France's Encouragement of Kagame to Continue Rwanda's Occupation of Eastern DRC

 

France's Encouragement of Kagame

to Continue Rwanda's Occupation of Eastern DRC

How Macron's Nairobi Intervention Shields the Aggressor and Undermines International Accountability

Published by the African Rights Campaign (ARC) | May 2026

 

Introduction

On 12 May 2026, at the close of the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a forty-minute interview to France 24, RFI, and TV5 Monde. The interview covered a range of African policy questions. On the subject of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, Macron delivered a position that was not merely diplomatically cautious — it was analytically misleading, strategically self-serving, and directly harmful to the architecture of international accountability that the United States had begun to construct.

Macron argued against adopting US-style collective sanctions against Kigali. He insisted that isolating Rwanda would be counter-productive, and that dialogue — respectful, multilateral, African Union-led — was the only credible path to peace. What he did not address, and what this article examines in detail, is the cost of that position: the cost to Congolese sovereignty, the cost to the integrity of the Washington Accords signed in December 2025, and the cost to the millions of Congolese civilians whose displacement and suffering Rwanda's Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) has directly enabled.

Macron's intervention at Nairobi was not neutral diplomacy. It was a political signal to Kagame that France would shield him from the full weight of Western accountability, regardless of the documented evidence against the RDF. This article analyses what Macron said, what he omitted, why his framing is analytically untenable, and what the true economic and diplomatic consequences of the US sanctions are — consequences Macron conspicuously refused to acknowledge.

 

1. The Africa Forward Summit and Macron's Rwanda Position

The Africa Forward Summit, held on 11 and 12 May 2026 at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre in Nairobi, was co-hosted by France and Kenya. It brought together more than thirty African heads of state and government, alongside business leaders, civil society representatives, and senior international officials. Rwandan President Paul Kagame was among the attendees.

At the close of the summit, Macron was asked directly why France and the European Union had declined to follow the United States in imposing sanctions on Rwanda for its military support to the M23 rebel movement in eastern DRC. His answer was unambiguous. He stated that if every country rushed to 'put Rwanda on the bench' simply because the Americans had done so, there was little chance of convincing Rwanda to adopt a cooperative policy. He said he believed more in the 'virtue of respectful dialogue' with both President Tshisekedi and President Kagame.

Macron did not dispute the facts. He did not argue that Rwanda was innocent of supporting M23. He did not challenge the United Nations Group of Experts findings, nor the US Treasury designation of 2 March 2026, which found that the RDF was 'actively supporting, training, and fighting alongside the March 23 Movement.' He simply argued that sanctions were the wrong instrument — and in doing so, he handed Kagame precisely the diplomatic cover Kigali had been seeking.

The summit itself was positioned by Paris as a demonstration of France's renewed and equal partnership with Africa. Yet on the one issue where moral clarity was demanded — the systematic destruction of Congolese sovereignty by a foreign military force — Macron chose ambiguity. That choice reveals the limits of France's proclaimed transformation and the structural interests that continue to shape French policy in the region.

 

2. What the Sanctions Actually Say: The Evidentiary Record Macron Ignored

Macron's position at Nairobi was built on a premise that the dialogue route remained open and productive. But the sanctions architecture he dismissed was not constructed on speculation. It was built on a documented evidentiary record stretching across years of UN investigations, human rights reporting, and direct field evidence from eastern DRC.

On 2 March 2026, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the RDF as an institution and on four of its senior commanders: General Vincent Nyakarundi, Army Chief of Staff; General Ruki Karusisi, Commander of the 5th Infantry Division; General Mubarakh Muganga, Chief of Defence Staff; and Colonel Gashugi. These designations followed the earlier individual designation of General James Kabarebe on 20 February 2025.

The Treasury's own press release stated that M23's offensives — including the capture of the provincial capitals of Goma and Bukavu, and the subsequent seizure of Uvira on 10 December 2025, just days after Kagame had signed the Washington Accords — 'would not have been possible without the active support and complicity of the RDF and key senior officials.' The US State Department was equally direct: Rwanda's continued military backing had 'enabled M23 to capture DRC sovereign territory and continue these grave abuses.'

These are not characterisations invented for diplomatic convenience. The UN Group of Experts had documented the same reality across multiple successive reports. The UN Mapping Report of 2010 had established patterns of Rwandan military conduct in the Congo that preceded and anticipated the current crisis. The Human Rights Watch report of 3 March 2026 confirmed the wide-reaching implications of the sanctions and called on other governments — specifically naming the EU and the UK — to follow Washington's lead.

Macron's Nairobi interview was conducted in full knowledge of this record. His choice to invoke 'dialogue' as an alternative was not a policy analysis. It was a political preference presented as a diplomatic principle.

 

3. The FDLR Alibi: A Structural Justification Macron Adopted Without Scrutiny

In his interview, Macron included a reference to the FDLR — the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda — as one of the groups that needed to be addressed through regional cooperation. By inserting the FDLR into his four-pillar framework without qualification, Macron effectively endorsed Rwanda's long-standing justification for its military presence in eastern DRC.

Rwanda has deployed the FDLR as a permanent alibi for its operations in the Congo since at least 2004. The argument is structurally self-reinforcing: the continued presence of FDLR elements in eastern DRC, which Rwanda frames as an existential threat linked to the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, is cited as the basis for RDF cross-border military action. The alibi is designed to be unfalsifiable. Any pressure on Rwanda to withdraw is recast as pressure to tolerate genocidal forces on Rwanda's doorstep.

What this framing conceals is the proportionality question. The RDF does not conduct limited counter-insurgency operations against FDLR combatants. It sponsors, arms, trains, commands, and fights alongside M23 — a force that has seized two provincial capitals, expelled hundreds of thousands of civilians, committed extrajudicial killings, engaged in sexual violence, and looted mineral resources worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The FDLR, which numbers in the low thousands and has been significantly degraded over the past decade, does not constitute a threat that requires the occupation of the Kivu provinces.

By including FDLR in his framework without that proportionality analysis, Macron gave legitimacy to Rwanda's alibi. A French president who claimed to stand for Congolese sovereignty and territorial integrity should have been explicit about what the evidence shows: the FDLR is instrumentalised by Kigali as cover for resource extraction and territorial expansion, not as a genuine security objective that international actors are obliged to validate.

 

4. The Economic Reality Macron Chose Not to See

One of the most analytically serious omissions in Macron's Nairobi interview was his failure to engage with the actual and potential economic consequences of the US sanctions for Rwanda. His argument that sanctions would not change Kagame's behaviour rested on an implicit assumption that Rwanda could absorb the cost of isolation. The evidence suggests the opposite.

The March 2026 US Treasury designations carry significant structural weight. The sanctions prohibit any transaction in US dollars — the world's primary reserve currency — involving the RDF, its designated commanders, and any entity owned by the RDF directly or indirectly by fifty per cent or more. Given that the RDF is deeply embedded in Rwanda's national economy through a network of holding companies, investment vehicles, and business ventures, the dollar prohibition casts a wide shadow.

4.1 The RDF's Commercial Footprint

The Egmont Institute's March 2026 analysis identified the scope of RDF-linked economic activity. Crystal Ventures Ltd, the investment arm of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, is active in mining operations in the Central African Republic, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. While not formally owned by the RDF, its foreign operations rely on RDF protection and personnel. Ngali Holdings, formally part of the Agaciro Development Fund, is widely understood to depend on RDF networks and holds stakes in mineral operations including Ngali Mining and a joint venture with the Israeli firm Elbit Systems through its wholly-owned subsidiary Locus Dynamics.

The consequences of the sanctions have already begun to materialise. A professional basketball team owned by the Rwandan Ministry of Defence withdrew from the upcoming season of the NBA's Basketball Africa League in mid-March 2026. More consequentially, media reports indicated that the EU does not plan to renew its European Peace Facility funding package for the RDF's deployment in northern Mozambique's Cabo Delgado province. Rwanda responded by threatening to withdraw its several thousand troops if funding guarantees were not forthcoming.

4.2 The EU's Exposure and the Mozambique Dimension

The Mozambique dimension is directly relevant to France's position, and Macron's silence on it at Nairobi is telling. The EU's European Peace Facility had earmarked funds to pay for the RDF's mission in Cabo Delgado — protecting a liquefied natural gas facility operated by French oil and gas major TotalEnergies. France has a direct financial and commercial interest in maintaining Rwandan troops in Mozambique.

The EUobserver reported in March 2026 that should the EU pay out remaining funds to the RDF, it could place itself in direct conflict with the US Treasury, which had stated explicitly that 'financial institutions and other persons may risk exposure to sanctions for engaging in certain transactions or activities involving designated or otherwise blocked persons.' This is not a theoretical risk. It is an active legal and financial constraint that Macron's dialogue framework does not resolve.

Macron's commercial interests in Rwanda's Mozambique deployment did not feature in his Nairobi remarks. The omission is structurally significant. A French president arguing against sanctions on the Rwandan military while French energy interests depend on that same military's deployment is not delivering neutral diplomatic analysis. He is defending a position shaped by economic self-interest.

 

5. Macron Cannot Stop the Sanctions — And Future Designations Are Likely

Beyond his omission of the economic consequences already in train, Macron's Nairobi position contained a deeper analytical error: the assumption that France's refusal to join the US sanctions regime constitutes a meaningful alternative. It does not. Macron has no authority over US Treasury designations. He cannot reverse the OFAC listing of the RDF. He cannot exempt Rwandan commanders from the dollar prohibition. And he cannot prevent further designations if M23 and RDF conduct continues to violate the Washington Accords.

The Critical Threats analysis of March 2026 noted that historical precedent is instructive here. US foreign military financing and aid cuts in 2012 to 2013, combined with EU sanctions, contributed directly to Rwanda ending its support for M23 during the first rebellion and allowing the group to collapse under Congolese and UN military pressure. The current sanctions are described by analysts as unprecedented in scope and reach. The March 2026 designations froze all assets and financial interests of the RDF and designated officials under US jurisdiction, with a wind-down period for existing transactions that expired on 1 April 2026.

Human Rights Watch's March 2026 analysis identified a further vulnerability: EU continued funding for the RDF's Mozambique mission could expose the EU itself to sanctions risk under the US Treasury's secondary sanctions warning. This is the architecture Macron's dialogue framework cannot address. France can argue for engagement, but it cannot neutralise the legal consequences of the existing US designations, nor can it prevent Washington from adding further individuals, entities, or commercial partners to the sanctions list.

The Congolese presidency's response to Macron's Nairobi position was noted as one of political frustration rather than surprise. A senior adviser to President Tshisekedi, cited in reporting by Yahoo Actualités France, observed that the United States had already secured privileged access to the DRC's strategic minerals and now occupied the centre of the geopolitical play. In that context, Macron's attempt to position France by protecting Kigali — framed as a useful partner in Mozambique, the Central African Republic, and elsewhere — was understood in Kinshasa for exactly what it was: a French calculation, not a peace strategy.

 

6. The Diplomatic Cost of France's Position

Macron's Nairobi interview did not simply defend a diplomatic preference. It broke what had appeared to be an emerging Western consensus on Rwanda. The United States had acted decisively. The EU had already imposed targeted sanctions on M23 leaders and several Rwandan officials in March 2025. Human Rights Watch and international civil society had called for further measures. Into that context, Macron inserted a public statement arguing against isolation and for dialogue — a statement that Kigali could immediately deploy as diplomatic ammunition.

The Journal de Kinshasa observed that Macron had 'broken apparent Western solidarity.' That fracture carries consequences. It gives Kagame grounds to argue that the international community is divided, that France is a guarantor of Rwanda's access to the international community, and that the sanctions pressure — however significant in financial terms — does not represent a unified Western position. It provides oxygen to Rwanda's own framing that sanctions are 'counter-productive,' a characterisation the Rwandan foreign minister had already deployed publicly.

There is also the question of what Macron's position communicates to the Congolese government and people. France, which styles itself as a champion of equal partnership with Africa and of African agency in global decision-making, chose at Nairobi to prioritise its relationship with the government whose military has occupied Congolese territory, seized two provincial capitals, looted mineral resources, and caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians. The Africa Forward Summit was held under the theme of transformative partnership. The message France delivered on the DRC was transformation deferred.

 

7. Four Pillars That Cannot Stand Without Accountability

Macron's four-pillar framework for DRC peace — withdrawal of foreign forces, direct political dialogue, Congolese state recovery of the east, and regional anti-terrorism cooperation — is not without merit as a structural description of what an eventual settlement must address. But as a response to the current crisis, it is insufficient in at least three critical respects.

First, the withdrawal of foreign forces cannot be achieved through dialogue alone if the force in question has no incentive to leave. The RDF's presence in eastern DRC is commercially rewarding. M23's taxation of coltan production at the Rubaya mine alone was generating an estimated eight hundred thousand US dollars per month by 2024, according to the Oakland Institute. Rwanda's mineral revenue from the DRC far exceeds any diplomatic cost of remaining. Without sanctions that alter that cost calculus, dialogue produces declarations, not withdrawals.

Second, direct political dialogue between Tshisekedi and Kagame cannot be credible while Kagame's forces are occupying Congolese territory and M23 is expanding. The Washington Accords were signed on 4 December 2025. M23 captured Uvira six days later. Dialogue under occupation is not dialogue — it is the management of terms dictated by the occupier. Macron's framework does not address this structural asymmetry.

Third, the regional anti-terrorism cooperation pillar — which in practice involves the FDLR — serves Rwanda's narrative more than it serves Congolese security. Including it without proportionality analysis or accountability conditions provides Kigali with a permanent pretext to maintain RDF presence in the Kivus under the cover of counter-terrorism. Macron's inclusion of this pillar, without any conditioning language, was analytically irresponsible.

 

8. What Accountability Without Impunity Requires

The African Rights Campaign's position is consistent and evidence-based. The RDF's conduct in eastern DRC constitutes a documented pattern of military aggression against a sovereign state, carried out in violation of international law, the UN Charter, and — since December 2025 — the Washington Accords that Kagame himself signed. Accountability for that conduct is not optional. It is the prerequisite for any durable peace.

What accountability without impunity requires in the current moment is clear. The EU must match US sanctions designations and suspend all European Peace Facility funding to the RDF, including for the Mozambique mission. The UK must impose targeted sanctions consistent with its Global Anti-Corruption Sanctions Regulations and its stated commitment to accountability in the Great Lakes region. The UN Security Council must consider the removal of Rwanda from peacekeeping deployments under the Human Rights Due Diligence Policy (HRDDP), given that the RDF now meets the standard threshold for exclusion from UN-mandated operations.

France cannot prevent any of these measures. Macron cannot veto EU sanctions — the appetite within the EU Parliament and among member states for stronger measures against Kigali is documented and growing. He cannot prevent further US Treasury designations. He cannot insulate Rwanda from the consequences of its documented violations. What he can do — and what he did at Nairobi — is delay the consolidation of Western consensus, give Kagame political cover, and signal to the international community that France's commercial interests in Rwanda will continue to take precedence over Congolese sovereignty.

That is not a peace strategy. It is a continuation of the very dynamic — Western complicity sustained by strategic convenience — that has allowed Rwanda's military adventurism in the DRC to persist across three decades.

 

9. The Fallacy of Macron's Mediation Offer: A Record of Failure

Macron's claim at Nairobi — that dialogue facilitated through a France-shaped multilateral framework remains the most credible path to ending the war in eastern DRC — is not merely optimistic. It is contradicted by the documented history of every mediation process that preceded the Washington Accords. France's own record in this space is one of marginal contributions, unsuccessful bilateral efforts to bring the two presidents together, and a late and minor role in a diplomatic outcome delivered by others.

The principal mediation architecture of the past three years was the Luanda Process, led by Angolan President Joao Lourenco under the auspices of the African Union. France and the African Union-led approach that Macron now champions had years in which to produce results. What they produced instead was a series of declarations, ceasefire agreements breached within weeks, and ultimately, in December 2024, the collapse of the Luanda process entirely when Kagame cancelled his attendance at a meeting in Luanda that was supposed to seal a peace agreement. Angola formally ended its mediation role in March 2025, having failed to secure a durable agreement after three years of effort.

The International Crisis Group's analysis of the Luanda process was unsparing. It attributed the failure to bad faith on the part of the conflict parties, noting that both sides had demonstrated a determination to continue fighting regardless of the diplomatic calendar. That assessment applies directly to Rwanda's conduct — the same Rwanda whose willingness to engage in cooperative dialogue Macron was at Nairobi insisting upon as the only credible path. It is the same Rwanda whose president had boycotted the very African Union process Macron was invoking as the solution.

The Africa Report noted before the summit that both Kagame and Tshisekedi would be present in Nairobi but that no meeting between them was planned — and that France had attempted several times, unsuccessfully, to bring them together. That fact alone deflates Macron's mediation offer. France could not arrange a bilateral meeting between the two presidents at a summit it co-hosted and co-organised, on its own diplomatic terrain, in front of thirty African heads of state. The claim that it can deliver a cooperative diplomatic outcome through respectful dialogue is not credible against that backdrop.

 

10. The Washington Accords and France's Displacement from the Diplomatic Centre

To understand why Macron's Nairobi arguments carry such particular urgency, it is necessary to understand what preceded them. The Washington Accords of 4 December 2025 were not a French achievement. They were a US-led diplomatic intervention that displaced France from the centre of Great Lakes diplomacy and demonstrated, with unmistakable clarity, that Washington — not Paris — held the leverage that Kigali and Kinshasa both ultimately responded to.

The Washington process was initiated after President Tshisekedi wrote directly to President Trump in February 2025, offering privileged access to the DRC's strategic minerals in exchange for US security assistance. That offer was accepted. The Trump administration appointed Massad Boulos as special envoy to mediate the agreement. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke directly with both Tshisekedi and Kagame. Qatar facilitated direct DRC-M23 talks in Doha. The Regional Economic Integration Framework was signed in Washington on 7 November 2025. The Washington Accords themselves were signed on 4 December 2025, in a ceremony presided over by President Trump, with both Tshisekedi and Kagame present.

France's role in this sequence was a supporting part. On 30 October 2025, France and Togo co-hosted a Great Lakes Conference on the margins of the Paris Peace Forum — a meeting focused on mobilising humanitarian response and supporting ongoing negotiations led by others. It was not a mediation breakthrough. That breakthrough came in Washington, under US sponsorship, driven by the transactional logic of mineral access that the Trump administration successfully leveraged.

The Washington Accords were violated within days of signing. M23 captured Uvira on 10 December 2025, just six days after Kagame had signed the agreement in Washington. Tshisekedi accused Rwanda of carrying out attacks with heavy weaponry on the day after the signing. The US responded not with more dialogue but with sanctions — the March 2026 RDF designations that Macron was now arguing against. The entire chain of events — US mediation, US-brokered agreement, Rwandan violation, US sanctions — is one from which France was entirely absent as a principal actor. Macron's offer to mediate is a bid to re-enter a diplomatic game whose centre of gravity has moved permanently to Washington.

 

11. The Dialogue Fallacy: Why Accountability Is a Prerequisite, Not an Alternative

The argument that sanctions will not change Kagame's ambitions in the DRC deserves direct analytical engagement, because it is precisely the argument that has been used to defer accountability for three decades of Rwandan military conduct in the Congo. It is empirically false, structurally misleading, and serves no one's interests except Kigali's.

The claim that sanctions do not change behaviour assumes that the sanctioned party's cost-benefit calculation remains static regardless of pressure. The historical evidence in this very conflict contradicts that assumption. In 2012 to 2013, when the United States cut foreign military financing and the European Union imposed targeted measures, Rwanda ended its support for the first M23 rebellion and allowed the group to collapse under Congolese and UN military pressure. The mechanism was direct: reduced financial and diplomatic benefit, combined with increased cost, changed the calculus. The M23 dissolved.

The argument that Kagame's ambitions are immune to external pressure also ignores what the current sanctions have already demonstrably affected. Rwanda threatened to withdraw its troops from Mozambique when EU funding guarantees were placed in doubt — a direct acknowledgement that the financial viability of its military deployments is sensitive to international measures. Crystal Ventures and Ngali Holdings face dollar-prohibition exposure that threatens their capacity to operate across international commercial networks. These are not symbolic inconveniences. They are the opening signals of a sanctions architecture that will deepen if the RDF's conduct does not change.

The more fundamental fallacy in Macron's framing is the suggestion that dialogue and accountability are in competition — that one must choose between engaging Kagame and sanctioning the RDF. This is a false binary. Sanctions designations do not close diplomatic channels. They change the terms on which those channels operate. The United States simultaneously maintained its stated commitment to the Washington Accords framework and imposed sanctions when those Accords were violated. That is not inconsistency. It is the application of consequences — the only mechanism that has historically moved Kigali toward behavioural change.

Macron's argument that dialogue is the only way to end the war is not a peace strategy. It is an argument for a process without consequences — the very process that the Luanda track, the Nairobi track, the East African Community track, and years of UN engagement all demonstrated produces declarations, not withdrawals. Kagame has sat at more tables than any other leader in the Great Lakes region. He has signed more ceasefire agreements. He has issued more joint communiques. And through all of them, the RDF has remained in eastern DRC, M23 has continued to expand, and Congolese civilian casualties have continued to mount.

 

12. Positioning, Not Peacemaking: The Real Motivation Behind France's Stance

What Macron's Nairobi intervention actually represents is not a coherent peace strategy. It is a diplomatic repositioning manoeuvre by a French president who is one year from the end of his second and final term, whose Africa policy has been defined by military retreat from the Sahel, whose continental influence has diminished in the face of Russian, Chinese, and now American competition, and who arrived in Nairobi needing a legacy moment that the summit ultimately failed to deliver on the DRC question.

The structural logic of France's position is transparent once the commercial dimension is acknowledged. Rwanda is the guarantor of TotalEnergies' operations in Mozambique. The RDF deployment in Cabo Delgado, funded in part through the EU's European Peace Facility, protects a natural gas investment of strategic importance to French energy interests. To sanction the RDF is, in effect, to threaten the security architecture on which that investment depends. Macron cannot say this publicly. So instead he offers dialogue.

France is also losing ground across francophone Africa. Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad have expelled French military forces, revoked basing agreements, and in several cases pivoted openly toward Russia. In that context, Rwanda — an anglophone country that nonetheless maintains close ties to French institutions through Macron's personal relationship with Kagame and through Rwanda's membership of La Francophonie — represents one of the few remaining points of French influence in sub-Saharan Africa. Protecting that relationship, regardless of what the RDF is doing in eastern DRC, is a French national interest calculation. It is not a principled peace position.

Senior advisers to President Tshisekedi, cited in French-language reporting in the days following the Nairobi summit, described the Congolese reaction as one of political frustration rather than surprise. The observation was direct: the United States had already secured its position at the centre of the diplomatic and commercial game in the Great Lakes, and Macron was attempting to insert France into a negotiating space from which it had been largely absent. This reading — of a French president positioning himself as an indispensable mediator not because he has leverage over Kagame, but because he fears irrelevance — is the most analytically coherent account of what happened at Nairobi.

Kagame does not need Macron's mediation offer in order to cooperate. He needs a cost structure that makes non-cooperation more expensive than cooperation. Every statement from a Western head of government arguing against Rwanda's isolation gives Kigali grounds to resist pressure from Washington, to argue that the international community is divided, and to continue the calculation that the benefits of remaining in eastern DRC — mineral revenue, territorial leverage, strategic depth — outweigh the costs of partial Western sanctions. That is what Macron's respectful dialogue framework delivers in practice: diplomatic breathing room for the state that caused the crisis.

 

 

13. The False Equivalence: Invited Forces, Uninvited Occupiers, and the Principle Macron Abandoned

One of the most analytically dishonest elements of Macron's Nairobi framework was his insistence that the withdrawal of 'all foreign forces' from Congolese soil was a core pillar of the peace process — a formulation that treated every external military presence in eastern DRC as legally and morally equivalent. It is not. The distinction between invited forces and uninvited occupiers is not a diplomatic nicety. It is the foundational principle of state sovereignty under international law, and Macron's deliberate erasure of that distinction served one purpose: to give Rwanda's occupying force the same diplomatic status as security partners that Kinshasa had lawfully invited.

The facts are unambiguous. Uganda has deployed forces in eastern DRC since November 2021 under a formal bilateral agreement with Kinshasa — Operation Shujaa — authorised by President Tshisekedi to combat the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist armed group affiliated with the Islamic State and responsible for systematic massacres in North Kivu and Ituri. On 12 October 2024, Tshisekedi publicly confirmed the continuation of military cooperation between the Congolese and Ugandan armies following a formal evaluation meeting between the two countries' military leaderships. The Ugandan People's Defence Force (UPDF) is present in the DRC because the DRC asked it to be there.

Burundian forces were similarly deployed in eastern DRC under a bilateral agreement with Kinshasa, initially to target Burundian dissident groups operating across the border. Those forces subsequently joined the fight against M23 alongside the Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC). At the time of the Washington Accords signing on 4 December 2025, there were as many as twenty-five thousand Burundian troops in eastern DRC — the largest foreign deployment in the country — fighting on the side of the Congolese government. Burundi's forces were not occupiers. They were there at Kinshasa's request, fighting Kinshasa's enemy. The Congolese and Burundian foreign ministers jointly called on the United States to sanction Rwanda after the Accords were violated in December 2025.

The Rwanda Defence Force is in an entirely different legal and moral category. Rwanda's forces are present in eastern DRC without any invitation from Kinshasa. They are there in violation of Congolese sovereignty, in violation of the UN Charter, in violation of successive UN Security Council resolutions demanding the withdrawal of foreign forces, and — since December 2025 — in violation of the Washington Accords that Kagame himself signed. The UN Group of Experts has documented the RDF's direct command and control over M23 operations. The RDF is not a security partner of the DRC. It is the primary driver of the security crisis.

Macron's formula — 'the withdrawal of all foreign forces, not only Rwandan' — is a phrase constructed with precision. The inclusion of 'not only Rwandan' performs a specific function: it presents Rwanda as one actor among several, implying shared responsibility and diluting the particular accountability that Kigali bears. It is language designed to protect Rwanda from the full weight of condemnation that the evidentiary record demands, by placing it in a category alongside Burundi and Uganda — countries fighting in the DRC with Kinshasa's blessing, against the same forces Rwanda is supporting.

13.1 Rwanda Reactivated M23 Because of the Invited Forces

There is a further dimension to the false equivalence that makes Macron's framing not merely inaccurate but structurally inverted. The International Crisis Group's analysis, grounded in extensive field research and UN expert reporting, identifies the primary trigger for Rwanda's reactivation of M23 in late 2021: it was Kinshasa's decision to invite Uganda and Burundi to deploy forces in the eastern Kivu provinces. The DRC brought in these regional partners to help combat the ADF and to extend trading and security networks. Rwanda, which views eastern DRC as a strategic extension of its own economic and security sphere, responded by reactivating the M23 precisely to counter what it saw as the expansion of its regional competitors into territory it had treated as its own preserve.

This sequence reveals the full perversity of Macron's framework. The DRC exercised its sovereign right to invite security partners. Rwanda responded to that exercise of sovereignty by launching a proxy war. Macron then proposed, at Nairobi, that the solution to that proxy war is for all foreign forces — including the sovereign partners Kinshasa invited — to withdraw. The practical consequence of that formula, if applied, is that the DRC would be stripped of the security partnerships it lawfully sought, while Rwanda's actual withdrawal — repeatedly refused, repeatedly deferred, repeatedly violated — would be absorbed into a general formula that treats aggressor and victim alike.

13.2 Consent as the Irreducible Legal Distinction

The legal framework governing foreign military presence on sovereign territory is not complex. Under the UN Charter and customary international law, a state may invite foreign forces onto its territory at its discretion. That invitation confers legitimacy. The absence of invitation — or the presence of forces against the host state's explicit objection — constitutes a violation of sovereignty, regardless of the justifications offered by the intervening state. Rwanda has no legal basis for the presence of RDF troops in eastern DRC. None of the justifications Kigali has deployed — FDLR security concerns, Tutsi protection, resource security — provides a basis in international law for uninvited military occupation of a neighbouring state's territory.

Macron's Nairobi framework collapses this distinction. By calling for the withdrawal of 'all foreign forces,' without qualifying which forces are legally present and which are not, he implicitly places the RDF on the same legal footing as Operation Shujaa and the FDNB. That is not a neutral diplomatic formulation. It is the adoption of Kigali's preferred framing — that Rwanda is merely one of several external actors engaged in a complex multi-party conflict — rather than the correct framing, which is that Rwanda is the primary external aggressor in an internationally documented military occupation.

A French president who claimed to champion DRC sovereignty as the non-negotiable foundation of any peace settlement had an obligation to be explicit about this distinction. Macron was not explicit. He was deliberately vague. And the diplomatic consequence of that vagueness — giving Rwanda the cover of false equivalence with Kinshasa's invited partners — is a further service rendered to the state whose conduct has caused the crisis, at the expense of the state whose sovereignty is being violated.

 

Conclusion

Emmanuel Macron arrived in Nairobi as the host of a summit premised on equal partnership and transformative cooperation with Africa. He departed having delivered a message that Rwanda's president could immediately weaponise: that France would not join the United States in imposing economic consequences for the RDF's occupation of eastern DRC.

The argument that sanctions are counter-productive is not new. It is the argument that has been made by every government that has chosen to protect a preferred partner over the principles it claims to uphold. It is the argument that enabled Rwanda's first M23 rebellion in 2012 to 2013, until sanctions changed the calculus. It is the argument that allowed years of documented atrocities in eastern DRC to proceed without meaningful international response.

Macron did not mislead Kagame about Rwanda's behaviour. He misled the international community about the consequences of that behaviour and the adequacy of dialogue as a response to occupation. He equated Rwanda's uninvited occupying force with the sovereign security partners Kinshasa had lawfully invited, erasing the most fundamental distinction in international law. He offered Kagame reassurance that France would stand apart from the US sanctions architecture. He did so while French commercial interests in Rwanda's military deployment in Mozambique remained intact. And he did so in full knowledge that additional US sanctions remain possible, that EU pressure is increasing, and that the evidentiary record against the RDF is unambiguous.

The sanctions will deepen. Macron cannot stop them. France's failed mediation record is documented. The false equivalence between invited and uninvited forces is exposed. What Macron has done at Nairobi is make it harder for the Western consensus to hold — and that, ultimately, is a service rendered not to peace, but to impunity.

Frequently Asked Questions

What did Macron say about Rwanda at the Nairobi Africa Forward Summit?

On 12 May 2026, in an interview with France 24, RFI, and TV5 Monde at the close of the Africa Forward Summit in Nairobi, Macron opposed US-style collective sanctions against Rwanda. He argued that isolating Kigali would be counter-productive to achieving a cooperative solution to the conflict in eastern DRC, and called instead for 'respectful dialogue' between President Tshisekedi and President Kagame.

Why did the United States sanction the Rwanda Defence Force?

On 2 March 2026, the US Treasury OFAC designated the RDF as an institution and sanctioned four senior commanders — Generals Nyakarundi, Karusisi, Muganga, and Gashugi — for actively supporting, training, and fighting alongside the M23 armed group in eastern DRC. The sanctions followed M23's capture of Uvira on 10 December 2025, just days after the Washington Accords were signed. The Treasury stated that M23's offensives would not have been possible without RDF support.

Can Macron stop the US sanctions on Rwanda?

No. US Treasury OFAC designations are unilateral instruments of US law and foreign policy. France has no legal authority to reverse, modify, or exempt Rwanda from the consequences of those designations. Macron can decline to mirror sanctions at the EU level and can advocate for dialogue, but he cannot prevent further US designations, nor can he insulate Rwanda from the dollar prohibition and secondary sanctions risk that the March 2026 designations impose.

What economic consequences have the US sanctions had on Rwanda?

The sanctions have already produced measurable effects. A professional basketball team owned by the Rwandan Ministry of Defence withdrew from the NBA Basketball Africa League in March 2026. The EU indicated it may not renew European Peace Facility funding for the RDF mission in Mozambique, prompting Rwanda to threaten troop withdrawal. Analysts at the Egmont Institute identified wide exposure across RDF-linked commercial entities, including Crystal Ventures and Ngali Holdings, both of which depend on dollar-denominated transactions.

Why does France oppose sanctions on Rwanda?

France's opposition to sanctions on Rwanda reflects several converging interests. Rwanda is a strategic partner for French commercial operations in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly through the RDF's mission in Mozambique protecting TotalEnergies' LNG facility in Cabo Delgado. Rwanda is also considered a useful regional security partner in the Central African Republic and elsewhere. Senior advisers to President Tshisekedi have noted that France is attempting to reposition itself by managing the Kigali relationship at a time when the United States has displaced France at the centre of DRC diplomacy.

What is the FDLR and how does Rwanda use it to justify its presence in DRC?

The FDLR (Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda) is an armed group operating in eastern DRC, composed in part of individuals with historical links to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Rwanda systematically uses the FDLR's presence as justification for RDF cross-border military operations. The African Rights Campaign characterises this as a deliberately instrumentalised alibi. The FDLR, though a real group, does not constitute a threat proportionate to the RDF's occupation of the Kivu provinces, and its continued existence has served Rwanda's interests as a permanent pretext for regional military intervention.

Is Macron's offer to mediate between Kagame and Tshisekedi credible?

No. France attempted several times before and during the Africa Forward Summit to bring Kagame and Tshisekedi together, and failed each time. At a summit France co-hosted in Nairobi, attended by both presidents, no bilateral meeting between them was arranged. France played a marginal role in the Washington Accords process — the only mediation that produced a signed agreement — which was driven by US special envoy Massad Boulos, Qatar, and the direct engagement of the Trump administration. The African Union-led Luanda process, which France also championed, collapsed in March 2025 after Kagame boycotted a key meeting in Luanda in December 2024.

Why did previous DRC-Rwanda peace talks fail before the Washington Accords?

The Luanda Process, led by Angolan President Joao Lourenco under African Union auspices, ran from 2022 until early 2025. It produced ceasefires that were breached within weeks and ultimately collapsed when Rwanda demonstrated bad faith — most pointedly when Kagame cancelled his attendance at a December 2024 meeting in Luanda intended to seal a final agreement. Angola formally ended its mediation role in March 2025. The International Crisis Group attributed the repeated failures to bad faith by the conflict parties, who were determined to continue fighting regardless of the diplomatic calendar.

Was France involved in the Washington Accords peace process?

France played a peripheral role. On 30 October 2025, France and Togo co-hosted a Great Lakes Conference on the margins of the Paris Peace Forum, focused on humanitarian mobilisation and supporting ongoing negotiations led by others. The substantive diplomatic breakthrough was the Washington Process, led by the United States. The Washington Accords were signed on 4 December 2025 in a ceremony presided over by President Trump, with both Tshisekedi and Kagame present. The regional economic framework was initialled in Washington. France was not a principal mediator.

Why are Uganda and Burundi's forces in the DRC different from Rwanda's?

Uganda and Burundi deployed forces to eastern DRC under formal bilateral agreements with Kinshasa and at the explicit invitation of President Tshisekedi. Uganda's UPDF has operated under Operation Shujaa since 2021, tasked with combating the ADF armed group affiliated with the Islamic State, with Tshisekedi publicly confirming and renewing this cooperation in October 2024. Burundian forces were similarly deployed by agreement to counter Burundian dissident groups and subsequently fought alongside Congolese forces against M23. Rwanda's RDF, by contrast, is present without invitation, in violation of DRC sovereignty, fighting against Congolese forces and commanding M23 rebel operations. Macron's formula calling for withdrawal of 'all foreign forces' deliberately obscures this fundamental legal and moral distinction.

Did Macron's 'all foreign forces' formula give Rwanda diplomatic cover?

Yes. By calling for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from the DRC without distinguishing between forces present by Congolese invitation and forces present in violation of DRC sovereignty, Macron placed the uninvited and sanctioned RDF on the same legal footing as Uganda's and Burundi's invited security partners. This framing reproduces Rwanda's preferred narrative — that it is merely one of several external actors in a complex conflict — rather than the accurate characterisation established by the United Nations, the United States, and international human rights organisations: that Rwanda is the primary external aggressor and occupying force.

Yes. The United States has stated it is prepared to use all available tools to ensure compliance with the Washington Accords. EU institutions and member states are under documented pressure to match US designations, particularly in light of the risk that continued EU funding to the RDF could expose European institutions to secondary sanctions liability. Human Rights Watch has explicitly called on the EU and UK to impose additional targeted sanctions. The historical precedent of 2012 to 2013, when sanctions contributed to Rwanda ending its first M23 operation, suggests the current pressure is likely to intensify.

 

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About This Publication

Author: African Rights Campaign (ARC) Research and Analysis Unit

Organisation: The African Rights Campaign (ARC) — London, United Kingdom

Website: africarealities.blogspot.com

Contact: africanrightscampaign@gmail.com

Copyright: 2026, African Rights Campaign. All rights reserved. This publication may be reproduced for non-commercial advocacy and educational purposes with full attribution to the African Rights Campaign.