DR Congo–Uganda border

A colonial swap

In 1885 King Leopold’s Congo Free State claimed the 30th meridian as its eastern limit, and in 1894 Britain leased him lands in the Nile basin, of which he occupied only the Lado Enclave, in return for recognition of the British sphere in Uganda. A conference in Brussels in 1910 settled the line: Belgian Congo gave Uganda the land west to the 30th meridian south of the Semliki River, and Uganda gave Belgian Congo the western half of Lake Albert. The Lado Enclave passed to the Sudan on 16 June 1910.^[1]

From the volcano of Sabinio the border runs in straight lines and along rivers, crosses Lakes Edward and Albert, and then follows the Congo–Nile drainage divide north to the Sudan tripoint.^[1]

Armed activities

In 1999 the Democratic Republic of the Congo took Uganda to the International Court of Justice. On 19 December 2005 the Court found that from August 1998 Uganda’s troops had been in the DRC without its consent, outside a limited exception for the Ruwenzori border area; that the intervention was a grave violation of the ban on the use of force; that Uganda had been the occupying power in Ituri; and that its soldiers, including high-ranking officers, had committed abuses and looted natural resources. It found no proof of a government policy of exploiting Congolese resources, and upheld part of a Ugandan counter-claim over attacks on its embassy in Kinshasa.^[2]

When talks on compensation failed, the Court set it itself: on 9 February 2022 it awarded the DRC US$225 million for damage to persons, US$40 million for property and US$60 million for natural resources, payable in five yearly instalments.^[2]

“a grave violation of the prohibition on the use of force expressed in Article 2, paragraph 4, of the United Nations Charter”^[2]