President Paul Kagame met with James Swan, the new head of the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo (MONUSCO), on Wednesday, September 2, 2026, for talks on the ongoing security crisis in eastern DR Congo. Also, present was Huang Xia, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Great Lakes Region.
According to Village Urugwiro (the Rwandan Presidency), the discussions “focused on the need to address the root causes of the conflict and its impact on Rwanda’s security.” Other reporting similarly noted that the talks centered on resolving the crisis through measures that address its underlying causes rather than concentrating only on the symptoms of the crisis.
The Kigali meeting came a day after Swan and Huang met Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe. Rwanda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said those talks “focused on regional developments, particularly the situation in eastern DRC and ongoing efforts towards peace and stability in the region.”
James Swan, an American diplomat, was appointed to lead MONUSCO by UN Secretary-General António Guterres in March 2026, succeeding Guinean official Bintou Keita, who left Kinshasa on 30 November 2025 after four years in the post. Swan previously served as US ambassador to the DRC under President Barack Obama and later headed the UN mission in Somalia. He arrived in Rwanda on Tuesday, September 1, 2026.
The visit unfolds against two parallel diplomatic tracks. Under the Washington Peace Accords, signed by Presidents Kagame and Félix Tshisekedi in December 2025, MONUSCO is expected to support peace and security efforts between the two countries, including verification mechanisms and civilian protection — while the accord also provides for the disarmament of the Kinshasa-backed FDLR, a militia founded by remnants of the perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. MONUSCO additionally has a defined logistics and coordination role under the Doha ceasefire arrangements, including transport and communication support for verification missions.
This renewed engagement echoes Kagame’s broader positioning on the Congo crisis. In February 2026, he said armed groups like the Interahamwe and FDLR were settled in DR Congo and supported by the Congolese government, even integrated into Congolese armed forces (FARDC), and observed that the convenient path is often to find a culprit, and that culprit becomes Rwanda — a framing consistent with this week’s emphasis on addressing root causes rather than symptoms.
