RUTSHURU, Democratic Republic of the Congo — The humanitarian situation in North Kivu is grave. The conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has already displaced almost 7 million people, according to the U.N.’s International Organization of Migration. Just last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced an additional $414 million for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, almost doubling Washington’s annual assistance to the country; this does not include the millions of dollars that Washington contributes directly to the IOM.

Much IOM work is laudable. The organization builds shelters, toilets, and showers. It helps coordinate with refugee agencies and the World Food Programme. IOM also brags about its work permanently resettling those displaced by conflict to third countries. Herein lies the problem.

The root of the conflict in eastern Congo is not foreign aggression, nor is it simply incompetent government. What sparks fighting today in eastern Congo is ambition by those who perpetrated the 1994 genocide in Rwanda against Tutsis to have a do-over.

Tutsis have lived in the highlands of eastern Congo since at least the 18th century. When Rwanda expelled the Hutu génocidaires in 1994, they settled just across the border, sheltered in U.N. camps funded in part with U.S. contributions to the United Nations. While the Gaza conflict highlights the infiltration of Hamas into U.N. agencies, a parallel occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where génocidaires took de facto control of camps and schools and used them to recruit and train a new generation.

Hutu prisoners I met in eastern Congo were unapologetic about their past and hoped to finish the job in the future. The irrational hatred and dehumanization of Tutsis by Hutu militants no more ended with their 1994 expulsion from Rwanda than did the antisemitism of Nazis who escaped to South America after World War II. The difference is that Argentina is 7,500 miles from Germany, but Rwanda sits just a couple miles from the Hutu camps.

With the encouragement of the Congolese government, Hutu génocidaires today rampage through the countryside, raping women, hacking men to death, and kidnapping children. Terrified Tutsis flee the génocidaires and the Congolese army that backs them. These displaced townsmen and farmers shelter in IOM camps.

While IOM, in theory, seeks to return the displaced, too often, it resettles the displaced Tutsis elsewhere or even arranges for them to relocate to the United States, Canada, Europe, or Australia. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that IOM helps more Congolese resettle in the United States than Syrians or Afghans. On the surface, this might seem humane. These are real refugees in need rather than economic migrants crossing illegally.

Across eastern Congo, however, locals have another phrase for IOM resettlement: ethnic cleansing. They are right. After all, if Hutu militants or Congolese soldiers force families resident in Congo for generations to flee to U.N. camps and the IOM and its partners relocate them permanently thousands of miles away, that encourages and rewards Hutu violence.

This is not the first time international and USAID naivete catalyzed ethnic cleansing. In 2023, as Azerbaijan blockaded the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenians said USAID officials suggested building 50,000 housing units in Armenia proper, signaling to Azerbaijan that Washington would accept rather than punish its aggression. Months later, Azerbaijani troops invaded to drive out Nagorno-Karabakh’s indigenous Armenian population.

Back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the problem with resettlement goes further, as it fuels the engine for further conflict in Congo. Migrants send remittances home, supporting the militias that compound the conflict.

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Perhaps the solution to the conflict, therefore, is to end the 30-year travesty by which militants who committed genocide remain not only free but also armed. It will require ceasing to reward Kinshasa with emergency aid that the Congolese government inevitably embezzles. Most importantly, it will necessitate imposing a policy change so that IOM returns victims of ongoing ethnic cleansing to their homes rather than helping ethnic chauvinists complete their goal.

The Biden administration betrayed Nagorno-Karabakh; it should not essentially do the same to North Kivu.

Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.