Why children in eastern Congo need protecting.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) sits at the heart of Africa. It is the second-largest country on the continent, about the size of Western Europe, and it straddles the Equator and much of the Congo River basin, home to the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest. Its capital, Kinshasa, lies in the far west. Beni and Goma, where Fesser and Friends works, are about 1,500 km (930 miles) away in North Kivu province, near the borders with Uganda and Rwanda.

About 113 million people live in the DRC, and it is one of the youngest countries in the world: UNICEF estimates that more than half the population is under 18 ¹. People speak hundreds of languages. French is the official language, and Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo and Tshiluba are national languages. In the east, where we work, Swahili is spoken most widely.

The DRC is enormously rich in natural resources, including copper, cobalt, gold, tin, coltan and diamonds, as well as farmland, forests and rivers with huge hydro-electric potential. Yet most of its people are very poor. The World Bank estimates that in 2025 about 81% of Congolese lived on less than US$3 a day ².

Three decades of conflict in the east have left the DRC with one of the largest displacement crises in the world. UNHCR counted more than 6.1 million people displaced inside the country at the end of June 2026 ³, and estimates from other UN agencies have been higher still: OCHA put the figure at about 6.5 million in early 2026 ⁴. In 2026 the country is also facing the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record (see Section 6).

Kingdoms and the slave trade. Long before colonization, organized states flourished here. The Kingdom of Kongo exchanged ambassadors with Portugal from the late 1400s, and the Luba, Lunda and Kuba kingdoms rose inland. The Atlantic and East African slave trades later devastated these societies ⁵.

Leopold II’s “Congo Free State” (1885–1908). At the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, European powers recognized King Leopold II of Belgium’s claim to the Congo basin as his personal possession ⁶. His agents used forced labor, hostage-taking and mutilation to extract rubber and ivory. Estimates of the resulting deaths are disputed and run into the millions; the historian Adam Hochschild puts the population loss as high as 10 million ⁵. After an international outcry, Belgium took over the colony in 1908 ⁶.

Independence and Mobutu. The Congo became independent on June 30, 1960, with Patrice Lumumba as prime minister ⁶. He was deposed and, in January 1961, killed in Katanga; in 2022 Belgium’s prime minister acknowledged his country’s “moral responsibility” ⁷. Army chief Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seized power in 1965, renamed the country Zaire in 1971, and ruled for 32 years with Western backing. His regime became the textbook example of a kleptocracy, or government by theft: Mobutu and his inner circle siphoned off the country’s mineral wealth and foreign aid while roads, schools, hospitals and the army fell apart ⁶.

The Congo Wars (1996–2003). After the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, more than a million Rwandans, including people responsible for the genocide, fled into eastern Zaire. In 1996 Rwanda and Uganda backed Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s rebellion, which toppled Mobutu in 1997. A second war in 1998 drew in at least eight African countries. The International Rescue Committee estimated 5.4 million excess deaths from 1998 to 2007, mostly from hunger and disease; other researchers believe the true figure is lower ⁸.

Aftermath. Peace deals in 2002–2003 formally ended the war, and elections followed in 2006 ⁶. But many armed groups never disarmed, and the east has known little peace since.

Eastern DRC is not one war but many: in 2017 researchers mapped 120 armed groups in North and South Kivu alone ³⁹.

• M23/AFC: a Tutsi-led rebel group that took up arms again in late 2021, allied since 2023 with the political coalition Alliance Fleuve Congo. UN experts report that Rwanda backs it with troops and has “de facto control” of its operations; Rwanda denies this ¹⁰¹¹.
• ADF: a group of Ugandan origin, affiliated with the Islamic State, behind many massacres around Beni and in Ituri ¹².
• CODECO: a mainly Lendu militia in Ituri that has repeatedly attacked displacement camps ¹².
• Wazalendo: pro-government local militias, some accused of abuses against civilians ¹².
• FDLR: a Rwandan Hutu armed group founded by people linked to the 1994 genocide.

Key events. M23 took the Rubaya coltan mines in April 2024 ¹³, then Goma on January 27, 2025 and Bukavu on February 16, 2025 ¹²; the UN says nearly 3,000 people died in the battle for Goma ¹⁴. The DRC and Rwanda signed a US-brokered peace agreement on June 27, 2025 and the “Washington Accords” on December 4, 2025 ¹²¹⁵. Qatar-mediated talks produced the Doha Framework between Kinshasa and M23 on November 15, 2025 ¹⁶. Days later M23 seized Uvira, then announced a pull-back under US pressure ¹⁵¹⁷.

Autumn 2026. Only two of the eight Doha protocols had been signed by October, and fighting continued in both Kivus ¹⁸. The ADF entered Beni city on May 31, 2026, killing at least 16 people according to the government ¹⁹. On October 12, 2026 former president Joseph Kabila, sentenced to death in absentia in 2025 and sanctioned by the US in April 2026, launched the Front pour la Refondation de la Nation (FRN) in Goma, replacing the AFC/M23 ⁹²⁰. MONUSCO’s mandate runs to December 20, 2026 ²¹.

The DRC is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child in wartime. In June 2026 the UN Secretary-General reported 4,114 grave violations against 3,263 children in the DRC in 2025, the second-highest total of any country ²². These are only the cases the UN could verify. In 2025 ²²:

• 1,397 children (1,109 boys, 288 girls) were recruited and used by more than 60 armed groups and forces, including M23 (142), CODECO (119) and the ADF (85). 421 were used in combat.
• 1,067 children were abducted, most often for recruitment.
• 592 children, almost all girls, suffered sexual violence.
• 918 children were killed or maimed.

Why children? Children are easy to control and cheap. Many are abducted. Others “join” because their families have been killed, because they are hungry, or because a group promises protection or revenge. Save the Children reported in February 2026 that recruited children describe abduction, drugging and violence ²³. They serve as fighters, porters, cooks, spies and “wives”.

Coming home. In Ituri alone, about 1,360 children were released in 2025, while some 13,000 remained with armed groups ²³. Released children need medical care, safe shelter, counseling and school, a process known as DDR (disarmament, demobilization and reintegration). The UN has urged the government to stop detaining these children and to give them reintegration services instead ²².

Above all, children need a family. Tracing relatives, preparing families and communities, and following up after a child returns home reduces stigma and the risk of re-recruitment. That is why family reunification is at the center of Fesser and Friends’ work.

Your phone, laptop or car probably contains metal from the DRC. The country produced about 73% of the world’s mined cobalt in 2025, a key battery ingredient ²⁴. Most cobalt and copper come from mines in the south-east, far from the fighting in the Kivus.

In the east, the issue is “conflict minerals”, or 3TG: tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. Tantalum comes from coltan and is used in the tiny capacitors inside electronics. For decades, armed groups have profited by controlling mines, taxing diggers and traders, and smuggling ore across borders.

Rubaya. The coltan mines around Rubaya in North Kivu supply about 15% of the world’s tantalum, according to Global Witness ²⁵. M23 took control in April 2024. UN experts estimated that it earned about US$800,000 a month from taxing the trade, and that more than 120 tonnes of coltan a month were trafficked to Rwanda in mid-2024 ²⁵. The UN Group of Experts’ June 2026 report linked a sharp rise in Rwanda’s tin-ore exports in 2025 to probable smuggling from M23-held areas; Rwanda had not responded at the time ²⁶. Global Witness reports that smuggled ore can be relabeled as Rwandan before reaching global supply chains ²⁵.

Rules for companies. Since 2012, Section 1502 of the US Dodd-Frank Act has required US-listed companies to report whether their products contain 3TG from the DRC or its neighbors. Since January 1, 2021, the EU Conflict Minerals Regulation has required EU importers to check their 3TG supply chains ²⁷. Critics say enforcement is weak and certification can be gamed; others warn that blunt boycotts hurt miners who depend on the trade.

2018–2020. North Kivu and Ituri suffered what was then the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history, with 3,470 cases and 2,287 deaths; Beni was an epicenter ²⁸. Responders worked in the middle of active conflict. Fesser and Friends’ founder, Dr. Nicolas Fesser, spent eight weeks in North Kivu during that outbreak in 2019, which is where the organization’s story begins.

Later outbreaks. Ebola returned to North Kivu in 2021 (12 cases) ²⁸. An outbreak in Bulape, Kasai province, began in September 2025, caused 64 cases and was declared over on December 1, 2025 ²⁹.

2026. On May 15, 2026, the DRC declared its 17th Ebola outbreak, caused by the Bundibugyo strain, which began in a mining area of Ituri ³⁰. Bundibugyo has no approved vaccine or specific treatment, though candidates are being tested ³¹. The WHO declared a global health emergency on May 17. Beni and Katwa are among the worst-hit health zones in North Kivu ³¹. In August it overtook the 2018–2020 outbreak as the deadliest in the country’s history ⁴². As of October 31, 2026, the DRC had reported 10,467 confirmed cases and 5,103 deaths ³³, making it the second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, after West Africa in 2014–2016. Ituri is the worst-affected province, followed by North Kivu ³². Figures change weekly. Check the WHO for the latest.

Other threats. The DRC was the epicenter of the 2024–2025 mpox emergency, which the WHO ended on September 5, 2025 ³⁴. In 2025 it had its worst cholera outbreak in 25 years, with more than 64,000 cases and 1,888 deaths ³⁵. A measles epidemic killed more than 6,000 people between early 2019 and January 2020 ³⁶. About 26.5 million people faced acute food insecurity in early 2026 ³⁷.

Congolese people are not only victims of this crisis. They are its first and most lasting responders. When an attack empties a village or Ebola closes the schools, it is local nurses, teachers, social workers, church groups and neighbors who act first, and they stay after international teams leave. They speak the languages, understand local politics, know which families can be traced across a front line, and can reach places where foreigners cannot safely go.

The humanitarian system has long promised to recognize this. In the 2016 “Grand Bargain”, major donors and aid agencies committed to channel at least 25% of humanitarian funding to local and national actors “as directly as possible” ³⁸. A decade later, that goal remains far off. According to Development Initiatives’ Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2026, local and national actors received only about 4.3% of international humanitarian funding directly in 2025, and about 8.7% including funds passed through intermediaries. The volume of this funding fell by 27% as global aid budgets were cut ³⁸.

This “localization” agenda is not about charity; it is about effectiveness and dignity. Locally led organizations tend to cost less, respond faster and keep working through insecurity. Fesser and Friends is built on this model. Its centers in Beni and Goma are run day to day by its Congolese partner, World Hope Givers, with an all-Congolese staff. The role of Fesser and Friends is to raise funds, provide oversight and stand behind local leaders.