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The Democratic Republic of the Congo and M23 rebels have reached a new agreement to ease humanitarian aid deliveries and release prisoners, following five days of peace talks in Switzerland.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: The Eastern DRC has been in near-constant conflict for over three decades, and M23 (a rebel group that Rwanda is accused of arming) has been grabbing ground in the region since 2021. The group took Goma and Bukavu, two of the biggest cities in the east, earlier this year, and just days after a US-brokered peace deal was signed in December, it moved on Uvira, a city sitting right on the Burundi border. Rwanda denies arming M23 and argues its involvement is defensive, pointing to militias tied to the 1994 genocide that still operate inside DRC. Despite multiple peace agreements, fighting has continued.

What’s going on now: Talks mediated by Qatar were held in the Swiss town of Montreux from April 13 to 17, bringing together DRC government representatives, M23 and its political arm the Alliance Fleuve Congo, along with representatives from the US, Switzerland, the African Union, and Togo. The two sides committed to letting aid move freely, keeping civilians and aid workers out of the crosshairs, and handing over prisoners within ten days. They also inked a separate deal setting up a ceasefire monitoring body, which will watch for violations on the ground with logistical backing from MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission.

The agreement came with immediate caveats. Hours after the joint statement dropped, Congo’s military said M23 and Rwandan troops hit army positions in South Kivu with drone strikes, leaving four civilians dead (mostly women and children) and eight more wounded. M23 threw the accusation right back, saying government forces had used a drone to strike civilian areas.

Human Rights Watch warned ahead of the talks of a dire humanitarian crisis in South Kivu’s highlands, where civilians “live in fear of abuses by all parties.”

This all comes as the conflict has left more than 7 million people internally displaced across the DRC (the highest number in Africa and among the highest globally) with hundreds of thousands having been forced to flee multiple times as fighting has shifted from city to city. The UN estimates at least 7,000 people were killed in recent months alone, with the offensive on Goma killing between 900 and 2,000 people depending on whether you use UN or Congolese government figures.

Human Rights Watch documented thousands of civilian deaths across North and South Kivu in 2025, alongside widespread sexual violence used as a weapon of war by virtually all armed groups in the region.