MINERALS AND CONFLICT: Conflict minerals have fueled and continue to help sustain armed violence in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo), linking them to the deadliest conflict globally since World War II. The four conflict minerals (gold, along with tin, tantalum, and tungsten, the “3Ts”) are not the only source of income to armed groups, but they are some of the most lucrative. The illegal exploitation of natural resources today is a manifestation of the grand corruption linked to violence that has marked successive governments in Kinshasa and the broader region since colonial times.
The U.N. Group of Experts on Congo found in 2015 that gold continued to be a source of funding for armed groups and Congo’s army. 1A study from the Enough Project found that armed groups made an estimated $185 million from conflict minerals in 2008.2 In 2007 the Pole Institute noted “minerals are a major source of income and of conflict in North Kivu as in the whole of the DRC,” 3 and in 2001 the UN experts found that “minerals [were] the engine of the conflict.”
A mortality study by the International Rescue Committee looking at conflict-related deaths between August 1998 and April 2007 estimated that more than 5.4 million people died as a result of armed conflict in Congo.5 There has been continuing violence since that study, but no definitive follow up has been conducted on the mortality toll