Hello, everyone. Good morning, afternoon or evening, and welcome to this edition of Elsewhere in Focus. You can find all the articles in the series here (along with my other diaries).
At this point, I am sure you will know the extent of Chinese and Western capitalist extraction in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We also talked about the history of Rwandan invasion of DR Congo with involvement from a lot of other African countries such as Uganda, Angola and Burundi, which has led to an estimated 12 million dead in DR Congo in the past three decades. We read how the United States has a long history of undermining democracy in Congo and supported Rwanda with arms in its war on DR Congo; how the US and EU continue to support Rwanda as it arms and guides M23 in DR Congo. Today, let us read about the continual of conflict in DR Congo along with various attempts at ceasefire—without stopping arms—, their failures, and other stories.
Trigger Warning: Mentions of sexual assault and rape.
DR Congo—An Absent Peace, Conflict Minerals and Governance
Where Is Peace?
There have been multiple attempts at peace agreement in DR Congo but peace seems to be long time coming. The US, for example, has been trying to engage deeply in the peace talks given the country’s importance to the minerals that they need (no, not because of the lives lost). Erin Banco reported for the politico on the US efforts last year (1 Dec 2023)—It says 12/01/2023 that is 1 Dec, right? We in India follow the dd/mm/yyyy. I know US follows mm/dd/yyyy. But I don’t know which Politico follows).
The Biden administration previously said that Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines flew to the region last week to “secure commitments” from Congolese and Rwandan leaders to deescalate fighting and that they “plan to take specific steps to reduce current tensions.” But the administration did not disclose the extent to which the U.S. was designing and overseeing the plan.
Washington drew up the deal, according to the readout. The administration is also setting up an intelligence fusion cell — a formalized information-sharing mechanism — to transmit data to Congo and Rwanda about ground movements and to ensure both countries adhere to the deal.
The Congolese are not exactly happy with Biden’s support for Rwanda though.
The intervention was welcomed by Congolese officials, said Patrick Muyaya, a spokesperson for the Congolese government.
“When it comes to Ukraine, the United States is doing its best. When it comes to Rwanda, which is acting the way sometimes Vladimir Putin is acting, we are not receiving the same answer or the same reaction from the United States,” he said. “It’s a bit unfair for Congolese people, so we hope that these last rounds of discussions will be able to deliver.”
The talks didn’t deliver clearly since the fighting continues. But before looking at the failures, let us look at US’ reasons for engagement.
The meeting with Haines comes as Washington is attempting to counter China in Africa.
“The Chinese have cornered the market on Congolese minerals and have for a number of years. And we have in office right now [in Congo] a government which has at least shown itself amenable to revisiting those contracts,” said Cameron Hudson, a former intelligence analyst for Africa at the CIA. “A glaring piece of this that I think undermines all of this is that there’s a proxy war going on in the eastern part of the country.”
Over the last several years, the administration has worked to establish economic pacts with Congo and its neighbors to develop trade routes for the export of minerals such as copper and cobalt — a key component for electric vehicle batteries.
Angola has been trying to broker peace as well. Okeri Ngutjinazo writes for the Deutsche Welle (DW) about a ceasefire agreement that the parties had agreed to (1 Aug 2024).
The fresh deal comes as a humanitarian truce between the M23 rebels and government forces obtained through the United States was due to expire on August 3.
However, analysts are sceptic about the new deal because previous truces inked by both countries were never respected for more than a few weeks.
Justine Masika, an activist living in the province of North Kivu, believes that there is too much hypocrisy in these various mediation processes. She told DW that the parties involved in the conflict have too many interests and the well-being of the population is not their priority.
"The truce has been declared, but the problem we still have in this conflict in eastern DRC is that the parties to the conflict don't respect the agreements they've signed."
"There are still papers that are signed but they continue the war and the population continues to die every day."
Political scientist quoted says that while Rwanda controls the M23, M23 can always distance themselves from the peace talks.
The UN estimates that fighting in North Kivu province has displaced more than 1.7 million people, driving up the number displaced in Congo by multiple conflicts to a record 7.2 million.
A UN Security Council report revealed that 3,000 to 4,000 Rwandan soldiers have been fighting alongside the M23, indicating that Kigali exercises "de facto control" over the group's operations.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has not explicitly denied the presence of Rwandan forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, he has openly stated his readiness to take a "defensive" stance to protect Rwanda's interests.
Political scientist Christian Moleka believes that, like many peace initiatives, this one is limited by the fact that there are not enough elements of pressure that can be exerted on Rwanda.
"By tacitly signing the ceasefire agreement, Rwanda is presenting itself as a co-belligerent, because only those involved in a military operation can sign a ceasefire. So its signature confirms the fact that Rwanda is a player on the ground," he said.
However, Moleka said this signature is not binding on the M23.
"As much as Rwanda can sign the ceasefire, the M23 can disassociate itself from it, especially as the Luanda process does not include the M23 in its dynamics," he said, adding that Nairobi was the second mechanism offering the M23 a political way out.
Aside: Ngutjinazo says that former colonial power Belgium welcomed the ceasefire. How often do you see a former colonial power being described as such in a news article? :) Brava all involved.
In any case, that August 4 ceasefire agreement did not hold. Isaac Kaledzi reported on ceasefire violations for DW (20 Aug 2024).
Samuel Birichera was forced to flee his home to the Bulengo camp for internally displaced people in Congo's North Kivu province due to the ongoing conflict in the region. The camp provides shelter for thousands of people who fled their homes in the area between Goma and Sake near Lake Kivu.
In March 2022, tensions flared as M23 rebels, after a decade of relative calm, launched attacks on Congolese army positions near the Uganda-Rwanda border. Since then, they have seized large swathes of territory in an effort to gain a share of North Kivu's major deposits of copper, gold and diamonds. An uptick in violence forced local residents to flee, seeking safety from the escalating conflict.
Recent clashes have sparked renewed worries about the durability of a cease-fire that began on August 4, aimed at stopping the conflict in the region and providing aid to millions in need. Previous cease-fires between the government and rebels have also been breached.
Note that the the previous conflict came to a halt in 2012 or thereabouts because Obama imposed sanctions on Rwanda (even if small). It appears Biden is unwilling to do that.
On July 16, bombs were launched from areas occupied by M23 rebels, targeting the town of Bweremana in Masisi territory, North Kivu, on the Sake-Minova road.
Civilians were killed and several others wounded. Henry Pacifique Mayala, coordinator of the Kivu Security Barometer, a research institute documenting armed groups in eastern Congo, said that warring parties refusing to respect peace deals must be sanctioned.
"We talked about the recent truce violation, but nothing has been done," he told DW. "We know that there were deaths in a camp for displaced people in Bweremana, and we know in which direction the bombs fell on the population. And so we'll have to act, because we've acted too much with the carrot, now we'll have to act with the stick."
Political analyst Jack Kahorha in Goma fears that the conflict is far from ending anytime soon due to the significant differences between the M23 rebel group, which is allegedly backed by neighboring Rwanda, and pro-government militias.
"Of course everybody would like to see peace really being restored and discussions among the leaders," Kahorha told DW, refering to Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi.
Kahorha said, "what we can see on the field is that when the president [Tshisekedi] is speaking in DRC, he shows the impression that he's not ready to talk to his counterpart," adding that such a stance does not inspire confidence that the conflict will be resolved soon.
Meanwhile the current deployment of a Southern African Development Community (SADC)mission to eastern Congo which was expected to help defeat the rebels seems to have rather complicated matters geopolitically.
"So, SADC is a completely different intervention force. SADC mission mandate is to actively fight M23," Daniel van Dalen, a signal risk analyst based in South Africa, told DW.
But since December 2023, when the SADC sent a military force to support the Congolese government to push out rebels, the troops have yet to halt the influence of M23 rebels.
Kahorha says the coordination of the activities of the troops backing the Congolese army hasn't been effective, complicating the conflict.
"This [troop deployments] seems to complicate things because the coordination is not at one side. We find disorder somehow, there is something really complicating things in terms of operations," Kahorha said.
Michelle Gavin writes for Council on Foreign Relations blog that all sides are to blame for the failure of ceasefire (20 Aug 2024).
Peace talks between the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda are scheduled to resume in Angola’s capital, Luanda, this week. The Angolan-led process has international support, but as Congolese Catholic leaders recently noted, agreements are routinely violated in the DRC, and accountability is in short supply.
There is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to the DRC. Thoughtful experts have emphasized the importance of applying more pressure on Rwanda to stop backing the M23 insurgency, and they are right. The strategy of using international leverage has worked before, and while Kigali has made headway in its attempt to become an indispensable security partner on the continent (and therefore beyond reproach), it is not yet untouchable.
Others have stressed that Kinshasa’s failures are ultimately to blame for the seemingly endless insecurity in the east. They are right too. The central government has too often been both deeply corrupt and profoundly incompetent. Efforts to professionalize the military have largely failed to overcome the misaligned economic incentives and factionalism that too often render it ineffective.
She also says US seems to have no clear political strategy on DRC despite it being part of their green transition plan.
Basically, all the analysts are saying similar things. There is no proper pressure being brought to bear on Rwanda and Uganda (and some also say, DRC’s President Tshisekedi).
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) troops have been trying to fight M23 in Eastern Congo but with limited success. Cai Nebe reports for DW (27 Aug 2024). Josephine Mahachi contributed to the article.
But it is the current offensive by the M23 rebels and their disregard for the ceasefire that alarms observers. M23's onslaught comes despite the deployment of a Southern African Development Community (SADC) mission to eastern Congo to combat the M23 rebel group.
In December 2023, SADC sent a military force to aid the Congolese government to push out the rebels. So far, the SADC troops have failed to halt the M23 rebels, who keep seizing more territory.
Speaking exclusively to DW on SADC's deployment, Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera stressed that the troops' top priority is protecting innocent lives. "Peace is a prerequisite for development. Whether it is proxy wars or to do with who has power over this resource or that resource, it's a decision that says 'make sure that we protect vulnerable communities'."
But, SADC's force is not of a peacekeeping nature. "SADC's mission mandate is to actively fight M23," Daniel van Dalen said. "It's coincidental, maybe not so coincidental, that you had the contributing members to the SADC force who are now the exact same ones that were part of the UN's Force Intervention Brigade in 2012, that basically defeated M23. But they're now just doing it in their own capacity."
With SADC forces effectively taking on a Rwandan proxy at the request of the Congolese government (a SADC member), more geopolitical complications could emerge. SADC and Rwandan troops joined forces, largely successfully, to drive out Islamist forces in northern Mozambique.
However, according to van Dalen, SADC's military mission in the eastern DRC is likely to test future military cooperation. "They [SADC troops] are not fighting just a rebel. They're fighting one of the most capable militaries on the continent, through Rwanda, and a rebel group that is being equipped with advanced weapons," van Dalen said, adding that SADC's lack of air support has hampered their effectiveness.
The UN Peace Corps, the MONUSCO, which is not well liked in the country due to rights violations, paused their withdrawal due to the continued presence of Rwanda in the area. Camila Pimentel writes for the Organisation for World Peace (20 Aug 2024).
Congo’s foreign minister said that the United Nations peacekeepers are unlikely to
withdraw from Congo’s conflict-torn North Kivu for as long as Rwandan troops remain in the territory. During an interview, the Congolese foreign minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner said “The current situation with the presence of Rwandan troops, the aggression by Rwanda makes it very difficult to envisage such a situation right now.” Wagner also emphasized that while withdrawal remains a priority, it should only take place when conditions permit.
In light of the current tensions arising from the presence of Rwandan troops, a reckless withdrawal could do more harm than good. By delaying the withdrawal, Congo allows additional time to address unresolved issues and ensure a peaceful transition. This approach strategically prioritizes waiting for improved conditions before considering a UN exit, rather than pushing for withdrawal at any cost.
Meanwhile a new contingent of Kenyan troops have arrived in the country. So says Defence Web (29 Aug 2024).
With September fast approaching and the end of current United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations set for year-end in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), there’s no let-up as disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration (DDR) taskings continue alongside a fourth Kenyan quick reaction force (QRF) rotation.
The latest DDR tasking for MONUSCO peacekeepers saw twenty-five thousand plus rounds of ammunition destroyed at a camp in Munigi, North Kivu. This DDR action will continue until next week and is seen as essential to developing a secure environment without which DDR cannot be successfully undertaken.
This week also saw the first batch of the fourth contingent of the Kenya QRF fly out of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi en route to eastern DRC, where a Southern African Development Community (SADC) mission is headquartered in Goma assisting Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC) subdue rebel forces.
The QRF deployment, a Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) statement has it, comes at a crucial time, as MONUSCO intensifies efforts to protection civilians, reform the country’s security sector and continue the DDR programme.
Patricia Huon writes for the New Humanitarian that DR Congo has been turning to abusive militias to fight M23 (13 Aug 2024).
For the past year, the Congolese army has been supporting several militias like the APCLS, using them as proxies to combat the M23 rebel group, which has seized swathes of territory in the east of the country with the backing of thousands of Rwandan troops.
The militias, collectively known as Wazalendo (‘patriots’ in Kiswahili), are being used because of poor motivation and dysfunction within the ranks of DRC’s army, which has seen dozens of soldiers and officers prosecuted for deserting the battlefield.
Yet the Wazalendo groups – some of which have previously fought each-other – are committing serious human rights abuses and bringing large numbers of child soldiers to the frontlines, thwarting long-running efforts to prevent their recruitment.
UN experts say the militias are using the Wazalendo banner to legitimise their existence and criminal activities, expanding territory in some cases and taxing and exploiting civilians in others.
Weapons transfers from the army to the militias have undermined prior calls by the government for armed groups to demobilise and are planting the seeds of future conflicts by further militarising the region, according to Congolese analysts.
DRC’s anti-M23 campaign – which includes military alliances with southern African troops, Burundian soldiers, and private security contractors – has proved ineffective against the rebels, which began their latest insurgency at the end of 2021.
Increasing Rwandan support has allowed the M23 to massively expand its footprint this year, overshadowing other insurgencies in the east and raising the risk of a major regional conflagration between Rwanda and DRC and its allies.
The combat has uprooted 1.7 million people, and the use of increasingly heavy and sophisticated weapons has led to a surge in casualties, many of them Wazalendo fighters and child soldiers.
“I was in hospital for three months and I didn’t receive a single visit – neither from the authorities, nor from our commanders,” said Jaffar Abubakar, a 27-year-old father of two, who joined a Wazalendo-affiliated militia around a year ago.
Abubakar told The New Humanitarian that he had been shot through his arm, legs, and stomach while patrolling around Sake. Jaffar walked with a limp, his right hand was twisted unnaturally, and he had a colostomy bag hanging under his t-shirt.
At the moment peace does look far away.
Of course, one of the reasons though not the only reason the conflict continues is DRC’s mineral wealth. A lot of the militant groups, including of course M23, are actively involved in trading these minerals.
Why Does Exploitation Continue?
The International Peace Information Service (IPIS) published a report on the entrenched predatory mining practices in a province of the Eastern DRC. The main source of this predatory mining, the report says, are what they call semi-industrial companies that seem to be owned by China (5 Oct 2023).
Note: The study was funded by USAID.
The intersection between conflict and gold mining in Mwenga began as early as 1997 when the gold mines of the Société Minière et Industrielle du Kivu (SOMINKI, a former state mining company) were overrun by artisanal miners and rebel movements. Two decades later, conflicts still persist in the area, causing Banro Corporation, the multinational company that acquired the majority of SOMINKI's shares, to cease its mining activities in 2019 due to violence against its employees. While Banro's industrial operations were paralyzed, gold mining by semi-industrial companies - often Chinese-owned - increased significantly. Between 2017 and 2019, six semi-industrial companies established themselves in the territory, including Congo Blueant Minerals SARL and Société Orientale Ressources Congo SARL (ORC) (Map 2). Since their arrival, local populations, civil society and state authorities have complained about these companies’ behavior.
This report discusses how these semi-industrial companies have established themselves in Mwenga, as well as the impact of their practices on the security situation. The study uses the notion of ‘practical norms’ to explain the companies’ strategies to set up and secure their operations. ‘Practical norms’ refer to the gap between actual informal practices and the legal provisions that regulate the mining sector. It is a set of informal norms that underpin the practices of actors who deviate from official norms, notably the mining laws in this case. First, the practices of these companies do not abide by or adhere to the mining law and formal regulations governing the mining sector. Second, in order to acquire access to gold deposits, they sign partnership agreements with mining cooperatives, which serve as fronts for the companies. Consequently, the cooperatives do not act in the best interests of the artisanal miners whom they supposedly represent. To date, the details of these agreements remain opaque. Third, the mining companies continue to operate with the support of a vast predatory network involving state, customary, and military authorities at various levels.
The Congolese Army acts as enforcers for the companies.
The geographies where the semi-industrial miners work have become areas that operate outside of government control without mining taxation or traceability of mineral production. State mining services and local authorities do not dare to enter the mines because of heavy militarization in and around the mines through the deployment of large numbers of soldiers of the national army (Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, FARDC) and police, who are perceived as so-called ‘Chinese guards’. This excessive presence of security forces also lies at the root of illegal taxation and has led to arbitrary arrests.
Traditional chiefs can be considered key actors enabling installation of semi-industrial companies in Mwenga. They have organized social dialogues to convince local populations to accept these companies’ operations, dialogues often perceived as a way to silence, and even intimidate, the population.
At the heart of tensions surrounding semi-industrial gold mining in Mwenga are civil society actors who have been the main whistleblowers. The advance of semi-industrialization has however also led to the creation of multiple new civil society organizations and a climate of division between them. This does not happen by chance but is rather the intended consequence of a policy of ‘divide and rule’ developed by the mining companies and their supporters. The semi-industrial exploitation of gold has thus become one of the main drivers of insecurity, at times involving local militias. This insecurity manifests itself not only in terms of physical violence, but through the destruction of the means of subsistence of local populations.
These companies meanwhile create conflict and division by pitting the local chiefs against the population.
Finally, the study highlights long-term security risks, as semi-industrial mining is a major source of predation, social destruction and conflict. First, semi-industrial gold mining actors operate in well-established, powerful networks that enable predatory behavior against local populations. Operating from the national capital of Kinshasa, the South Kivu capital of Bukavu, and at the mining sites, these networks involve state authorities, heads of the mining administration, the military and police, as well as customary authorities. It is thus hard to tackle this climate of predation. The second risk factor concerns the way in which semi-industrial gold mining affects mining governance, namely by creating areas where the State cannot control activities and production, by fostering suspicion over corruption by state and customary authorities, and by making the gold trade more opaque. Thirdly, a heavy price is paid in terms of social cohesion as semi-industrial gold mining creates deep divisions within local civil society and pits traditional chiefs against their own populations. Therefore, there is a risk of score-settling by dissatisfied populations in which local militias may become active. These risks urgently need to be addressed if the gold sector is to be beneficial to the DRC and its people.
The report says that they end with recommendations for addressing these issues.
The world, including the West, has been talking about stopping this exploitation since the 2000s. Western organisations mobilised to get the West to track minerals and stop exploitation. Melanie Gouby writes for Foreign Policy (FP), reproduced at the Pulitzer Center, about the failure of those policies (22 May 024).
Why Congo has been in a perennial state of upheaval since the mid-1990s has been the subject of much debate, but no other narrative has cut through as much as that of so-called conflict minerals. In the 2000s, the link between markets’ demand for minerals and the war in Congo helped bring attention to the conflict in an unprecedented way. Western organizations such as the Enough Project and Global Witness mobilized around the seductive proposition that the solution to one of the world’s deadliest conflicts was within the grasp of consumers and policymakers, triggering a series of laws and regulations beginning with, in the United States in 2010, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act. The logic behind the legislation was simple. “Armed groups finance themselves through the exploitation of cassiterite, gold, coltan,” Fidel Bafilemba, a Congolese researcher who used to work for the Enough Project, told me at the time. “By stopping the export of these conflict minerals, we dry up their resources and lessen the violence.”
Section 1502 required companies to conduct due diligence checks on their supply chain to disclose their use of minerals originating from Congo and neighboring countries and to determine whether those minerals may have benefited armed groups. The legislation didn’t outright ban the sourcing of minerals from mines contributing to conflict financing but instead intended “this transparency and its attendant reputational risk” to pressure companies to stop buying them voluntarily, according to Toby Whitney, one of the authors of Section 1502.
What followed is an important lesson for a world rushing to secure critical minerals for the energy transition. Western advocacy led to policies focused on derisking supply chains and virtue signaling to consumers, rather than improving artisanal miners’ living conditions or addressing the conflict’s root causes. That narrative continues today: An Apple store in Berlin was vandalized last week by Fridays for Future activists accusing the tech giant of sourcing so-called conflict minerals from Congo.
ITSCI, the region’s leading private traceability scheme, is facing criticism about the validity of its work—and that it has not improved the lives of artisanal miners in the region. ITSCI stresses its limited mandate and that it is working as intended. But in a cruel twist, the cost of the due diligence program has been shouldered by Congolese miners themselves, effectively asking the world’s poorest workers to pay for the right to sell their own resources to Western companies.
It appears the problem was that the companies did not concern themselves with the people of DR Congo. They just wanted to be free of the stigma associated with buying conflict minerals. Thus, they first imposed an embargo—leading to the people being left with no way to sell minerals—and then, imposed a bureaucracy and tax regime, which made selling the minerals difficult and expensive.
“We started selling again, but it’s a cacophony. There is a ton of admin, taxes after taxes, and prices have gone down. We have been weakened by all this,” Kulimuchi said.
As the de facto embargo on eastern Congo’s minerals lifted, by 2012 thousands of small sites across the region found themselves effectively outlawed by a new mine site validation process. To be able to sell, Congolese mining sites must now be inspected by a delegation of government representatives, NGOs, and U.N. agencies. At sites given the go-ahead from that audit, the Congolese artisanal mining agency carries out its own checks while also tagging and recording the minerals in logbooks for ITSCI. There are other records kept by the provincial government’s Mining Division and a regional body. Many sites are still waiting for an audit. For those that don’t conform, the consequences are devastating: “You are destroying the livelihood of hundreds or thousands of people,” said Maxie Muwonge, who was a program manager for the International Organization for Migration between 2013 and 2018 when it was tasked with coordinating the validation process. “This excludes entire communities. What are they meant to do? Do you think these people stopped working?”
In fact, even under the de facto embargo, the minerals trade never really stopped. It just went further underground. Rwanda’s export statistics, which experts say don’t match its reserves, suggest that smuggling to neighboring countries spiked during the period. While the volume of trafficked minerals has fallen with the reopening of the legal market in eastern Congo, smuggling is still an issue, not least because of the market distortion caused by heavy regulation and taxation in Congo of small businesses. “Many collapsed because they couldn’t meet the requirements, and the investment in the sector decreased. It broke down artisanal miners even further,” Muwonge said.
Joyeux Mumpenzi followed in his mother’s footsteps when he decided to become a négociant, an intermediary who buys minerals from the creuseurs, or diggers, and transports them to export companies in large cities—a reflection of the highly organized division of labor in the artisanal sector. “To begin with, we have no say regarding the going price—the London Metal Exchange sets it, and it fluctuates constantly,” he said. “Then there are all the taxes, and finally, the export company retains a penalty on my payment for ITSCI.”
(I am excerpting only bits but you should read the article in full. Interesting how local people view boycotts—not in favour. What they want is to earn enough, I suppose. Instead, a lot of money goes into what the ITSCI does because companies pass down the cost to the miners.).
Hmm… The FP says that the Global Witness had reported that ITSCI may also provide cover for smuggling minerals into Rwanda. The FP has not been able to verify those reports. The FP links to the Global Witness report, which also details other flaws in the tagging system such as malpractices by poorly paid and even unpaid government agents (Updated 30 May 2022).
Our findings suggest that ITSCI's system has permitted the laundering of tainted minerals in DRC. Large amounts of minerals from unvalidated mines, including ones with militia involvement or that use child labour, enter the ITSCI supply chain and are exported, evidence suggests. ITSCI’s incident reporting frequently appears to downplay or ignore incidents that seriously compromise its supply chain.
The most extensive evidence of the scheme’s failure in DRC comes from the area around Nzibira, where a trading centre in South Kivu accounted for around 10% of minerals tagged in the province in 2020. In the first quarter of 2021, the production of the validated mines in Nzibira sector amounted to less than 20% of the nearly 83 tonnes of 3T minerals tagged there.
Interviews with officials, traders, miners and others confirmed that the bulk of minerals tagged came from unvalidated mines in neighbouring territories,including mines occupied by militias and one where children frequently work. One of those mines was Lukoma, where a militia has used violence against the local population and forced miners to work unpaid, as well as exacting a levy from traders. The Ministry of Mines is said to tag bags despite being aware of this illegal levy.
ITSCI has been aware of the risk of conflict minerals contaminating its supply chain around Nzibira since at least 2014, when its own governance assessment acknowledged the danger. A 2015 report by a local NGO presented evidence of large volumes of tagged minerals being falsely attributed to unproductive validated mines in the area. These findings were corroborated by a consultant commissioned by the US NGO Pact, ITSCI’s implementing partner,who also confirmed that tagged minerals came from areas controlled by militias.The consultant concluded that government officials and local ITSCI agents were aware of the situation and were engaged in a cover-up.
While ITSCI acknowledged allegations of laundering, it omitted from its public incident reporting mention of the most problematic issues identified by its own consultant, namely militia involvement and its own agents’ complicity. ITSCI apparently failed to tackle the alleged problems, as —a 2018 UN report again found evidence of laundering of minerals from mines controlled by a militia and the Congolese army. This investigation documents that in 2021 the same problems seem to persist.
There you have it. The US and EU compounded preexisting problems by not putting enough thought into their law making.
Driving Indigenous Communities Out of the Environment
Something that has been true across postcolonial nations including in Africa and South Asia is the spread of Western imagined conservation that does not think of indigenous systems or communities as they seek to protect environments. The Oakland institute that calls this mode of conservation fortress conservation brought out a report on the subject in DR Congo (27 Aug 2024).
From Abuse to Power: Ending Fortress Conservation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Oakland Institute exposes conservation’s counterintuitive deep ties to the extraction of natural resources and abuse of Indigenous Peoples in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Throughout decades of environmental conservation in the country, the government and NGOs have failed to address the issue of land grabbing and violence against Indigenous communities. Measures taken in recent years, such as training, grievance mechanism, and safeguards, are inadequate given the systemic flaws of the current fortress conservation model.
The report details how security forces and ecoguards involved in “environmental protection” and conservation NGOs running some of the national parks, such as World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), are responsible for horrendous violence and atrocities committed against Indigenous communities. Security forces and ecoguards enjoy impunity for these crimes despite the funding provided by the German and US governments for material support and their training.
The Indigenous communities in DRC have, for years, unsuccessfully sought justice by filing lawsuits in domestic courts. Batwa community members expelled from the Kahuzi-Biega National Park took their case to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, alleging violence, rape, murder, and arson that have victimized their people are crimes against humanity. In July 2024, the African Commission recognized the Batwa’s rights to their land and ordered the DRC government to return the land to its rightful owners, compensate them, and ensure their full protection.
Just one of the ways colonialism continues to affect the postcolonial world to our detriment.
An Epidemic Amidst the Conflict and Global Apathy
A mpox (formerly called monkey pox) outbreak adds to DR Congo’s problems and humanitarian crisis. ABC examines how an mpox outbreak became a public health emergency in DR Congo (18 Aug 2024).
DRC is now enduring its worst outbreak yet, with all 26 of its provinces recording cases of the virus, according to its state-run news agency.
Salim Abdool Karim, an infectious disease expert who chairs the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's emergency committee, said the DRC outbreak has a particularly concerning change in that it's disproportionately affecting young people.
Children under 15 account for 70 per cent of cases and 85 per cent of all deaths in the country, the Africa CDC reported.
At least 13 African countries have recorded cases, four of them for the first time.
The outbreaks in those four countries — Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda — have been linked to DRC's, and Doctors Without Borders said on Friday that DRC's surge "threatens a major spread of the disease" to other countries.
The WHO said the new variant could spread beyond the five African countries where it had already been detected — a timely warning that came a day before Sweden reported its first case of the new strain.
DRC had limited access to vaccines.
Duke University's Global Health Institute director Chris Beyrer said the global community missed multiple warning signs, including calls by experts to share vaccines with Africa.
"We're paying attention to it now, but mpox has been spreading since 2017 in Congo and Nigeria," Dr Beyrer said.
He said the WHO's emergency declaration was "late in coming", with more than a dozen countries already affected.
Dr Beyrer said there was a good vaccine and good treatments and diagnostics for mpox, but "the access issues are worse than ever" in places like eastern DRC.
War, displacement, exploitation all played a part.
Dr Beyrer said the humanitarian crisis in DRC complicated efforts to stop the mpox outbreak in almost every possible way.
That includes war, illicit mining industries that attract sex workers, transient populations near border regions and entrenched poverty.
Millions of people in DRC are thought to be out of reach of medical help or advice in the conflict-torn east — where dozens of rebel groups have been fighting Congolese army forces for years over mineral-rich areas, causing a huge displacement crisis.
Seven million people are internally displaced in DRC, with more than 5.5 million of them in the country's east, according the UN refugee agency.
DRC has the largest displacement camp population in Africa, and one of the largest in the world.
International aid group Medair's health advisor in DRC, doctor Pierre Olivier Ngadjole, said about 70 per cent of the new mpox cases in the last two months that were recorded at the group's Goma treatment centre were from displacement camps.
The youngest of those cases was a month-old baby and the oldest was a 90-year-old, he said.
Conflict and displacement makes it possible for other difficulties to arise. War is after all preceded (or is it followed? Accompanied anyways) by pestilence and famine. And death.
In any case, the international community has sent in some vaccines after the mpox started affecting them too. Al Jazeera reports that the first shipment of vaccines has arrived (5 Sep 2024).
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has received its first batch of mpox vaccines, which health authorities hope will help curb an outbreak that has prompted the United Nations to declare a global public health emergency.
The Central African country of about 100 million people is at the epicentre of an mpox outbreak that the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global public health emergency last month.
A plane carrying vaccine doses donated by the European Union touched down in the capital Kinshasa around 1pm local time (12:00 GMT), the Reuters news agency reported.
Congo’s Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba Mulamba told reporters the newly arrived vaccine had already proved its worth in the United States and would be rolled out to adults in DR Congo.
“We know which provinces are heavily affected, notably Equateur and South Kivu … The idea is to contain the virus as quickly as possible,” he added.
The vaccines come from the Danish pharmaceutical laboratory Bavarian Nordic. It is the only vaccine approved in Europe and the United States and is only intended for adults. Trials are currently being conducted for potential use on children over the age of 12.
A reminder that Bill Gates is one of the reasons that Africa doesn’t have a domestic pharmaceutical industry. We saw the same dynamics play out during Covid 19 (I wonder if Africa is fully vaccinated yet) and he is now trying to destroy the continent’s agriculture.
A Prison Break to Boot
In the overall scheme of things, a prison break attempt is not the greatest of worries. But the condition of the prisons is cause for worry. Ajabu Adolphe and Malcolm Webb report for Al Jazeera about the prison break and the terrible conditions in the prison that may have caused it (9 Sep 2024).
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo – It was two hours after midnight last Monday when the first bursts of gunfire rang out in Selembao municipality, south of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The shots, some deafening, created panic among residents who traced the ruckus to Makala central prison and wondered what could be happening.
Soon after – in videos that went viral on social media – footage emerged of prisoners brandishing torches as they made their way through the darkness, before the situation degenerated when the sound of locks being forced mingled with screams and the thumping of bullets.
In the aftermath, Congolese authorities said there was an attempted jailbreak at Makala – which holds 10 times the capacity it was built to take. They said at least 129 prisoners were killed – some shot by security forces, others crushed and suffocated.
Authorities said no one escaped. However, inmates and prisoners’ rights groups say there are nearly 2,000 fewer prisoners in Makala now than before the incident.
Though details of what transpired last Monday remain unclear, several inmates inside the prison spoke to Al Jazeera by phone to piece together what they saw and heard. They described hours of frenzy and fear – as prisoners were shot and crushed, structures were destroyed and female inmates were gang-raped.
In response to questions from Al Jazeera, Patrick Muyaya, a Congolese government spokesperson, confirmed some of what the inmates described, including instances of rape. He said an investigation had been launched into what happened at Makala – and whether security personnel used excessive force, as rights groups have alleged.
The guards shot and killed a few escapees whereas other prisoners entered the women’s area and gang raped multiple prisoners.
Part of the problem in the prison is immense overcrowding and corruption.
Makala prison was built in 1957 to accommodate 1,500 people, but currently holds between 14,000 and 15,000 detainees, according to official figures – the vast majority of them men. Activists say nearly three-quarters of inmates have never been tried in court.
Rights groups have long criticised the dire conditions inside Makala.
Video shared online in July by Congolese journalist Stanis Bujakera, who was held there for six months, showed inmates drinking out of buckets on the ground and sleeping piled on top of one another, with barely any space to move between them.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, current and former inmates said there is no food or clean water; people die regularly from malnutrition and diseases; and prisoners pay guards and prison bosses to get a piece of the floor to sleep on.
Inmate Jean, who has been detained in Makala since 2020, told Al Jazeera he pays the guards to sleep in a “VIP” section of his block, where he gets a little more space and food brought in from the outside. “If you pay, they grant you a small space to sleep in, not on top of one another. It’s a big business,” he said.
The reports add that the intolerable conditions are typical of all prisons in DRC.
The Human Rights Watch released a report on the prison break and demanded that the government investigate the abuse (10 Sep 2024).
Human Rights Watch interviewed three prisoners by telephone who said that suspected youth gang members, known as kulunas, attempted a mass escape in the early hours of the morning of September 2. Several prison buildings caught fire during the attempted escape.
Makala, like many prisons across Congo, has massive overcrowding, poor infrastructure, and inadequate resources. While details surrounding the escape attempt remain unclear, the authorities claim that officials fired “warning shots” before firing on escaping prisoners. The authorities said that most of the deaths were from a stampede. The prison’s administrative buildings have been destroyed, including its archives, creating significant problems in identifying the exact number and identities of the people who were held in the prison.
The United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials provides that law enforcement officers should only use firearms where there is an “imminent threat of death or serious injury” and “only when less extreme means are insufficient” to prevent such harm. The “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.” Where warnings of firearm use can be given, there should be “sufficient time for the warning to be observed.”
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obligate governments to investigate and appropriately punish those responsible for abuses against people in custody and to provide reparations for victims.
The HRW also describes the poor conditions and sexual assault of women and asks the government to take necessary actions. Oh, they say that in some sections, rather than the police, it is the prisoners who provide security. Most of the prisoners are not convicts and are there awaiting trial. So, the bail system is also a problem just like in India, I suppose.
That is it for today, everyone. Until next Wednesday, stay safe. Be well. Take care.
May the Congolese and all other Africans be free of exploitation and conflict.
