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FDLR fighters are not a relic of the past. They are a second generation raised on the same hatred that drove the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
In 1994, the genocide against the Tutsi was stopped by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), which went on to build today's Rwanda. As the killing ended, more than a million people fled across the border into what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Among them were soldiers of the former Rwandan army and members of the militias who had carried out the genocide. Many children fled too. They were told they were escaping the “Inyenzi” — “cockroaches” — a slur used to dehumanise Tutsi. Inside the camps, those same fighters regrouped, rearmed, and in 2000 formed the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
Three decades on, a new generation has grown up inside this movement. Many of today's FDLR fighters were the refugee children of 1994, or were born after it. They were raised by people who took part in the genocide, or by extremists who still hold sway in parts of eastern Congo — including within local Wazalendo militias and, increasingly, alongside the Congolese army itself. Through their families, their communities and their commanders, they have been taught to see Tutsi as enemies who must be destroyed.
Most of these younger fighters have never set foot in Rwanda. Many have never met a single Tutsi. Yet they have inherited the hatred all the same — passed down through stories, lessons and propaganda. It is a clear example of how extremism can travel from one generation to the next, even to people with no memory of the events it claims to avenge.
Where the hatred comes from
The FDLR's worldview draws directly on the propaganda that paved the way for the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. One example was the so-called “Hutu Ten Commandments,” published in the magazine Kangura in December 1990, which branded any Hutu who worked or intermarried with Tutsi a traitor.
The most infamous voice was Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), the hate radio station that broadcast before and during the genocide. RTLM called Tutsi “Inyenzi,” named people to be killed, and urged listeners to take part in the slaughter. This was not just talk. A study published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2014 estimated that RTLM was responsible for around one in ten genocide killings — roughly 51,000 deaths. In 2003, the UN tribunal for Rwanda convicted RTLM's founder and Kangura's editor of incitement to genocide, the first such convictions since the Nuremberg trial of a Nazi propagandist.
The same language is heard again today. Across parts of eastern Congo, extremists describe Congolese Tutsi and the Banyamulenge as foreigners, invaders and agents of Rwanda — “cockroaches,” “vermin” and “snakes.” Peer-reviewed research published in 2024 traces these exact insults straight back to RTLM and Kangura. In 2022, the UN's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide warned that the conditions that produced genocide in the past were once again present. Such words do real harm: they lower the barrier to violence by making murder feel justified.
How the movement survives
The FDLR has lasted for more than two decades through more than ideology. It funds itself by smuggling minerals and charcoal, taxing roads and extorting ordinary people. The illegal charcoal trade out of Virunga National Park alone has been valued at up to $35 million a year, shared among the FDLR and its partners. This money keeps the fighters fed and the recruits coming.
And the recruits keep coming. UN investigators have repeatedly found that the FDLR refills its ranks with new fighters, including children. In 2025, UN experts identified FDLR training camps where new recruits were taught anti-Rwanda ideology alongside combat skills — proof that the hatred is being deliberately handed down, not simply fading with age.
A myth that needs correcting
Congolese officials often claim the FDLR no longer matters — that its genocide-era members are now old men. This misses the point. The FDLR never stopped recruiting. The children it raised in the camps were taught from infancy that Tutsi were “cockroaches” who had “stolen their country,” and many of those children are today's fighters.
What makes this more dangerous is who the FDLR now fights beside. UN experts have found that the Congolese army relies “systematically” on the FDLR and Wazalendo militias, putting them on the front line and supplying them with weapons, ammunition, money and equipment — in breach of UN sanctions. A genocidal militia is no longer hiding in the forest. It has been folded into a national army.
The bottom line
The FDLR is not history. It is a living movement that carries the ideology of 1994 into the present, funds itself through crime, recruits and indoctrinates the young, and now operates with the backing of the Congolese state. Breaking this cycle means confronting two things at once: the hatred passed from one generation to the next, and the political and military support that allows the movement to survive. Ignoring either will only guarantee that the next generation inherits the same war.