The eleven countries in the Great Lakes region of Africa have signed a UN-mediated peace agreement meant to end the interminable cycles of violence that have been plaguing the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo for many years.

The deal was signed on Sunday in the presence of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, Reuters reported.

Ban said he hoped the accord would bring "an era of peace and stability" to Congo and Africa's Great Lakes, adding that he would soon name a special envoy for the region.

"It is only the beginning of a comprehensive approach that will require sustained engagement," he noted.

The leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia signed the peace deal, which paves the way for the deployment of a new military brigade to take on rebel groups fighting the Kinshasa government.


No representatives of rebel groups attended the signing in Addis Ababa.

Leaders from the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) had originally been expected to sign the deal on January 29 on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa. But Ban delayed the signing over "procedural issues."

Meeting in the Mozambican capital Maputo on February 8, ICGLR leaders approved the deployment of a 4,000-strong peacekeeping force, which would come from SADC countries, to Congo.

The force will be able to combat "whoever is trying to destabilize the situation in the eastern part of Congo," SADC Secretary General Tomaz Salomao said after the meeting.

The force would be contained within the existing UN peacekeeping force in Congo, known as MONUSCO -- the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In July 2012, Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, along with other leaders from the Great Lakes region, signed an accord that called for the creation of a neutral international military force to combat rebels in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu in the eastern Congo.

The agreement also called for the Great Lakes leaders to work with the African Union and the United Nations "for an immediate establishment of a neutral international force to eradicate M23, FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), and all other negative forces in eastern DRC, and patrol and secure the border zones."

The March 23 movement (M23) rebels defected from the Congolese army in April 2012 in protest over alleged mistreatment in the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC). They had previously been integrated into the Congolese army under a peace deal signed in 2009.

Since early May 2012, nearly 3 million people have fled their homes in the eastern Congo. About 2.5 million have resettled in Congo, but more than 460,000 have crossed into neighboring Rwanda and Uganda.

Congo has faced numerous problems over the past few decades, such as grinding poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and a war in the east of the country that has dragged on since 1998 and left over 5.5 million people dead.