16 April 2025
We would like to thank Huang Xia, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General, and Tete Antonio, Angola’s Foreign Minister and Chairperson of the Executive Council of the African Union, for their briefings. We welcome the participation in the meeting of DRC’s Foreign Minister Therese Wagner, as well as the representatives of Rwanda and Kenya.
To our deepest regret, since the beginning of this year, the situation in the Great Lakes Region has deteriorated significantly. Given the resumed offensive by M23 (which is carried out with external assistance), the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is escalating, and the region is being pushed to the brink of a real inter-State armed confrontation.
Such a turn of events is precisely what we all feared, and this is the result of missed diplomatic opportunities.
However, political options for settling the crisis are still on the table. They are enshrined in the key provisions of Security Council resolution 2773 and are well known to the parties. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, the parties have chosen to ignore this document, which by the way is legally binding. We believe this choice to be a mistake.
M23 must withdraw from the villages and territories it has taken over. The support for M23 and the engagement with the Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) must be stopped.
The implementation of this resolution by Rwanda and the DRC would be the quickest way to stopping hostilities and hammering out lasting and viable parameters for peace agreements.
It is very important for the basic components of resolution 2773 to be based primarily on regional “recipes” for stabilizing the situation. Precisely such solutions are embedded in the road map agreed upon by the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC); this roadmap outlines practical steps to settle the crisis and serves as a reference point for the work of the High-level Panel of Mediators.
We support the decision of our African colleagues to merge the Luanda and Nairobi tracks. We hope that this will help to develop real measures to cease any State interaction with illegal armed groups in the Great Lakes Region.
We believe that this is precisely what the efforts by Qatari mediation are aimed at, and we support these efforts as well.
Armed conflict in no way meets the core interests of the States of the region nor can it resolve the deep contradictions between them. Hostilities can only aggravate civilian suffering, primarily in the eastern provinces of the DRC.
Since January of this year, the number of refugees fleeing from eastern DRC to neighboring Burundi and Uganda has exceeded 100,000, with more than 500,000 internally displaced persons. Millions of people are in need of medical assistance and food.
Kigali and Kinshasa should harness every opportunity offered to them. They need to demonstrate political wisdom and resolve their differences at the negotiating table so that ordinary people no longer suffer.
In conclusion, we would like to emphasize that all the key parameters for lasting inter-State cooperation have long been agreed upon by the States of the Great Lakes Region as per the Framework Agreement for Peace, Security and Cooperation. They need to reaffirm their commitment to this fundamental document, which proved to remain pertinent in light of the events of recent months.
We support the work of Special Envoy of the Secretary-General Huang Xia to assist in addressing this task. We note his efforts geared towards reducing tension in the region.
For our part, we will continue to contribute to the development of a constructive dialogue between all the countries of the Great Lakes Region in order to find balanced and long-term solutions to regional problems, as per the UN Charter.
Thank you.