NEW YORK – The head of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), Vivian van de Perre, on Wednesday called on the member states of the UN Security Council to exert pressure for the immediate reopening of Goma and Kavumu airports. Both facilities have been shut since forces of the AFC-M23 coalition seized control of eastern Congo’s most strategically vital urban corridor, severely disrupting the flow of humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations to a region already devastated by years of conflict.
Van de Perre’s appeal underscores the deepening logistical crisis confronting aid agencies, UN personnel, and peacekeepers who rely on air access to reach communities across eastern DRC. With ground routes compromised by ongoing fighting and shifting front lines, the closure of Goma’s international airport and the Kavumu aerodrome in South Kivu has effectively bottlenecked the entire humanitarian response architecture for the region.
“The closure of Goma and Kavumu airports has throttled humanitarian access to millions of people in desperate need.” Stated the UN Security Council Session, March 2025
In a broader session focused on the escalating crisis in eastern Congo, the UN Security Council also expressed support for expanding the UN’s monitoring mission tasked with overseeing the fragile ceasefire between the Congolese government and AFC-M23 forces. The proposed expansion is intended to strengthen oversight capacity and improve on-the-ground verification of compliance, a task that has become increasingly difficult as hostilities continue despite repeated calls for restraint from international actors.
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The Council’s endorsement of an enhanced monitoring framework reflects growing international anxiety over the sustainability of the ceasefire, which has been repeatedly tested by exchanges of fire, territorial advances, and allegations of violations by multiple parties. A more robust monitoring presence, diplomats argued, could help reduce the risk of a full-scale return to open warfare.
The Security Council session was also marked by an expression of collective condolences for a French national employed by UNICEF who was killed in a drone strike in Goma on March 11. The attack, which struck an area frequented by civilians and humanitarian workers, drew sharp condemnation from Council members and reignited urgent calls for an immediate cessation of aerial strikes in densely populated urban zones.
The killing of a UN staff member represents a grave escalation in the human cost of the conflict and a direct challenge to the protections afforded to humanitarian personnel under international law. UNICEF and other UN agencies have repeatedly warned that their staff are operating in increasingly dangerous conditions across eastern Congo, where the line between front lines and civilian spaces has blurred dangerously.
Going further, the Council issued a unified demand for an immediate halt to drone strikes in urban areas and against static or retreating forces. The call is significant in its specificity: it targets not only strikes in cities like Goma, where civilian casualties are inevitable, but also aerial attacks on forces that are no longer advancing or are in retreat, which would constitute violations of the laws of armed conflict.
The use of armed drones has emerged as one of the most contentious and deadly dimensions of the current phase of eastern Congo’s conflict. Multiple parties have deployed or are suspected of deploying drones in recent months, and their use over populated areas has resulted in civilian deaths, destruction of infrastructure, and a deepening climate of fear in communities already displaced or traumatised by years of war.
The closure of Goma airport, historically the main entry point for relief supplies, UN personnel, journalists, and diplomats entering eastern Congo, has had cascading effects across the humanitarian system. Medical evacuations have been severely hampered, supply chains for food, medicine, and non-food items have been disrupted, and organisations have been forced to reroute operations through longer, more expensive, and often more dangerous ground corridors.
Kavumu, which serves as a key air hub for South Kivu and the wider Kivu region, faces similar constraints. Its closure has compounded the difficulties of responding to a humanitarian emergency that the UN estimates affects millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of newly displaced persons who fled the AFC-M23 offensive.
Van de Perre’s call at the Security Council is therefore not merely procedural: it reflects a genuine operational emergency. Without air access, the capacity of the international community to respond to eastern Congo’s unfolding catastrophe is fundamentally constrained. The question of when and under whose authority those airports will reopen is now one of the most pressing issues in the diplomatic management of the conflict.