On Monday, nations in southern Africa decided to send troops to the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to assist in putting an end to the violence there, where armed groups have terrified locals for years.
A summit of the 16-bloc Southern African Development Community (SADC), which includes South Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Tanzania, backed the deployment “to restore peace and security in eastern DRC,” SADC said in a statement from the Namibian capital Windhoek.
Several heads of state, notably Felix Tshisekedi of the DRC, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, and ministers from the 16-member regional group attended the discussions where the decision was made.
Both the number of personnel to be deployed and the deployment schedule were not disclosed during the conference.
Additionally, it will bolster an East African regional military force that has since December taken control of some formerly held territory by the M23 militia but has thus far been unable to quell the uprising.
In North Kivu, the Tutsi-led rebels are still present and occasionally engage in combat with competing militias.
Since resuming hostilities in late 2021 after years of inactivity, the M23 has taken control of large areas of land in North Kivu.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the rebel campaign has caused the displacement of more than one million people.
Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, and other countries provide troops for the East African Community (EAC) force.
Since the 1990s and 2000s, armed groups have plagued much of the mineral-rich eastern DRC, a legacy of the conflicts that erupted in the region.