The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the most prolonged and complex conflicts. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) transitioned from a vast regional war into a series of localized insurgencies. There were a number of ceasefires, peace agreements, negotiations, and international interventions, but all failed to achieve durable peace. A number of agreements were presented to stop the Second Congo War, also known as Africa’s World War, such as the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement (1999), the Sun City Agreement (2002), and the Global and All-Inclusive Agreement (2002-03). These examples clearly show how agreements can fail if the drivers of conflict are not addressed in the society. Over the subsequent two decades, multiple successive peace initiatives emerged to address persistent rebel groups, particularly in the eastern DRC.
Peace agreements may stop fighting temporarily but do not always resolve the political, economic, ethnic, security, and institutional causes of conflict. The persistence of conflict cannot simply be explained by the failure of individual agreements. All the peace agreements tried to resolve the symptoms of violence while neglecting underlying grievances, competition over resources, weak state institutions, regional security rivalries, and armed group interests unresolved. As a result, all the peace efforts created negative peace for a short period of time instead of sustainable positive peace.
According to Johan Galtung, when peace agreements are made without resolving the root or underlying causes, they will always lead to temporary peace where fighting stops for a short period of time. That’s why whenever a conflict re-emerges, it is more violent than the previous one because the root causes get deeper. When poverty, weak institutions, political exclusion, insecurity, resource competition, and local grievances remain in society, unrest is caused. The element that is lacking due to which the conflict gets prolonged is not changing structures and relationships and the focus on stopping armed confrontations.
The condition in the DRC demonstrates that ending fighting is not the same as resolving conflict. The problem is not that the agreements are poorly designed. The political system is weak; those who make agreements are not capable of implementing them.
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Even if agreements are signed, there are still chances of conflict re-emerging because the root causes are not addressed. In the DRC, the state has very limited authority in eastern DRC, due to which there are weak justice and security institutions. Corruption and poor governance have spread so much that the state is unable to consistently protect the civilians. This shows how weak institutions create problems for civilians’ survival. The competition over land, political representation, ethnic insecurity, and historical grievances have shaped the causes of the failure of weak peace agreements. There are disputes over citizenship and belonging that local communities have started to perceive each other as security threats. All of these factors are interconnected. Weak institutions allow this insecurity to continue, which deepens poverty and displacement, leading to recruitment by armed groups and continued violence, which further weakens state authority.
The DRC is rich in natural resources such as gold, coltan, tin, and other valuable minerals. These resources provide financial opportunities for armed groups. The territorial control can become economically valuable because armed actors can use taxation, illegal mining, smuggling, or control of trade routes to finance their activities. The situation becomes more unstable when political and economic elites benefit from this instability and let this situation continue. Conflict can become self-sustaining when violence creates economic benefits for certain actors. Therefore, when a peace agreement is signed, those actors benefiting from the existing conflict structure may have little incentive to fully implement peace. This explains why peace agreements can fail even after formal political commitment.
The recurrence of conflict and the failure of peace agreements in the DRC are due to the continuous cycle that starts with unresolved grievances and deepens due to weak state institutions; insecurity emerges, which leads to the recruitment by armed groups. The resources are exploited and violence occurs. In this situation, even if a peace agreement is signed by the leaders of both parties, it will automatically fail. A peace agreement creates peace for a short period of time, but due to unresolved grievances and weak implementation, new conflict emerges. The peace agreements sometimes interrupt the cycle temporarily but do not remove the conditions that reproduce it. Resultantly, the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to experience endless peace agreements.
The problem in the DRC is not a lack of peace agreements but the fact that they produce temporary negative peace rather than sustainable positive peace. Political settlements do not resolve structural grievances alone. Weak institutions, resource competition, local insecurity, regional involvement, and poor implementation allow conflict to return. Sustainable peace requires conflict transformation, not simply another ceasefire.
