In a recent interview with Jeune Afrique, Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Prevot accused US President Donald Trump of “taking a transactional approach to mediating the Congolese crisis”, suggesting that peace negotiations under American leadership are more about minerals than actual peace.
This is yet another attempt by Prevot to undermine peace processes from which Belgium has been excluded. He views the deals as favoring Kigali and Congo’s rebels. The latter are preparing to administer the territory they control under the still-pending Doha peace agreement. Prevot also criticized the M23 rebels for acting as if the country belonged to them in a thinly veiled echo of Kinshasa’s genocidal narrative that Tutsis are not Congolese and should return to Rwanda.
What Prevot failed to mention is his own recent visit to Katanga, where he stated he was in “Lubumbashi in Haut-Katanga, a strategic location where the stakes of critical minerals, the global energy transition, and their environmental and social impacts on local communities intersect,” visiting STL, which partners with the Belgian company Umicore Group for germanium extraction.
The hypocrisy is striking: Prevot attacks the U.S. approach while Belgian companies sign mineral deals amid war, offering unconditional support to a genocidal project that threatens to exterminate Congolese Tutsis and those perceived as Tutsi, including the Hema population in Ituri. While Prevot claims to fight for respect for international law, he shows no concern for the Tutsi Banyamulenge, who have been given notice by Kinshasa army reservists, also known as Wazalendo militias, to leave Uvira or face death.
The Trump administration should issue a strong warning to Maxime Prevot, an actor who has systematically sought to sabotage U.S.-brokered peace efforts aimed at ending a crisis that has lasted three decades. The International Criminal Court should also investigate Belgium’s financial support to Gitega and Kinshasa, as the two regimes move to exterminate the Banyamulenge in Minembwe. This is a case of complicity in genocide. Belgium must be held accountable and even sanctioned.
The time for peace is now, and spoilers cannot be tolerated.