DR Congo files case against Rwanda at ICJ over decades of alleged ‘abuses’
Key takeaways
- Kinshasa takes Kigali to UN’s top court over 30 years of alleged massacres, sexual violence, and forced displacement.
- The dispute concerns “abuses attributable to Rwanda over a period extending from 1996 to the present day”, the ICJ said in a statement, confirming it had received DRC’s application to start a case.
- The Congolese application stated that the abuses “have primarily targeted Hutus present on Zairian, and subsequently Congolese, territory following the genocide against the Tutsi in 1994” in Rwanda.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Kinshasa takes Kigali to UN’s top court over 30 years of alleged massacres, sexual violence, and forced displacement.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogle Add Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Rwanda-backed M23 rebels escort government soldiers and police who surrendered to an undisclosed location in Goma, DRC, after seizing the city in 2025 [File: Moses Sawasawa/AP]By Heba Habib and Reuters Published On 26 Jun 202626 Jun 2026The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is taking Rwanda to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its role in three decades of alleged “abuses” in the country’s east.
The Congolese government filed the application with the ICJ – the United Nations’s principal court for disputes between states – on Friday, accusing Kigali of bearing direct responsibility for years of massacres, displacement and atrocities in eastern DRC, which borders Rwanda.