![]() ![]() Recent incidents in the DRC are a flare-up of long-boiling disputes between foreign-owned mining companies and artisanal miners. Yet, some companies appear to perform better in terms of preventing violence than others running very comparable sites. Local incidents of violence are common in and around mining sites in the DRC and beyond. It is not the abundance of opportunities to loot off artisanal miners that led to violence, but the lack of opportunities for artisanal miners to earn a livelihood. ![]() The case of DRC-and evidence from other countries-suggests a different connection between minerals and violent conflict. Although armed groups may extort industrial mining companies, artisanal miners are thought to be particularly vulnerable to predation, and therefore involuntarily prolonging this cycle of violence. The “conflict minerals” narrative is generally understood as the use of funds from minerals to support and perpetuate violence by non-state armed groups. Studies highlight that countries with high-value resources such as diamonds are more likely to experience civil war. ![]() The problem of “conflict minerals” has received widespread attention from the public and researchers alike. Weeks later, the army engaged in a similar expulsion campaign at Glencore’s Kamoto Copper Company mine, this time involving 20,000 artisanal miners. The soldiers torched the small village of Kafwaya in an effort to expel more than 10,000 artisanal miners-small-scale miners who use basic tools-from one of the DRC’s largest copper-cobalt mines, the Tenke Fungurume Mine (TFM). On June 17, 2019, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) army deployed close to 800 troops in an attack on its own citizens. ![]() Guest post by Anouk Rigterink and Kristen DeCaires Gall ![]()
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