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The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel alliance spent five days behind closed doors in Switzerland and came out with a roadmap for peace negotiations, though fighting continued through the week.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, there has been a brutal war going on in the DRC that dates all the way back to 2012, when the M23 rebels broke off from the Congolese army. At the time, M23 accused the government of failing to honor a peace agreement. The conflict is rooted in ethnic tensions, political power struggles, and control over the region’s vast mineral wealth, which is estimated in the trillions of dollars and includes critical minerals such as cobalt, gold, and tin. Rwanda is accused of backing M23 by providing military support, weapons, and logistical assistance, and allegedly profiting from the illegal export of these minerals. Rwanda denies any involvement, insisting its actions are focused on securing its border from armed groups operating within the DRC. Throughout the war, M23 has been accused of severe human rights abuses, including mass executions, the recruitment of child soldiers, and rape, leading to mass displacement and a dire humanitarian crisis. The US brokered a separate Congo-Rwanda deal last year in which Congo agreed to break up the FDLR and Rwanda agreed to pull its forces out, and Washington has since sanctioned the Rwandan army for keeping troops there anyway.

What’s going on now: In a notable development, the two sides came out of talks held from Aug. 17 to 21 with a roadmap that breaks the negotiations into ordered phases and puts dates on each one. It also creates a body to track progress and work through whatever stalls, plus one agreed process for logging accusations that the ceasefire has been broken (which matters because both sides have spent months blaming each other for exactly that).

Progress up to that point had been limited. The clearest step came earlier this month when Congolese authorities freed 15 detainees into the custody of M23. The two sides still can’t agree on who controls what, whether the sanctions on M23 come off, when the rest of the detainees walk, or how fast Kinshasa moves on political reform.

None of this has stopped the killing. AFC/M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said Saturday that Congolese coalition forces ran kamikaze drone strikes on densely populated parts of Minembwe that day. “These bombings caused civilian casualties and significant damage to civilian infrastructure,” he wrote. The UN warned in July that drones were making the security situation in North and South Kivu worse.

The DRC has denied targeting civilians.