Senior United Nations officials have warned that tensions between the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi remain dangerously high, cautioning that the risk of a wider regional confrontation is "tangible" despite a flurry of diplomatic activity in recent months.

Speaking at a UN Security Council meeting on 15 April, Huang Xia, the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region — the area of central and eastern Africa surrounding the chain of large lakes along the Rift Valley — delivered a stark assessment. "The risk of a slide into a regional confrontation remains tangible. This Council cannot afford to see the repetition of a cycle of violence it has been examining for far too long," he said, adding that a persistent erosion of trust between the parties was driving a damaging gap between political commitments and conditions on the ground. He called on all sides to agree to an immediate ceasefire.

At the same meeting, representatives of the DRC and Rwanda traded fresh accusations, with each side claiming the other had violated existing commitments. About a dozen countries called on Rwanda to withdraw its troops from Congolese territory. Rwanda's ambassador defended his country's position by citing the continued threat posed by the FDLR — the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, an armed group originally composed of perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide — which operates in eastern DRC. Congo's representative rejected the justification outright, insisting that Kinshasa was capable of guaranteeing the security of its own population without foreign military intervention.

The sharp exchanges came even as diplomatic efforts continued elsewhere. A new memorandum of understanding was signed in Switzerland between the Congolese government and the AFC-M23 armed coalition to formalise joint monitoring of a ceasefire in the country's east. This follows a declaration of principles signed in Doha and a broader peace and prosperity agreement endorsed in Washington in December 2025 — neither of which has succeeded in halting the fighting. Since early 2025, the AFC-M23 coalition, which Western governments and UN experts say receives Rwandan backing, has seized large areas of eastern DRC, including Goma, capital of North Kivu province, and Bukavu, capital of South Kivu.

The United States added pressure on multiple fronts, urging Kinshasa to honour its commitments to neutralise the FDLR while warning all parties that "those who undermine peace should expect consequences" — a statement that follows US sanctions imposed against Rwanda in March. Eastern DRC, a mineral-rich region bordering Rwanda, has been mired in cycles of armed conflict for three decades, and analysts note that the repeated failure of ceasefire agreements underscores how deeply entrenched the underlying political and security grievances remain.