Banyamulenge Must Be Central to Eastern Congo Peace Efforts

Minembwe sits in the High Plateaux of South Kivu, in eastern Congo—a rural cluster of villages where the Banyamulenge have lived for generations alongside neighboring communities like the Babembe, Bafuliru, and Banyindu. For most of the world, the name means little. For those who know it at all, it arrives wrapped in stories of violence, hunger, and displacement. But for Mandela Gapala and thousands of other Banyamulenge families, Minembwe is simply home—the place where their ancestors were born, where they built their lives, and where relatives still live today.

The Banyamulenge's relationship with their own country has been fractured by decades of conflict and systematic discrimination. Despite their deep roots in the region, they have faced persistent hostility centered on questions of identity and belonging. Beginning around 2017, the violence took on a new, deliberate character. Villages were attacked. Civilians were killed. Houses burned. Families fled. Cattle—which in Banyamulenge culture are far more than property, serving as dowry, income, school fees, and the foundation of livelihood—were looted. The national army, the FARDC, had a duty to protect them. Instead, the Banyamulenge watched as FARDC operated alongside Wazalendo militias and foreign forces, particularly Burundian troops known for targeting Banyamulenge civilians and villages. The trust between community and state fractured.

Then, in recent months, something shifted. FARDC and its allies were pushed out of Minembwe and surrounding areas. The relative calm that followed was fragile but real. Families who had fled began returning to their villages. Markets reopened. People could move between different parts of Minembwe without the constant fear of fighting. Neighbors could visit one another again. On September 1, 2026, when the new school year began, photographs emerged from Minembwe showing students in white and blue uniforms returning to classrooms, their faces bright with the simple expectation of safety. For parents sending children to school knowing they would come home, for families resuming routines that years of conflict had repeatedly shattered, those images meant something profound: the possibility of ordinary life.

But that fragile calm is now under threat. In recent weeks, FARDC and its allies launched a new military offensive toward Minembwe. Heavy artillery and drone strikes have been reported. Civilians are once again facing the fear and danger of war. For those living there, this is not a movement on a military map—it is renewed displacement, interrupted education, communities that had only begun to return to normal life now forced back into violence and trauma.

The timing is particularly bitter because the mechanisms for peace already exist. The Washington and Doha peace processes were designed to move eastern Congo away from repeated military confrontation and toward dialogue. On August 24, 2026, less than a month before fighting resumed, a ceasefire verification mechanism established through the Doha process conducted its first field verification mission in Minembwe. That mission found something worth preserving. The renewed fighting that followed undermined everything it was meant to prevent.

Gapala, a former refugee from Congo now working in Kentucky on refugee resettlement and integration programs, has called on UN leaders gathered at the 81st General Assembly to take three concrete steps: use diplomatic influence to stop the renewed fighting and protect civilians; support the immediate return of the ceasefire verification mechanism to establish what is happening on the ground and address violations; and ensure sustained humanitarian access while using the Washington and Doha processes to bring parties back to meaningful dialogue. He argues that Kinshasa must recognize that protecting the Banyamulenge is not a political favor or concession—it is the government's responsibility to its own citizens.

For the Banyamulenge, minority rights are not an abstract legal principle. They are about whether lives and homes are protected, whether the right to belong in Congo is respected, whether a child can stay in school, whether a mother can go to the market and return home safely. Progress, Gapala writes, should be measured in people's everyday lives. Right now, in Minembwe, it is being measured in how quickly that everyday life can be taken away again.