What You Need to Know:
President of Rwanda Paul Kagame is set to arrive in Angola this Monday to discuss the deteriorating situation in the eastern DRC with President João Lourenço.
Lourenço was appointed as a mediator between Rwanda and DRC by the African Union, although the details of their coming meeting have not been released.
According to local press, Kagame and Lourenço are only to meet for a few hours, leaving questions around how dedicated they are to creating a lasting peace in the DRC.
The Details:
In late February, President of the DRC Felix Tshisekedi met with Lourenço to begin the process of creating a dialogue between Rwanda and the DRC. Tshisekedi agreed ‘in principle’ to meet with Kagame, but such a meeting has not yet come about.
Tshisekedi has repeatedly accused Rwanda of backing rebels in the country’s east, which has witnessed intense violence in recent years, resulting in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Rwanda has claimed that it has the right to defend its borders, regarding the border it shares with the DRC’s North Kivu Province, which is also the epicenter of rebel activity.
Lourenço’s meeting with Tshisekedi ended with the creation of the ‘Luanda Roadmap’ – an agreement on the pacification of the eastern DRC region, however, the details of the roadmap are yet to be released.