Washington has sanctioned Rwanda’s army over its role in atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Concern for human rights may not be the Trump administration’s only motive.
Holding Rwanda to account
When the United States imposed sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) and some of its senior officers on Monday, it was the first time Rwanda has been punished by the western powers for its role in the war in the neighbouring DRC. The US state department said Rwanda’s support for the M23 rebel group had enabled human rights abuses in the eastern DRC.
Rwandan forces have supported and sometimes fought alongside M23 in a brutal campaign since 2023 that has seen the rebels commit numerous massacres and routinely use rape as an instrument of war. A million Congolese people have sought refuge abroad and many more have been displaced within the country, where aid groups say that more than 20 million are in need of urgent medical, food and other assistance.
Under a deal brokered by the US last year, Rwanda agreed to withdraw all its forces from the DRC and end its support for the M23 and other militias. The DRC government agreed to disarm the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a radical Hutu militia that Rwanda views as an existential threat.
Washington imposed Monday’s sanctions on the grounds that Rwanda breached the peace deal after M23 rebels captured more territory in eastern DRC.
“M23, a US- and UN-sanctioned entity, is responsible for horrific human rights abuses, including summary executions and violence against civilians, including women and children,” state department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a statement.
“The continued backing from the RDF and its senior leadership has enabled M23 to capture DRC sovereign territory and continue these grave abuses.”
The conflict has its roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide that saw Hutu militias systematically kill hundreds of thousands of people from the Tutsi minority.
When the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Rwanda’s current president Paul Kagame took control of the country many Hutus, including some who had been responsible for the genocide, fled to the DRC, which was then called Zaire.
Rwanda claims it only got involved in eastern DRC to protect itself from the Hutu militias linked to the genocide. But the region is also rich in minerals and the DRC is responsible for 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt production, 40 per cent of its coltan and 13 per cent of its copper.
M23 rebels control some of the key mining areas and they have been smuggling minerals into Rwanda to fund their operations. This trade has seen Rwanda become a major exporter of coltan, which is used in electronics manufacturing, although it has few reserves of the mineral itself.
The mineral wealth of eastern DRC is also what makes the conflict interesting to Washington, which last year signed a deal with the government in Kinshasa giving it preferential access to minerals in return for security assistance. China currently dominates the DRC’s mining sector, and its firms control much of the country’s copper and cobalt extraction and export, a position the US is seeking to challenge.
The decision to sanction Rwanda’s military may reflect Washington’s deepening economic ties to Kinshasa as much as the Trump administration’s commitment to defending human rights, which is flickering at best. Those ties gained a further dimension last week when the DRC signed a memorandum of understanding with the US on healthcare.
The deal will see Washington provide up to $900 million for the DRC’s healthcare sector over the next five years, in return for more contracts for American healthcare and medical equipment providers.
This is one of a number of controversial deals Washington has agreed with African countries that also gives the US access to data on pathogens that could trigger epidemics, without any guarantee that drugs or vaccines developed as a result of the data would be made available to the countries affected.
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