The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed a case against Rwanda at the International Court of Justice, accusing its neighbor of three decades of abuses in the country’s east. It is the third time Kinshasa has tried this. The first case was withdrawn in 2001. The second was dismissed in 2006 because the court ruled it lacked jurisdiction. The question now is whether the third attempt will be different — and whether the ICJ can do anything that decades of diplomacy, military intervention, and peace agreements have not.
The case was lodged on June 26. Congo’s application argues that Rwanda has violated multiple international treaties, including the Genocide Convention, the Convention on Racial Discrimination, and the Torture Convention. Specifically, the filing alleges that Rwanda deployed its own troops on Congolese soil and provided support to armed groups carrying out military operations in the country’s eastern provinces.
The accusations span the full arc of a conflict that began in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. After the genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed, remnants of the forces responsible fled across the border into what was then Zaire. Their presence drew Rwanda into successive military interventions and gave rise to dozens of armed movements that have operated in eastern Congo ever since.
Among them is M23, a rebel group that captured significant territory in eastern Congo earlier this year, including the strategic city of Goma. UN experts and Western governments have concluded that Rwanda provides support to M23. Kigali has consistently denied it.
The human toll is staggering and diffuse. Congo’s filing cites massacres, extrajudicial killings, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement, and discrimination. The numbers are hard to pin down because the conflict has been running for so long and the area is so large, but millions have been displaced and hundreds of thousands killed over three decades. Eastern Congo is one of the most mineral-rich regions on earth — coltan, gold, tin, and other resources that fuel both the global electronics industry and the armed groups that fight over them.
The legal strategy this time is different. Congo’s previous cases failed on jurisdictional grounds because Rwanda had either not ratified the treaties cited or had entered reservations that excluded the court’s authority. The new filing is built around multiple international conventions that both countries have signed without the same reservations. Congo’s Justice Minister Guillaume Andali said the government seeks to hold Rwanda accountable for “breaches of international law, including obligations to prevent genocide, combat ethnic discrimination, and uphold human rights.”
Kinshasa is asking the ICJ to order Rwanda to halt the alleged violations and to award reparations to both the Congolese state and individual victims.
But here is the problem, and it is the same problem the ICJ has always had. The court can issue judgments. It cannot enforce them. Its rulings are legally binding under international law, but the court has no army, no police force, and no mechanism to compel compliance. States have ignored ICJ rulings before — most notably in the 1986 Nicaragua case, when the United States simply refused to accept the court’s jurisdiction after losing.
Even if the ICJ accepts jurisdiction and rules in Congo’s favor, Rwanda could ignore the judgment with impunity. The only leverage is political. A ruling would increase diplomatic pressure on Kigali and could be used by other states and international organizations to justify sanctions or other measures. But that is a long way from ending a war.
The timeline is another obstacle. ICJ cases take years. The court will first hear preliminary objections on jurisdiction, then move to the merits, then consider reparations. Congo’s eastern conflict has been running for three decades. A judgment in 2030, if it comes at all, will not stop the fighting today.
Analysts say the case could intensify diplomatic tensions between the two countries in the short term. Rwanda has not yet issued an official response. But the filing also draws greater international attention to a conflict that has largely faded from global headlines, crowded out by the Iran war, the war in Ukraine, and the crisis in the Middle East.
The ICJ case is a legal tool, not a solution. It adds a courtroom dimension to a conflict that has already been addressed through peace agreements, military operations, and regional diplomacy, all with limited success. The court can adjudicate. It cannot occupy territory, disarm militias, or protect civilians. The war in eastern Congo will end when the political conditions for peace exist, not when the judges in The Hague finish reading their opinions.
That is not an argument against the case. Legal accountability matters. But it is an argument for honesty about what international courts can and cannot do. Congo’s third attempt to bring Rwanda before the ICJ may produce a judgment. Whether that judgment produces peace is a different question entirely.