The Democratic Republic of Congo has endured two of the deadliest conflicts fought anywhere since the Second World War. The First Congo War, which erupted in 1996, toppled the country’s longtime ruler and drew in neighboring states pursuing their own security interests along the border. Barely a year later, a second and far larger war broke out, eventually pulling in the armies of roughly half a dozen African nations and giving rise to the label “Africa’s World War.”
Estimates of the death toll from the fighting and its associated humanitarian collapse, driven as much by disease and displacement as by combat, run into the millions. Even after a formal peace process and power-sharing government took hold in the early 2000s, large parts of the country’s east never fully returned to stability, with armed groups continuing to contest territory, minerals, and local authority. Crisis Insights has covered the conflict’s long aftershocks as a case study in how difficult it can be to convert a signed peace agreement into lasting security on the ground.