EAC Leaders To Meet In Nairobi On Monday To Discuss Security Situation In DR Congo

Leaders of the East African Community (EAC) will meet on Monday in Nairobi for a meeting convened by President Uhuru Kenyatta to discuss the security situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), reported WION News.

The EAC consists of Burundi, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda as its member countries. The Monday meeting will aim to encourage dialogue between rebels and the Congolese government.

In a statement, President Kenyatta, the current chairman of the EAC, said the people in the eastern DRC have long suffered and continue to pay an inordinately heavy price in loss of lives, property, and elusive peace.

Over the past two months, two meetings have been held with foreign and local armed groups active in the DRC.

The third meeting comes as the situation gets tense between Kinshasa and Kigali, with the DRC blaming neighboring Rwanda for the recent resurgence of the M23 rebel group. Rwanda continues to deny all the allegations.

The March 23 Movement (M23), a former Tutsi-dominated rebellion, was defeated in 2013 but took up arms again in late 2021. The group reemerged in November last year after a nearly decade-long hiatus to take up arms against the Congolese government.

Last week, Kenyan President Kenyatta appealed for the urgent deployment of a regional force to help quell the violence in eastern Congo. But the DRC government said it rejected the Rwandan military’s participation in the joint forces to be deployed in the country.

“The government of DRC welcomes the proposal made by President Kenyatta of deploying a new regional military force led by the East African Community to enforce peace in the provinces targeted by M23 and Rwanda but insists that it will not accept the participation of Rwanda in this joint force,” the DRC government spokesman Patrick Muyaya said in a press statement on Friday.