Sustained combat between the M23 movement and government forces in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has displaced over 300,000 people from their homes throughout the province of North Kivu this past month, as reported by the United Nations refugee agency. Fueled by lingering geopolitical and ethnic tensions from the 1994 Rwandan genocide and an ongoing battle for control over highly-valued natural resources, the alleged Rwanda-backed rebel group has been engaged in military action against the Congolese government since its seizure of capital city Goma in 2012, leaving many vulnerable to military violence and human rights violations. Subsequent escalations from M23 groups, including the recent siege of the Ituri province in 2021, have sparked concern among UN officials and various international agencies about the possibility of a worsening humanitarian catastrophe in the region. 

Experts have raised growing concerns of civilian casualty in the affected areas, citing that the current scale of attacks in the Ituri province has hindered humanitarian organizations from effectively delivering aid and coordinating peacekeeping operations. Matthew Saltmarsh, a spokesperson from the United Nations, expressed “great alarm” over the matter to reporters in Geneva on Friday. “Civilians continue to pay the heavy and bloody price of conflict, including women and children who barely escaped the violence and are now sleeping out in the open air in spontaneous or organised sites, exhausted and traumatised,” said Saltmarsh to Al Jazeera, assuring that the UN and its allies would be expediting assistance for groups most vulnerable to inadequate shelter, food, and water access. 

Exacerbating the country’s vulnerability to conflict and violence is its vast natural resource wealth, estimated to be worth nearly $24 trillion of unused mineral resources according to the Council for Foreign Relations. These minerals include cobalt, colt, lithium, tin, and others found in personal technology like laptops and cell phones. Skyrocketing global demand for these “conflict minerals” has created a gateway to riches that can be appropriated by armed militias and the organized crime networks corroborating with them, as occurred over the span of the June 2000 “Second Congo War” fought between Ugandan and Rwandan forces over the region’s diamond mines. Undoubtedly, the mineral trade served as a major economic boon for rebel groups such as M23 and the FDLR throughout the 2000s; Foreign Policy reported that armed groups generated between $138 to $226 million from their activity in 2008 alone, the same time around which the Congolese Pole Institute observed the trade as “a major source of income and of conflict in North Kivu, as in the whole of the DRC.” 

The common tragedy of sexual abuse against women and children in the eastern Congo also relates to the region’s resource politics, as local officials have observed a worrying correlation of military presence across the DRC in these mineral-rich areas with increased rates of physical and sexual violence against civilian inhabitants. “Most places that are home to mines are where the assaults on women have been most dramatic,” said Archbishop François-Xavier Maroy Rusengo to Foreign Policy in 2014. “War is planned by people who want to get a hold of this wealth.” 

What policy measures, then, have been enacted to keep this wealth out of the hands of violent groups and curb the spread of war? The United States’ sweeping passage of 2010’s Dodd Frank Act included notable provisions to require companies to investigate and disclose the use of “conflict minerals” sourced from the DRC, but findings on its effectiveness have been scattered. A 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office found that over time, fewer companies were filing preliminary reports of ‘due diligence’ and were not assigned clear performance benchmarks to gauge their progress in conducting these investigations. Other major importers of foreign minerals such as the EU were encouraged by the law to follow suit, but their success metrics are similarly limited. 

Though Dodd-Frank did curb a considerable amount of foreign demand for the tin, tantalum, and tungsten (“3T”) trade, outside interventions alone have not been enough to disarm combatants on the ground and work toward a peaceful solution. Violent activity of independent militia groups is still rampant, and will require the participation of Congolese government and military officials to prosecute and sanction the unlawful exploitation of natural resources by rebel groups, and primarily coordinate humanitarian assistance for the nearly 4.5 million internally displaced civilians and refugees, who are demanding more action from leadership.

 “My big wish is for the government to bring peace,” Christine Mukankusi Bashoboye, a mother of eight forced to flee from her village near Masisi territory, told The New Humanitarian. “It has been a very long time since there was a war in my village. It’s all new for me to live in such conditions, under a small tarpaulin with so many children. We just want peace.”