UN spokesperson: Peacekeepers won’t be leaving the DRC in December

Monusco, the UN operation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that keeps the peace, will not leave the country until December 2024.

While in the Congo this past weekend, UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix said that the date of December 31, 2024, which was meant to be the date when all Monusco troops would leave, has never been officially agreed upon by all parties.

“I want to put an end to this rumor, especially since it has never been confirmed by the government, the Security Council, or us.” We are now in the debate phase, and the situation for refugees is still very scary. “We’ve talked to people from civil society, and they all want us to stay in Ituri,” Mr. Lacroix said in Kinshasa.

The Congolese government recently asked Monusco to change its plan to withdraw, even though the mission had already started to disengage, mostly in South Kivu, where it left the area fully and gave control to the Congolese army.

There were violent protests in both North and South Kivu in 2023. The people there wanted this mission, which had been in the DRC since 1999, to leave.

However, in July 2023, Thérèse Kayikwamba, the Congolese Minister of Foreign Affairs, told the UN that the government of Monusco needed to “delay the withdrawal process” because of the rising bloodshed in North Kivu.

Today, there is mostly peace in the area after a ceasefire. There are still occasional fights between the M23 rebels and the Wazalendo, a group of young people who back the Congolese army.

But the “security vacuum” that the Congolese government was afraid of is now showing up in Ituri, where Codeco and other armed groups are killing people and causing chaos. MP for Ituri province Gracien Iracan said, “The Congolese army has no control over 60% of the province, which is held by armed groups.”

The company Monusco has promised to strengthen its positions in Ituri and keep helping the Southern African Development Community’s goal in the DRC.

With Monusco’s means, we are now required to give more help to Sami-DRC. When we talked about the diplomatic efforts that are going on, Mr. Lacroix said, “They are very important, and we will back them up politically and in terms of our support for the verification mechanism and the ceasefire.”

The diplomat was glad that the fighting in North Kivu had stopped getting worse, but they did say, “Of course, we can’t say that there is no violence, as you know.” That means there’s a lot of work to do.