- 1994: In Rwanda, tensions between the majority Hutu ethnic group and the minority Tutsis explode, leading to genocidal massacres that leave an estimated 800,000 people dead.
The slaughter finally ends in July when a Tutsi force, assisted by neighbouring Uganda, overthrows the Rwandan regime.
Around a million Rwandans, including many Hutu perpetrators of the massacres, flee across the border into the eastern Kivu provinces of DR Congo, which at the time is known as Zaire.
Zaire's ruler Mobutu Sese Seko takes the side of the Hutus, while the new Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, still in power today, backs ethnic Tutsis in the region.
- 1996: Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of stirring unrest in South Kivu.
In October, after clashes between the army and Tutsis, an anti-Mobutu rebel group led by Laurent-Desire Kabila and backed by Rwanda and Uganda dismantles Hutu refugee camps established since 1994 in Kivu.
- 1997: Kabila's forces overthrow the Mobutu regime. The vast country is renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kagame says Rwanda planned the uprising and led the rebels who toppled Mobutu, with Rwandan forces taking part directly in the fighting. Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers who have helped Kabila's forces are integrated into the DRC army.
- 1998: In a switch of alliances, Kabila expels foreign soldiers from his army. A new rebellion begins in the Kivu region, in which Rwanda again intervenes, citing "national security".
- 1999: Kabila, now allied with Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, reaches a peace agreement with the Kivu rebels and their Rwandan and Ugandan backers.
- 2001: Laurent Kabila is assassinated by his presidential guard and succeeded by his son, Joseph Kabila who then holds talks with Kagame.
A UN report accuses Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi of intervening in the Kivu region to get their hands on its abundant mineral resources.
- 2004: Pro-Rwandan dissidents in the DRC army stage a new uprising in South Kivu. Rwanda, which says it has pulled all its troops out of the region, denies Kinshasa's accusations it is backing the rebels.
- 2008: Kinshasa accuses Kigali of sending troops to its territory to back rebels from the National Congress for the Defence of the People, led by the Tutsi Laurent Nkunda. His forces had faced off against government troops since late August.
- 2009: In a new switch, DR Congo again allies itself with Rwanda, sending a joint force to put down a rebellion by Rwandans in eastern DR Congo. Nkunda is arrested.
Former rebels are again integrated into the DRC army.
- 2012: After a mutiny from the DR Congo army, a group of mainly Tutsi soldiers form the March 23 (M23) rebel group and launch a new insurrection. In October a UN report accuses Rwanda and Uganda of arming the rebels.
In November the M23 is driven from the last positions they hold in the mountains of North Kivu.
- May 30, 2014: Start of a process of demobilisation of Rwandan Hutu rebels from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), present in eastern DRC since 1994, which includes remnants of the militia that carried out the genocide.
June 11-12: Fighting flares again on the border.