UN report documents a series of deliberate violations by the M23 insurgents and the Rwandan and Congolese armies after the first peace deals were signed last year.
The 142-page report by a panel of UN-appointed investigators, submitted to the UN Security Council on Dec. 30 and made public on Wednesday, describes a pattern of death and destruction by M23, including the targeted execution of hundreds of civilians, the burning of villages, the expelling of farmers, the systematic targeting of the Hutu community and the forcible recruitment of child soldiers.
Despite its frequent denials, the Rwandan government sent 6,000 to 7,000 well-equipped soldiers across the border into Congo to support the insurgents, the report said. The Rwandan brigades and battalions, known by the militia as the “Friendly Force,” managed the front lines and controlled the M23 combatants, the report said, quoting a senior militia commander.
Trump touts Congo-Rwanda peace deal, but deadly clashes continue
The support from the Rwandan troops has been crucial to the success of M23’s operations, it said. The militia has captured a huge swath of eastern Congo, including two of its biggest cities, Goma and Bukavu, and has continued to conquer new territory in defiance of the peace deals.
The UN investigators found that M23 has entrenched its rule by expanding its military recruitment and training, controlling borders, imposing taxes and creating a parallel government in its territories, including its own police force and courts. The militia also runs its own detention centres where prisoners have been tortured, starved, stripped naked or even executed, the investigators said. All of this is a “direct contravention” of its commitments under the peace agreements, they said.
Under the agreements, Congo’s government is required to dismantle an ethnically Hutu militia known as the FDLR, but most of the militia is operating in M23-controlled areas, the report noted. The agreements refer to the militia and its “associated groups,” which has made it easier for M23 to target Hutu refugees and other civilians, expelling or attacking many of them, it said.
The forced expulsion of Hutus from M23-controlled areas has sparked concerns that the Rwandan-backed force is deliberately trying to “reshape” the demographics in eastern Congo, it said.
Rwanda-backed rebels bow to U.S. pressure, announce pullout from key city in Congo
“The deliberate and systematic targeting of a particular group − FDLR and civilians associated with them, primarily from the Hutu community − may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity,” the report said.
The report also documents how M23 has expanded its control of lucrative mining sites in eastern Congo, including a former Canadian-owned gold mine.
After capturing a key mineral trading hub in South Kivu, the insurgents now control the majority of the province’s critical minerals, including about half of its coltan and cassiterite production and two-thirds of its wolframite output, the report found.
The militia finances its armed operations by imposing taxes on miners, including the estimated 5,000 small-scale miners who seek gold from hundreds of shafts at a South Kivu site known as Lomera, it said.
Elsewhere in the province, M23 took control of the region’s only industrial gold mine, Twangiza, which had been brought into production in 2012 by Toronto-based Banro Corp. and was later sold to Chinese investors. After M23 gained control, satellite photos suggested that the militia was using heavy trucks to rehabilitate roads and clear landslides around the mine, a sign that it might take over the mine’s operations, the report said.