U.S. to oversee signing of historic African peace deal as world attention centers on Middle East

Rwandan and Congolese leaders are set to convene in Washington on Friday to sign a historic peace agreement brokered by the U.S. and Qatar, potentially ending the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is slated to oversee the meeting to officially end the nearly 30-year Second Congo War, which has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 6 million people.

Although overshadowed by U.S. media attention on conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, this development could be one of the Trump administration’s more momentous diplomatic achievements.

The State Department announced in a June 18 memo that teams from the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Rwanda had signed off on the text of the peace agreement outlining provisions for “territorial integrity” and the cessation of hostilities.

The document calls for the disarmament and “conditional integration” of non-state armed groups, which have been a driving force in the war. Both sides will facilitate the transfer of prisoners and refugees and allow access for humanitarian groups.

The terms of the deal were hammered out over three days of intense discussions in April between Congolese and Rwandan technical teams. U.S. Undersecretary for Political Affairs Allison Hooker mediated the discussions. Officials from Qatar, a key player in the peacemaking, were observers.

“Both the DRC and Rwanda expressed their appreciation for the valuable contributions and joint efforts of the United States and Qatar as partners in advancing a peaceful resolution,” said a joint statement circulated by the State Department.

The peace deal and the U.S. role have gone mostly unmentioned in mainstream press reports. The world’s media have been focused instead on conflict in the Middle East and the eventful NATO summit that President Trump attended this week.

Although the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran has made global headlines, the human cost of the Second Congo War is far greater than the fighting in the Middle East in recent years.

In 2009, the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental organization, characterized the conflict as the deadliest on earth since World War II in an analysis backed by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Some disputed those figures, saying the region’s instability would have led to millions of deaths over the past three decades anyway.

A more recent 2025 report by the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Tracker estimated the death toll from decades of fighting in the DRC at more than 6 million.

The war officially ended in July 2003, but a fragile peace agreement and an unstable region have contributed to continued violence. Ethnic conflict between Hutu- and Tutsi-aligned groups has been the primary driver of violence in eastern areas of Congo.

Geopolitical win for U.S.

The signing of a lasting peace agreement is likely to have wide-ranging implications for U.S.-Africa relations. Ending or at least paring down the war could bring new stability to the region, fostering an improved investment atmosphere for those interested in Congo’s rich natural resources.

The eastern Congo region has large reserves of valuable, rare minerals, including tungsten. In April, the Trump administration’s Africa envoy, Massad Boulos, floated the idea of a rare minerals deal with Congo. Mr. Boulos said a strong peace agreement between Congo and Rwanda would mean more meaningful Western investment.

The U.S. and European nations are already backing a major infrastructure project called the Lobito Corridor. It aims to revitalize a cargo railway line connecting mineral-rich southern regions of Congo and Zambia to the Angolan port of Lobito on East Africa’s Atlantic coastline.

In essence, the railway would facilitate expanded export of critical minerals such as copper, cobalt and other precious metals sought by U.S. and European companies grappling with the global shift to green technologies.

Regional analysts have described the project as an attempt by Washington to counter China’s economic and diplomatic influence on the continent. Over the past decade, China has financed billions of dollars in infrastructure projects in Africa, largely through what U.S. officials describe as predatory loans to fragile nations.

China dominates Congo’s mining sector, and Chinese-based companies control at least 80% of the nation’s rare earth minerals mines. Congo signed the Sicomines Agreement with Beijing in 2008, allowing Chinese companies to extract the nation’s natural resources in exchange for infrastructure investment.

China’s large share of the market has worried Congolese who have made moves toward diversifying the country’s international partnerships. Reports surfaced this year that Congo was courting Saudi investors.

The U.S.-brokered peace deal could open more opportunities for Western companies in the African mining sector and allow the U.S. to counter Chinese influence on the continent.

A lasting peace?

In terms of human life, the stakes of the peace deal are enormous.

Fighting in Congo flared in 1996 with a cross-border spillover from the 1994 Rwanda genocide. The conflict would go on to devour far more lives than the ethnic Hutu extremists’ slaughter of an estimated 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

The First Congo War ended in 1997. The next year, a resumption in fighting sucked in nine African nations and gained the unofficial titles the Second Congo War and “Africa’s World War.”

That conflict ended on paper in 2002, but chaotic combat in various areas of the country never ended. High-intensity conflict reignited after the rebel militia M23 group resurfaced in eastern Congo in 2022.

The Rwandan capital of Kigali became deeply engaged as a direct combatant and as a supporter of militias such as M23, which were bent on toppling the Congo capital of Kinshasa.

The war’s savagery has been exacerbated by cross-border tribalism. Its scale has been fueled partly by the country’s rich natural resources base. As a major investor in Congo’s mineral extraction sector, Beijing has supplied Kinshasa with weaponry, including drones.

In its 2025 report, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Conflict Tracker estimated the death toll from decades of fighting in Congo at more than 6 million.

The report noted that conflict had driven 1.1 million refugees overseas, left 23 million internally displaced and put 21 million in need of urgent food and medical aid. Congo faces “one of the largest and deadliest humanitarian crises in the world,” the report said.

This carnage that the Trump administration is poised to end — although some observers fear M23 will not lay down its arms — has been widely overlooked by the global community.

In his 2012 work “The Great Big Book of Horrible Things,” Virginia-based U.S. historian Matthew White referenced a common reaction to the Second Congo War. “This was only a few years ago,” he wrote. “Why didn’t I hear anything about it?”