The recent nomination of James Swan as the new head of the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) should raise debate over the future role and effectiveness of MONUSCO in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This debate is mostly important at a time when violence continues to affect vulnerable communities in South Kivu and beyond. James Swan’s leadership offers an opportunity to reassess how MONUSCO operates, gathers information, and fulfils its mandate to protect at-risk civilians.
- Challenges Facing MONUSCO in Its Current Format
This blog post draws on analysis that examined 29 MONUSCO’s reports (2015-2022), alongside 325 violent incidents recorded by Kivu Security Tracker (KST) for the period 2017-2022.[1] This analysis covered the security situation in the southern part of South Kivu (Fizi, Mwenga and Uvira territories), where local communities such as the Banyamulenge have faced asymmetric repeated attacks, displacement, and destruction of livelihoods mostly because they are perceived as “secondary Congolese”. Its findings show that there is a significant structural and operational challenges affecting MONUSCO’s capacity to anticipate and prevent atrocities against at-risk and vulnerable civilians. The analysis identifies several key obstacles that limit the effectiveness of the UN peacekeeping mission.
2. Illustration of reporting challenges
The analysis of MONUSCO’s reports and KST’s records display challenges in terms of reporting local incidents. Illustratively, I use two incidents to give readers the idea of such misrepresentations and its implications on victims’ recognition.
- Killing of women in Minembwe
In September 2021, MONUSCO reported that
On 8 July, the FARDC transferred two suspected Twirwaneho collaborators, including one woman, to Bukavu following their arrest in Minembwe on 12 June, which triggered multiple protests by Twirwaneho supporters and Hutu community members. (See S/2021/807)
The report raises concerns about the framing and reliability of MONUSCO’s sources and informants. First, there were slight evidence that the woman arrested with her baby (less than 2 years-old) was a collaborator of Twirwaneho. Second, documented evidence indicate that demonstrators were Banyamulenge women protesting insecurity, not strictly Twirwaneho supporters. Third, neither MONUSCO nor KST did not report the highly premeditated killings of civilians whose majority were women. Fourth, the inaccurate framing that the demonstrators are members of the Hutu community remains an error that risks distorting the identity of victims and obscuring the realities that local populations faced.
- 2019 destruction of villages and social infrastructures.
In September 2020, MONUSCO reported that
The former FARDC Colonel Michel Rukunda, alias Makanika, who has been active since January 2020, consolidated his control over the Twigwaneho armed groups and led several raids in the Kamombo area, killing six civilians and destroying 15 schools and seven health centres. Many Babembe, Bafuliro and Banyindu community members fled the area, increasing the number of internally displaced persons in Bijombo, where MONUSCO is deployed, to 6,725 (1,122 men, 1,253 women and 4,350 children) see S/2020/919.
First, MONUSCO provided detailed accounts of the Twirwaneho-Makanika’s May 2020 attack on Kamombo area. Second, it included names of ethnic communities affected and number of infrastructures destroyed. However, MONUSCO previously failed to document that the Banyamulenge were the only community forced to flee the Kamombo area when roughly 40 villages were destroyed between May and September 2019. MONUSCO and KST did not record number of civilians and cattle raided during the May-September 2019 attacks. This omission can create a major blind spot in the narrative of the conflict. It obscures the earlier displacement of Banyamulenge civilians and limits the ability of external observers to fully understand the dynamics that later fueled renewed violence.
Welcome to James Swan, the new Head of #MONUSCO.
With more than 30 years of experience, including three years as Ambassador to the #DRC (2013–2016), his expertise in political transitions in Africa is a major asset for the stabilization mission. pic.twitter.com/iFw3uTfMlz
— MONUSCO (@MONUSCO) March 6, 2026
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3. Complex Security Environment
The first major challenge lies in the complexity of the security landscape. Since 2016–2017, the southern South Kivu region has experienced an escalation of violence involving numerous armed actors. These include various Babembe, Banyindu, Bafuliro and Bavira’s Mai-Mai militias as well as Banyamulenge-affiliated armed groups such as Gumino and Twirwaneho. The resurged violence involved Burundian rebel groups including Red-Tabara and Forces Nationales de Liberation (FNL). Undoubtedly, elements of the Congolese armed forces (FARDC), and other unidentified armed groups actively participated.
Though alliance between and across armed actors keep changing, this fragmentation makes it extremely difficult to clearly attribute responsibility for violent incidents. Many attacks occur within overlapping local, national, and regional dynamics. The violence is therefore not purely local; it is often entangled with regional political and security rivalries involving neighbouring countries such as Burundi and Rwanda.
As a result, conflicts in the southern of South Kivu increasingly resemble proxy wars in which local grievances intersect with broader geopolitical interests. Such complexity may complicate MONUSCO’s ability to monitor threats, identify perpetrators, and intervene effectively to prevent atrocities. The complexity of conflicts tends to push the UN mission to shift blame to local communities and mostly the vulnerable ones unable to contradict MONUSCO in public forums as do countries represented in the UN security Council and other forums.
4. Data Collection and Reporting
KST remained valuable sources for understanding violence in eastern Congo but the platform also informed other international partners such as UPPSALA and ACLED. Using KST’s dataset as an alternative to MONUSCO’s records of single violent incidents, the findings of this analysis suggest that these records sometimes produce what can be described as a “representational asymmetry.”
In practice and as shown in the illustrative cases, some communities are misrepresented and not explicitly identified as civilian victims. Incidents affecting Banyamulenge civilians are often recorded without clearly identifying them as victims or civilians. Instead, attacks may be framed broadly as clashes between armed groups. When civilian populations are not clearly recognized as victims, early warning mechanisms may fail to detect escalating patterns of targeted attacks.
There are loopholes in the reporting that include failure to record the systematic burning of villages, the destruction of homes and local infrastructure, the large-scale cattle looting, forced displacement of civilian populations and prolonged sieges that trap communities in isolated areas. Such underreporting or misrepresentation of forms of violence that affects civilians has negative implications on policy prospects. For instance, Banyamulenge livelihoods depend heavily on cattle herding to the extent the looting of livestock represents not only economic devastation but also the collapse of social and cultural structures. Yet these losses often receive limited attention in international reporting.
5. Oversimplifying “Ethnic Conflict” Violence
Another problem identified in the research is the tendency to frame violence primarily through the lens of “interethnic conflict”. While ethnic tensions are indeed present in the southern of South Kivu, reducing the crisis to ethnic rivalries can oversimplify a far more complex reality. At least, it was clear that these groups received support and sometimes fought proxy wars on behalf of the DRC, Rwanda and Burundi armies.
In addition, violence in the region is shaped by multiple factors, including historical disputes over land and local authority, mostly affecting the Banyamulenge whose Congolese full citizenship and entitlements are contested. The local socio-cultural contexts feed narratives portraying certain communities as “foreign” or “invaders”.
Violence is a result of competition for political power but also regional security dynamics and mobilisation of militias and armed combatants in the absence of the state authority. When violence is explained solely as ethnic confrontation, these deeper political and structural drivers remain hidden. Such narratives may unintentionally reinforce existing divisions and increase insecurity for communities that are already vulnerable.
6. Structural Limits of Peacekeeping Operations
The analysis of MONUSCO and KST’s records underscores broader structural limitations affecting UN peacekeeping missions operating in deeply polarised environments. As Severine Autesserre highlighted, MONUSCO personnel often face significant challenges in gathering reliable information and building trust with local populations. Peacekeepers must operate in remote regions with limited infrastructure, while navigating complex local power structures and competing narratives.
At the same time, the mission depends heavily on information from state institutions, humanitarian organizations, and local intermediaries—sources that may themselves reflect political or social biases. During my field research, I came to realise that the Banyamulenge are unevenly represented in the UN-affiliated organisations and structures. Highly obvious that they have limited and possibly no single staff among MONUSCO’s interpreters. A lack of deep local knowledge can therefore affect how incidents are interpreted, categorized, and reported. Over time, these gaps in understanding may influence policy decisions at the international level.
7. Toward More Effective Civilian Protection
The findings suggest that improving civilian protection in eastern Congo requires several reforms.
First, greater transparency in data collection and reporting practices is essential. Clearer documentation of sources and methodologies would help analysts better understand the limitations of existing datasets.
Second, peacekeeping missions would benefit from stronger integration of local voices and expertise, including collaboration with researchers, civil society organisations, and community leaders who possess firsthand knowledge of the conflict dynamics. The requirement needs to account for the danger of epistemic injustice that some ethnic communities face.
Third, early warning systems must be strengthened to capture a wider range of violence indicators—not only killings and clashes, but also patterns such as village destruction, economic targeting, displacement, and humanitarian blockades.
8. Critical Moment for MONUSCO
As James Swan prepares to lead MONUSCO during a critical period of transition, these findings highlight the urgent need to rethink how international peacekeeping missions operate in complex conflict environments. This analysis examined patterns of violence in the southern part of South Kivu to assess how well the UN mission identifies threats and anticipates attacks against vulnerable civilian communities in the region. Its findings are broadly generalisable for the Eastern DRC and mostly for at-risk and vulnerable communities.
For the people of eastern Congo—particularly those living in the Hauts Plateaux of South Kivu—the stakes remain extraordinarily high. Violence against communities perceived as “invaders” is ideologically harmful and genocidal in its essence. Violence against the Hema community in Ituri from 2017 onwards has shown signs of genocidal killings.
Ensuring that the realities of violence are accurately documented and understood is not simply an academic exercise. It is a fundamental step toward preventing atrocities and protecting communities that continue to face profound insecurity.
Delphin R. Ntanyoma
Twitter: https://x.com/Delphino12
Blog: https://easterncongotribune.com/
[1] Thanks to Fidele and Prosper for the contribution in this analysis (see https://www.jpolrisk.com/why-the-un-fails-to-prevent-mass-atrocities/).
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