The UN’s MONUSCO mission in the DRC saw its legitimacy fade in recent years, and a Center on International Cooperation survey in January 2023 found that as many as 67% of Congolese people wanted the organization to withdraw their peacekeeping efforts. “However, its phasing out will solve little,” Joshua Walker and Jason Stearns, experts in the region, wrote for CIC. “This absence of a coherent peace and stabilization process … is what should focus the attention of diplomats and government officials in the region,” they wrote. Meanwhile, even if M23 withdraws from eastern DRC, at least 100 other militias will remain in the region, some of which could be more devastating, they said. As many as 7 million people have been displaced by conflict in the DRC, as more than 120 armed groups in the country’s east vie for control of the region’s extensive gold and other natural resources.
SOURCE: SEMAFOR