UN human rights experts on July 21 called for an immediate end to what OHCHR described as a “reign of terror” carried out by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group in areas of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo under its control, urging states and the United Nations to help revive the ceasefire between Kinshasa and M23 signed in December 2025, a process distinct from the earlier state-to-state accord Rwanda and DRC signed in Washington in June 2025.
The experts, who include the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and members of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said rapes, gang rapes, violent assaults, and killings of civilians have become a routine feature of M23’s conduct in the territory it controls, distinct from the estimated 90,000 conflict-related sexual violence cases recorded across all armed actors nationwide in 2025, according to the UN Secretary-General.
M23 has built a system of arbitrary arrest, sexual torture, forced labor, and forced recruitment to control civilians in areas it holds, the OHCHR experts said, with detainees held at unofficial sites marked by overcrowding and deprivation of food and water; several deaths in custody have reportedly occurred, and relatives are in some cases required to pay for a detainee’s release, a pattern the experts linked to broader efforts to entrench control over the mineral-rich east.
The appeal follows a July 9 warning from High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, who told UN News that Congolese government forces and M23 must halt the use of explosive weapons after a string of civilian deaths.
The experts said they are in direct contact with the Congolese government and have raised their findings with Rwanda, whose military support for M23 has been documented by UN monitors since the group’s 2021 resurgence.
