It’s time to ask why the US and UK fund Rwanda while atrocities mount up in DRC

Millions of people have been displaced because of violence in DRC. Thousands were seen outside the eastern city of Goma on 7 February. Photograph: Moses Sawasawa/AP

For the third time in 12 months, a UN investigation has expressed concern over Rwanda’s role in arming and training the M23 militia accused of indiscriminate killing, rape and mass displacement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Yet even as the Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) encircles Goma – a city of 2 million people and the strategic capital of eastern DRC – and cuts off people’s access to food and healthcare, in London and Washington the patrons of the Rwandan president Paul Kagame are moving at a glacial pace. With low-key condemnations of the murderous violence in DRC they disgracefully continue to fund Kagame’s regime, including his brutal Rwanda Defence Force (RDF), and block the creation of an international criminal tribunal for DRC to end the impunity enabling the violence.