by Rona Jamieson
A war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo for almost 25 years, so why haven’t we heard about it?
The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s least developed countries with 15.6 million people in need of humanitarian aid, according to The International Rescue Committee [1]. The main form of violence began in 1996 but it all started in 1946 as the Strategic Minerals Stockpiling Act [2] was passed meaning that suddenly the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was put in the cross-hairs.
The main reason for this is because DRC is home to many valuable minerals to many industries across the world, specifically western countries. These minerals include diamonds, gold, cobalt, uranium and most importantly coltan2. This specific mineral is so valuable as it is used in many of our booming industries today, from phones and laptops to aerospace and defence industries. This makes coltan highly valuable to western countries and with the act dating from 1946, it means that countries such as France, the UK and the US can access these.
However, they don’t get it themselves. France, UK and US have sent financial and military resources to troops in Rwanda and Uganda, to take the coltan from the DRC. This has resulted in lots of violent conflict and a disregard for human rights within the country.
Since 1996, over 6 million people have died and half of those were children and half of that were children under 52. But the 6 million deaths aren’t even the half of it.
Multinational mining companies came to the region to take full advantage of the naturally occurring minerals, but this also meant taking advantage of what they deemed to be slave labour too. Therefore, men women and children were enslaved to go down the mines. A study in 2011 [3] found that 48 women in DRC were raped every hour. The violence is endless including the torture and starvation of DRC people and now this country is in dire need of help as it’s dealing with the aftermath of Ebola as well as a coronavirus hit.
This is not a new thing. In the 19th and 20th Centuries King Leopold II of Belgium committed mass murder across the country, killing nearly 10 million [4].
The population of DRC have been subjected to far too much just for being the country with the highest amount of coltan mineral.
[1] The International Rescue Committee. 2020. Democratic Republic of Congo. [Online]. [Accessed 20 October 2020]. Available from: https://www.rescue.org/country/democratic-republic-congo
[2] Hortons, T. 2019. Crisis in The Congo: Uncovering The Truth. 14 October. Global Trade Xchange. [Online]. [Accessed 20 October 2020]. Available from: https://www.globaltradexchange.com/blog.html?pstid=fbfba448e43a47b71c116f6be71672ac
[3] Adetunji. J. 2011. Forty-eight women raped every hour in Congo, study finds. The Guardian. [Online]. 12 May. [Accessed 20 October 2020]. Available from:
[4] Jones. O. 2015. Let’s be honest. We ignore Congo’s atrocities because it’s in Africa. 6 March. The Guardian. [Online]. [Accessed 20 October 2020]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/06/ignore-congo-atrocities-africa-drc-horror
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