Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a Rwanda-Congo peace deal, U.S. President Donald Trump’s legal win, and anti-LGBTQ+ policies in Hungary.
‘Turning Point’
Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo signed a landmark U.S.-brokered peace deal on Friday that aims to end their devastating decades-long conflict.
“This is an important moment after 30 years of war,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during the signing in Washington, with Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe calling it a “turning point” in the conflict. Since fighting first broke out in the 1990s, roughly 6 million people have been killed and another 7 million displaced.
Fighting first began following the end of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when Hutu extremists fled into neighboring Congo to continue their attacks on Rwanda’s Tutsis. Such assaults ultimately led to the First and Second Congo Wars, during which Congolese troops accused Rwandan fighters of targeting Hutu civilians and looting Congo’s lucrative resources.
Today, Kinshasa as well as the United Nations and Western powers accuse Kigali of backing one such rebel group: M23. M23 maintains that it is defending the rights of Congolese Tutsis, but many experts suggest that the organization is a front for Rwanda’s larger territorial and resource ambitions. Kigali has sent thousands of troops over the border into eastern Congo to support M23; however, Kigali insists that the troops are not there in support of M23 but rather are acting in self-defense against Congolese forces and ethnic Hutu militia fighters.
Years of fighting have led to what the United Nations has called “one of the most protracted, complex, serious humanitarian crises on Earth,” as consistent warfare has created a power vacuum in eastern Congo that some have feared could catalyze a larger regional war. Violence escalated in January, when M23 launched a new offensive, seizing the strategic cities of Goma and later Bukavu in an effort to march on the Congolese capital of Kinshasa.
Past peace efforts have largely failed. Both the African Union and Qatar have led peace talks, to little success. The European Union cut military aid to Rwanda in February to try to force Kigali to quell its support for M23, and that month, the United States also imposed sweeping sanctions on key Rwandan army officials.
“Until the international community recognizes Rwanda’s cavalier meddling in Congo and the violence and human suffering it has unleashed, lasting peace will forever remain elusive—not just in Congo, but also in Central Africa writ large,” Milain Fayulu and Jeffrey Smith argued in Foreign Policy at the time.
Friday’s deal aims to change that. Under the agreement, the two countries pledge to implement a 2024 deal that would see Rwanda withdraw its forces from eastern Congo within 90 days, according to Reuters, as well as launch a regional economic integration framework within 90 days and a joint security coordination mechanism within 30 days. Congolese military actions against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Congo-based armed group that includes remnants of Rwanda’s former army and militias that carried out the 1994 genocide, would also end within 90 days.
The deal also enables the U.S. government and U.S. companies to gain access to Congo’s critical minerals at a time when Washington and Beijing are competing for influence in Africa. Congo has one of the world’s largest coltan and cobalt reserves and contains extensive reservoirs of gold, tantalum, tin, and tungsten—all of which are essential for technology manufacturing.
Still, some worry that the deal is too little, too late. “Some wounds will heal, but they will never fully disappear,” Congolese Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner warned on Friday. “Those who have suffered the most are watching. They are expecting this agreement to be respected, and we cannot fail them.”
Today’s Most Read
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- Why Russia Is Sitting Out This Round of the Israel-Iran Conflict by Dimitar Bechev
What We’re Following
Legal win for Trump. The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday issued a ruling restricting federal judges’ abilities to issue nationwide injunctions blocking U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive orders, delivering a major win for the White House. The 6-3 decision paves the way for Trump to move forward with efforts to limit birthright citizenship, though legal challenges are expected to continue.
The plaintiffs argued that Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship violates the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which says that all “persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.” Three lower courts in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington state agreed and issued nationwide injunctions blocking the order, which appeals courts then kept in place while litigation continued.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled on Friday that such universal injunctions go beyond the courts’ authority. However, the ruling also said Trump’s executive order would not go into effect for 30 days, allowing time for other legal challenges to be brought against it. Crucially, the ruling did not weigh in on the constitutionality of the underlying executive order itself—a fact that dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized the majority for. In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the ruling was an “existential threat to the rule of law.”
Limiting birthright citizenship is part of Trump’s wider pledge to crack down on immigration. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced that Washington had signed deals with Guatemala and Honduras to allow them to potentially accept asylum-seekers deported from the United States.
LGBTQ+ crackdown. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned citizens on Friday that those who organize or attend a Budapest Pride event this weekend will face “legal consequences,” with organizers facing up to one year in prison and attendees potentially subject to a $580 fine.
Last March, Hungary’s parliament, dominated by Orban’s far-right Fidesz party, passed legislation allowing police to ban locals from attending LGBTQ+ marches on the grounds of “child protection.” The law also allows Hungarian authorities to use facial recognition software to identify people who attend these events.
Last week, police explicitly banned the Budapest gathering, with Fidesz lawmakers arguing that the country’s Christian conservative agenda supersedes people’s right to freedom of assembly. However, liberal Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony has chosen to go through with the event, with the backing of more than 30 countries and the European Union. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called on Hungarian authorities this week to allow the march, and Belgium issued a new travel advisory on Friday for those visiting Hungary.
Rare-earth deal. The United States and China have resolved a long-running dispute concerning rare-earth shipments, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Friday. Under the deal, which was signed on Wednesday, China will expedite export applications of controlled items; Beijing suspended rare-earth deliveries to the United States in May after Trump imposed a slew of hefty tariffs on China.
As part of the agreement, Washington agreed to de-escalate the U.S.-China trade war by reducing its duties on Beijing once China’s rare-earth shipments begin anew; however, a statement by the Chinese Commerce Ministry did not explicitly mention rare earths.
The deal is the result of several weeks of negotiations, with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping speaking over the phone in early June before top U.S. and Chinese officials convened for meetings in London and Geneva. Experts expect the agreement to help normalize supply chains for automakers, the aerospace industry, and semiconductor manufacturers.
The White House trumpeted the deal as a victory, while China’s Commerce Ministry said it hoped that both countries could “continuously enhance consensus, reduce misunderstandings, strengthen cooperation, and jointly promote the healthy, stable, and sustainable development of China-U.S. economic and trade relations.”
What in the World?
Brazil’s Congress on Wednesday nullified a presidential decree for the first time since what year?
A. 1926
B. 1944
C. 1980
D. 1992
Odds and Ends
Kenyan Olympic medalist Faith Kipyegon broke the women’s record for world’s fastest mile in Paris on Thursday, finishing in 4 minutes and 6.42 seconds. Although she fell just shy of breaking the 4-minute-mile benchmark, she bested her personal record of 4:07.64—and far outpaced most professional athletes, of whom many consider Kipyegon to be the greatest middle-distance runner of all time. If that’s still too fast to wrap your head around, it takes FP’s World Brief writer roughly the same amount of time (if not longer) to walk just three blocks to her closest grocery store.
And the Answer Is…
D. 1992
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s decree would have increased a financial transaction tax. It was not the only controversy that Lula faced this week, as his government also held an auction for oil drilling rights near the mouth of the Amazon River, FP’s Catherine Osborn reports in Latin America Brief.
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