DR Congo Conflict: M23 Ceasefire Mediation and Humanitarian Access

The first question an aid coordinator in Goma asks after a ceasefire communiqué is not whether the deal will hold. It is whose checkpoint will be at the front of the next convoy. The answer determines whether food, fuel, medical supplies and clean water move north from Goma toward Rutshuru, or sit in a warehouse while negotiators write the next statement.

Mediation has produced a paper trail long enough to choke on. A Luanda-brokered ceasefire between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda took effect at midnight on 4 August 2024, after foreign ministers met in Angola on 30 July. The March 23 Movement, known as M23, was not a party to that agreement. In January 2025 M23 entered Goma, a city of roughly two million people. Within weeks it had taken Bukavu. The distance between a signed truce and a working aid corridor isn't a metaphor. It's measured in rations that don't arrive.

A conflict built on a failed peace deal

M23 takes its name from a peace agreement signed on 23 March 2009, which the group says the DRC government never fully implemented. It resurfaced in late 2021 after years of dormancy and by June 2022 had seized Bunagana, a border post with Uganda used by traders and aid suppliers. The group now controls large parts of North Kivu and South Kivu, including the provincial capitals Goma and Bukavu.

The United Nations and the DRC government have repeatedly accused Rwanda of deploying troops and directing M23 operations. Kigali denies it. Rwanda says it is defending its border from Hutu militias, including remnants of the group that took part in the 1994 genocide. The disagreement has made every mediation about two wars at once: the armed fight for territory and the diplomatic fight over who is a party.

Mediation has split into parallel tracks

The main diplomatic efforts have been the Luanda Process, led by Angola, and the Nairobi Process, created under the East African Community. The East African Community deployed a regional force in 2022, but DRC demanded its withdrawal after accusing it of failing to fight M23. A Southern African Development Community mission, SAMIDRC, deployed in December 2023 with a more offensive mandate. By March 2025 SADC announced a phased withdrawal, leaving Goma's security to whatever political settlement comes next.

Several dates explain the current impasse:

• 30 July 2024 — DRC and Rwanda agree to a ceasefire in Luanda, effective 4 August. M23 is not a signatory.
• 15 December 2024 — a planned summit in Luanda collapses after Rwanda seeks direct dialogue between the DRC government and M23.
• 18 March 2025 — Presidents Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame meet in Doha with Qatar's emir and call for an unconditional ceasefire and direct negotiations. M23 is not at the table.
• April 2025 — M23 pulls out of direct talks in Luanda after European Union sanctions are imposed on its commanders.

What this sequence shows isn't that mediation has failed completely. It's that the parties are still negotiating who gets to negotiate.

Photo by Mohammad Mardani on Unsplash

What access actually looks like from the ground

Across the DRC, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs counted 25.4 million people in need of assistance in 2024. Internal displacement had already reached about 6.9 million by early 2024, most of it in the east, and it kept climbing as M23 advanced. Around Goma, families crowd into sites on volcanic rock at Kanyaruchinya and Lushagala, while Bulengo fills with new arrivals. Digging latrines in that ground is slow, and cholera moves fast.

A humanitarian convoy in North Kivu is not a simple drive. The main roads from Goma toward Rutshuru and the Masisi hills cross changing front lines, and the Sake corridor is worse. Aid agencies must negotiate movement with the Congolese army, M23, local self-defence militias and, in some places, Rwandan forces. Each actor can demand paperwork, levy informal taxes or simply delay a truck for days. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs produces access snapshots that read like route maps of obstruction.

IOM's Displacement Tracking Matrix documents movement in waves: people fleeing Sake toward Goma one week, then moving back when shelling shifts. Each return creates a new set of needs — shelter and clean water, plus protection for women and girls on the move.

Why the ceasefire papers don't open roads

A ceasefire between two governments doesn't automatically bind an armed group that wasn't in the room. The Luanda agreement of July 2024 committed the DRC and Rwanda to a truce. It created no enforcement cell on the ground, and within months the fighting had reached Goma. The Doha framework of March 2025 called for an unconditional ceasefire, but the joint statement didn't specify who would monitor it or what would happen to breaches.

Humanitarian access requires more granular work than most communiqués contain:

• a named liaison from each armed actor who can be reached by phone, not a ministry switchboard in a capital;
• agreed route notifications and fixed windows in which convoys may move;
• tax exemptions that are actually honoured at checkpoints, where the document often matters less than the relationship;
• clear rules for driver escorts, fuel resupply and the return passage of trucks to their depots.

Médecins Sans Frontières teams working around Goma and Bukavu treat war-wounded patients alongside cholera, severe malnutrition and the routine infections that follow displacement. Their teams often work in facilities that have lost power, water or staff. The same pattern repeats: security can improve for a week while administrative blockages stay in place, so fewer patients reach care than the ceasefire suggests. The Médecins Sans Frontières DRC page tracks these field conditions.

The regional price of an unwritten deal

Diplomatic energy has moved from Luanda to Doha and back, with the African Union and the UN Security Council issuing statements while the front line shifts. The International Crisis Group has warned that without a credible political track, the vacuum left by SAMIDRC's withdrawal will be filled by armed groups, not by a functioning Congolese state. That warning matters for aid access because every new group means new checkpoints and new fees.

For civilians, the cost is already concrete. Goma's airport closed during the January 2025 fighting, cutting the fastest medical evacuation route. Warehouses in the city held food that couldn't be moved for weeks. Traders rerouted goods through smaller crossings, and prices rose for basic food and fuel.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Before the next mediation round, negotiators should bring one thing that has been missing from the last three communiqués: a signed movement order for a named convoy, with a phone number for each side's access liaison. The test is not whether the parties can sit in the same room. It is whether a truck can reach Kanyaruchinya without being renegotiated at every crossing.