5/1/2024 DRC (International Christian Concern) — Officials announced this week that the U.N.’s peacekeeping force had completed its withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) eastern South Kivu province. South Kivu’s long eastern flank borders Rwanda, which continues to fund the M23 terrorist militant group. 

The U.N. departure from South Kivu marks the first step in a months-long drawdown in the country. Two later phases will see U.N. troops leave the North Kivu and Ituri provinces. In a statement, MONUSCO said it planned to complete the withdrawal nationwide by December 2024. 

According to a statement, the U.N. peacekeeping mission known as MONUSCO began to withdraw from the country in February. MONUSCO has worked in the country for more than 13 years and, before the drawdown, boasted nearly 18,000 personnel, including about 14,000 armed troops. 

Ongoing violence in the DRC has displaced 6.9 million civilians, including 2.3 million in North Kivu and 1.6 million in Ituri, according to a 2023 U.N. report. Despite the Congolese government’s own inability to quell violence from the roughly 120 armed groups fighting for power and territory, the U.N. mission has become increasingly unpopular with Congolese government leaders in recent years. 

The Rwanda-backed M23 militia was also found to have used surface-to-air missiles to fire on MONUSCO air assets. “The fact that Rwanda, a major troop contributor to U.N. peacekeeping, would take such hostile action against a U.N. mission is deeply unsettling,” said Ambassador Robert Wood, the deputy permanent representative of the United States to the U.N., calling it “cause for serious evaluation by the international community” in a statement earlier this year. 

On the same day as the U.N. announced its eventual withdrawal from the DRC, local authorities and civil society leaders announced that the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) — a radical jihadist terror group operating in the country — had conducted attacks in the eastern Ituri and North Kivu provinces, killing at least 24 civilians including women and children. ADF is among the most powerful armed groups, even advancing on Goma, the capital of North Kivu and the province’s largest city. 

Christians in northern and eastern DRC are vulnerable to extremist terror groups like ADF. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the DRC in 2022, highlighting its importance for regional stability. In a press statement ahead of his visit, Secretary Blinken’s office said that the meetings during the trip would highlight past, present, and future partnerships between the U.S. and DRC and consider how the two countries can better partner to advance issues like human rights. Though the press release did not mention religious freedom, it did repeatedly raise the issue of rights violations in eastern DRC. 

Shortly before his trip, in June 2022, Secretary Blinken expressed his support for international religious freedom, saying at an event that religious freedom is “a vital foreign policy priority.” Quoting former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Blinken said, “Those nations are stronger, and the lives of their people richer, when citizens have the freedom to choose, proclaim, and exercise their religious identity.” 

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