The Rwanda-backed M23 armed group has forcibly recruited thousands of people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and detained them in inhumane conditions, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
The anti-government group has seized vast swathes of territory since it re-emerged in 2021 in eastern DRC, which has been plagued by conflict for over 30 years.
Since taking the major cities of Goma and Bukavu, M23 "has carried out large-scale forced recruitment and other operations in areas under its control," the rights NGO said in a new report.
It has been "detaining thousands of Congolese soldiers and militia members, and increasingly civilians, subjecting them to inhumane and life-threatening treatment," said the report, which HRW said was "based on interviews with 102 former detainees and dozens of other sources."
Witnesses and former detainees described "people being abducted from the street or from their homes, rounded up at meetings, churches or schools and held in makeshift detention facilities, military camps or transferred to undisclosed locations."
Some of the captives, including children "as young as 12," were sent to training centres or military camps, where they were "held in inhumane conditions for weeks or months and subjected to beatings, severe ill-treatment and summary executions."
M23 fighters and Rwandan soldiers at the center "coerced thousands of people into joining the M23 under threat to their lives," HRW said.
Witnesses interviewed by HRW recounted seeing "captured soldiers and fighters and civilian men, women, and boys beaten, sometimes fatally, as punishment, or to compel others to enlist.
In one center, they were kept in cells where they were "subjected to frequent abuse, beatings, extreme overcrowding, dehydration and starvation."
HRW said the total number of deaths in these camps could only accurately be determined once all the mass graves were uncovered, "but interviews with former detainees indicate that hundreds, perhaps more," had died in 2025 and the camps were still active in 2026.
Former detainees "identified high-ranking M23 officers present in the camps" and "Rwandan military units in the vicinity."
