Negotiators representing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Rwanda-backed AFC/M23 rebel alliance have agreed on a roadmap to guide peace talks, following five days of negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland.

The agreement, announced Saturday in a joint statement released by the U.S. Department of State, marks the latest step in a peace process that has repeatedly stalled since fighting reignited in the country’s mineral-rich east. 

The talks, which occurred Aug. 17–21, brought together representatives of the DRC government and the Alliance Fleuve Congo/March 23 Movement alongside mediators from Qatar, the United States, Togo (representing the African Union), Switzerland, and the African Union Commission. 

According to a joint statement from the meeting, the parties “developed a roadmap setting out sequenced steps and timelines for negotiations” under the Doha Framework for a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which the DRC and AFC/M23 signed on Nov. 15, 2025. 

Building on a Fragile Framework 

Saturday’s roadmap does not constitute a final peace deal. Rather, it lays out a sequence for negotiating the protocols still outstanding under the Doha Framework, which established a ceasefire that has technically been in place since Nov. 15 of last year.  

The parties agreed that the order in which those protocols are negotiated will not necessarily dictate the order in which they are implemented, according to the joint statement, and they committed to “flexibility and creativity within the existing structure” of the framework. 

The parties also reported progress on the Expanded Joint Verification Mechanism Plus (EJVM+), the body tasked with monitoring ceasefire compliance. Its secretariat has now been established, and a reconnaissance mission was carried out on Aug. 20 with logistical support from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, MONUSCO, ahead of the mechanism’s first ceasefire verification mission, scheduled for Aug. 24 in South Kivu province. 

The parties additionally agreed on a standardized method for reporting allegations of ceasefire violations and established a new mechanism to review implementation progress and address disputes as they arise. 

Earlier this month, the DRC handed over 15 prisoners to AFC/M23 in a transfer facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, a modest but concrete step in a prisoner-exchange process that had stalled for months over mutual distrust. 

Fighting Continues Despite Diplomacy 

As negotiators met in Geneva, violence continued in the DRC. An AFC/M23 spokesman, Lawrence Kanyuka, alleged Saturday that Congolese “coalition forces” had launched drone strikes in the Minembwe region, causing civilian casualties and damaging infrastructure. The claim had not been independently verified as of this writing.

The U.N. warned in July that the growing use of drones by both sides has further destabilized North and South Kivu provinces, adding an unpredictable dimension to the ongoing conflict. 

The pattern is familiar. Since AFC/M23 relaunched its offensive in the region in 2021, it has seized broad swaths of territory, including the provincial capitals of Goma and Bukavu in early 2025, in a campaign fueled, in part, by the area’s abundant gold, cassiterite, coltan, and diamond deposits. 

Fighting has killed thousands and displaced an estimated 5.3 million people. The DRC, the U.N., and Western governments have long accused Rwanda of arming and directing M23, an accusation Kigali denies. Rwanda, in turn, accuses Kinshasa of backing Hutu militias, such as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda — a claim the DRC denies.

The conflict’s roots trace back to the 1994 genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda and the subsequent collapse of Mobutu Sese Seko’s government in what was then Zaire. 

This is also not the first time negotiators have announced a “roadmap” for peace. A Declaration of Principles signed in July 2025 set a deadline for a final agreement that was never reached. A ceasefire-monitoring framework signed that October led to a “comprehensive” deal in November that a M23 delegate himself cautioned would produce “neither any change in the situation on the ground, nor any activity whatsoever” until its measures were negotiated. Weeks later, M23 seized the border city of Uvira, displacing roughly 200,000 more people. 

An Overlooked Dimension 

AFC/M23 is not the only armed actor endangering civilians in eastern DRC. Roughly 120 militant groups operate in the region, among them the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a jihadist militia aligned with the Islamic State group and known for its brutality toward Christians, who make up most of the country’s population.  

In 2025, authorities blamed ADF fighters for the massacre of more than 50 worshippers at a nighttime prayer vigil in Komanda and a separate attack in Ituri Province that killed at least 40 people, including 13 children. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have separately documented summary executions, torture, and gang rape, also attributed to M23 fighters.

Should AFC/M23 ultimately dismantle the parallel administrations it has built across eastern DRC — collecting taxes, training civilian leaders, and governing captured territory — the resulting power vacuum could just as easily be filled by extremist groups similar to ADF as by a restored Congolese state.  

International attention to the crisis has focused heavily on the political and economic dimensions of the conflict, particularly the fight over eastern CCongo’smineral wealth. Far less attention has gone to the ideological and religious dimensions of the violence, particularly the sustained targeting of Christian communities by groups like the ADF. A durable peace will require addressing both. 

For now, the Geneva roadmap offers a narrow measure of hope alongside a long record of broken timelines. Without sustained pressure to translate diplomatic agreements into protection on the ground, the people of eastern Congo — and especially its vulnerable Christian communities — remain caught between a peace process that has yet to deliver and a conflict that shows no sign of relenting. 

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