Competition over mineral wealth has long been intertwined with conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The resurgence of the March 23 Movement (M23), including its capture of mineral-rich territory, has renewed attention to the role of mines, trade routes and cross-border mineral flows in financing conflict.
Drawing on more than two decades of experience in eastern DRC, the report examines what peace operations, development actors, sanctions, responsible-sourcing initiatives and other interventions have – and have not – been able to do about the conflict economies that sustain violence. It considers where these different responses have reinforced one another, where gaps have persisted and what this experience suggests for future peace operations or other efforts to address regional conflict systems.
The findings have immediate implications for the current efforts to broker peace in eastern DRC and sustainably address root causes of conflict in the Great Lakes region. As ceasefire monitoring and transitional security arrangements move forward, the report identifies ways to better account for strategic mining areas, trade routes and other political-economy dynamics that can trigger renewed conflict. It also considers how immediate security arrangements can be connected to longer-term efforts to address the regional conflict-financing systems that have repeatedly adapted to previous interventions.
The case also speaks directly to current debates about the future of UN peace operations. The DRC experience suggests that peace operations have more tools to address conflict economies than is commonly assumed, and potentially offer a comparative advantage in bringing political, security and technical responses together. The findings, in terms of how MONUSCO responded to conflict minerals, but also about the gaps in development actors' responses and the blockages to integrated and coordinated responses between MONUSCO and these development actors, provide important lessons for current debates about how to structure future peace interventions, both with respect to peacekeeping structures and along the full spectrum of other mission or non-mission structures.
A stand-alone Executive Summary of the main report is available here.
This publication is supported by the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme, funded by UK International Development. XCEPT brings together world-leading experts and local researchers to examine conflict-affected borderlands, how conflicts connect across borders, and the drivers of violent and peaceful behaviour, to inform policies and programmes that support peace. For more information, visit www.xcept-research.org.
