The UN’s senior humanitarian official in the DRC visited Goma this week and held direct talks with the AFC/M23 leadership, urging unimpeded access for aid organisations serving hundreds of thousands of people in need across North Kivu.
The United Nations’ top humanitarian official in the Democratic Republic of Congo held direct talks with the AFC/M23 leadership in Goma this week, pressing the rebel movement to uphold international humanitarian law and guarantee unimpeded access to civilians across rebel-held territory in North Kivu.
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Bruno Lemarquis, the UN’s Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for the DRC and acting head of MONUSCO, was in Goma from March 16 to 18. During the mission, he met with the de facto authorities of the city and its surroundings, led by AFC/M23 political coordinator Corneille Nangaa, and also visited Sake and Nyiragongo territory to assess conditions on the ground.
“We reiterated the importance of respecting international humanitarian law and humanitarian space, so that the many Congolese and international humanitarian organisations working here can have access to the very many people in need.”— Bruno Lemarquis, UN Humanitarian Coordinator, DRC
The visit comes in the aftermath of the March 11 drone strike on a residential neighborhood of Goma that killed French UNICEF worker Karine Buisset and two other civilians, and which triggered international condemnation and a French war crimes investigation. That attack and the broader pattern of drone warfare across the conflict zone have sharply focused attention on the safety of humanitarian workers and the conditions under which aid organisations can continue operating in rebel-held territory.
Lemarquis stressed that humanitarian assistance must remain apolitical and target exclusively the most vulnerable. The message carries particular weight in the current context: Goma’s airport has remained closed since M23 seized the city in January 2025, severely limiting the logistical capacity of humanitarian organisations to bring in supplies by air. Aid convoys have been periodically blocked by insecurity on key road axes. MONUSCO recently broke a 14-month barrier when its helicopter landed at Goma airport in a symbolic mission that raised cautious hopes for a gradual reopening of the facility to humanitarian flights.
The scale of need across North Kivu remains staggering. More than 7.8 million people are internally displaced across eastern Congo, according to the UN. In 2025 alone, 13 humanitarian workers were killed in the region, the highest annual toll in recent years. Last year, OCHA recorded over 650 incidents affecting humanitarian operations in the five eastern provinces. The Goma region, now under M23 control for over a year, is home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people and the headquarters of dozens of international aid organisations, many of which are struggling to maintain access to the communities they serve.
Lemarquis’s field visits to Sake and Nyiragongo during the mission were aimed at gaining a direct picture of the conditions facing populations beyond the city areas that have been repeatedly affected by front-line operations and civilian displacement. AFC/M23 has not publicly responded to the substance of the discussions.
The Goma mission follows a similar visit in February by EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Hadja Lahbib, who also pressed AFC/M23 leadership for humanitarian access and said she received commitments that had yet to translate into measurable change on the ground. The pattern of international officials visiting, demanding access, receiving verbal commitments, and departing has become a recurring feature of the humanitarian diplomacy around Goma. Whether Lemarquis’s direct engagement with Nangaa produces different results remains to be seen.