Special Report: Conflict Minerals in the DR Congo
- Genocide Watch
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 7 hours ago
By Grace Harris, Ebonie Kibalya, and Lea Gruber
Genocide Watch Great Lakes Team
A miner shows a bag containing coltan in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ...credit Alfredo Falvo/Contrasto/Redux
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has metal and mineral riches essential to global industries ranging from electronics and aerospace to renewable energy. This vast natural wealth has fueled devastating conflict. For over three decades, armed militias in eastern DRC have financed their operations by mining and trading coltan, gold, tin, tungsten, cobalt, copper and rare earths, sparking constant civil war and mass atrocities.
Control over these natural resources has driven recent M23 attacks in the eastern part of the DRC, where M23 rebels backed by neighboring Rwanda have seized the cities of Goma and Bukavu in 2025. The M23 offensive has killed over 7,000 civilians since January 2025.
Control over conflict minerals has had far-reaching implications for interregional relationships, global trade, and the future of the DRC. Serving as both a motivation for attacks and a way to sustain military operations, exploitation of mineral wealth plays a large role in the continuing humanitarian crisis in the DRC today.
Extractive mining and power struggles over control of mines have fueled conflict in the DRC since the Second Congo War began in 1998. Tin (cassiterite), tantalum (coltan), tungsten (wolframite), and gold- commonly referred to as the “3TGs”- are the primary conflict minerals that drive continuous civil war in North and South Kivu.
Cobalt and copper, key components of green energy technology, are not always labeled as “conflict minerals,” but they play similar divisive roles in the DRC’s south-eastern “Copper Belt.” Together, these resources are necessary for many global industries and products, including smartphones and laptops, energy storage batteries, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence chips, and aerospace and military technologies.
Small-scale artisanal miners, often children, are forced to work under harsh conditions while military and ethnic militias profit by taxing, controlling, and violently enforcing access to mines. M23 now controls all commercial points between Rwanda and the provinces of North and South Kivu. M23 has established de facto governance over the area and used its power to expand mining and smuggling operations.
Rwanda plays a central role in this mineral trade, acting as the dominant transit hub in the region. In 2022, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that Rwanda exported $654 million in gold, and in 2024, Rwanda exported 150 metric tons of coltan, vastly exceding Rwanda’s domestic production.
Uganda is also engaged in mineral smuggling out of the DRC, particularly exports of gold. Between 2020 and 2021, Uganda exported $2.25 billion in gold, despite its own very limited domestic production. Ugandan military forces in DRC's Ituri and North Kivu provinces are protecting Uganda’s economic interests. A 2024 UN report revealed that Uganda falsely labels DRC-sourced minerals as domestic exports.
Burundi, though possessing a smaller mining sector than Rwanda and Uganda, is a third transit point for smuggled gold from the DRC. Corruption among Burundian border officials enables the trafficking of conflict minerals.
Global corporations are involved in the conflict minerals trade in the DRC as well. The Chinese company Huayou Cobalt, through its subsidiary Congo Dongfang Mining International (CDM), is a major trader of cobalt sourced from the DRC.
Amnesty International reports that Huayou Cobalt has failed to file UN human rights reports. Huayou Cobalt maintains close ties to Chinese state-owned entities, including the China-Africa Development Fund. Despite US and Korean corporate denials, supply chain records link Apple, Microsoft, LG Chem, and Samsung to Huayou Cobalt’s unethical mining practices.
Apple is one of the world’s largest consumers of cobalt for lithium-ion batteries. Apple claims that it upholds strict ethical sourcing standards. Before 2016, Apple relied on assurances from its suppliers, including Huayou Cobalt. In December 2024, the DRC government filed criminal complaints against Apple in France and Belgium, accusing the company of incorporating illegally sourced minerals from DRC conflict zones into Apple’s supply chain.
Amnesty International investigations demonstrate Apple’s reliance on cobalt from the DRC. Although Apple has taken some steps to improve transparency, critics point out that Apple still relies on indirect oversight, selective disengagement rather than systemic reform, and failure to implement independent verification processes.
Armed militias in the DRC sustain their operations by exploiting mineral wealth. They control mining sites and extort mine operators, using their profits to buy weapons, pay fighters, and fund massacres, forced displacement, forced labor, and atrocities against civilians. Militias seize mining areas and demand “taxes” from miners and traders to fund weapons and fighters. In some cases, militias strike deals directly with mining firms. A 2016 investigation found Chinese-owned Kun Hou Mining supplied AK-47 rifles and money to the Raia Mutomboki militia for access to a gold site.
UN experts estimate that the M23 rebel group’s control of the coltan-rich Rubaya mine yields roughly $300,000 per month, with at least 150 tons of tantalum (coltan) ore smuggled to Rwanda. In gold-rich Ituri Province, armed militias earned at least $140 million in mineral revenues in 2024. These profits fund armed militia oversight of child labor while stripping the Congolese government of taxes.
Congolese government officials collude in these criminal networks. Global Witness investigations show how Congolese officials and army officers – as well as neighboring governments – facilitate the black-market mineral trade. In South Kivu, provincial authorities covered up illegal gold deals with militias.
UN Reports accuse Rwandan authorities of facilitating smuggling of conflict minerals into Rwanda. Such corruption enables Congolese warlords to reap enormous profits while Congolese villagers suffer.
International efforts to sever conflict mineral-militia links have failed. The OECD’s due diligence guidelines and regional certification schemes, like the International Tin Supply Chain Initiative ITSCI, have not stopped armed militias from maintaining control. UN reports show that many companies still turn a blind eye to fraudulent “conflict-free” tags.
The main conflict minerals traceability program, ITSCI, was suspended by the Responsible Minerals Initiative in 2024 for serious lapses. Yet many companies continue to accept ITSCI documents as proof they are sourcing minerals responsibly, even after serious fraud was exposed. The result is that the DRC’s minerals continue to finance armed militias, perpetuating militia atrocities despite years of efforts at reform.
Critics of conflict minerals sanctions programs point out that such programs often hurt the civilians and villagers who mine the minerals more than the militias and warlords that control the mines. The owners of mines have the resources to evade sanctions. Artisanal miners do not.
There are deeper underlying issues that are also driving conflict in the DRC today. Critics of conflict minerals prevention efforts assert that they are grounded in a colonial worldview that favors economic explanations and overlooks deeper ethnic conflicts. Economic determinists claim that M23 began its 2025 invasion to take control of the DRC’s rich natural resources. Such analyses ignore the geopolitical and ethnic divisions that drive conflicts in the DRC.
Tensions between the DRC and Rwanda have shaped the region’s security since the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The same ethnic conflict between Bantu farmers (Hutus, Lendu, Mai Mai) and Nilotic herders (Tutsis, Hema, Banyamulenge) that drove the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda have driven persecution of Tutsis in the DRC. The same mythology of indigenous inhabitants versus foreign “invaders” drives Mai Mai and Lendu massacres of Banyamulenge and Hema Tutsis in the DRC.
Congolese Tutsis constitute the majority of the M23’s militia. M23’s self-justification emphasizes the return and rights of Tutsi refugees. M23’s declared intent to advance towards Kinshasa points to ambitions that extend well beyond resource extraction, encompassing a broader political and military agenda. Rwanda’s backing for M23 militia’s insurgency in the DRC is the result of Tutsi solidarity against Hutu genocide.
While conflict minerals are fought over by global powers, resolution of conflicts in the DRC will require more than labelling minerals as “conflict-free” and imposing sanctions on violators of such labeling programs. – which can disproportionately affect civilians or further entrench illicit trade networks.
Labeling sources of conflict minerals, regulating trade, and imposing sanctions programs risk masking the deeper systemic, ethnic, and historical factors that have driven genocides in Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC.
The deep ethnic, cultural, and political conflicts that have caused genocides in the Great Lakes region must be resolved before conflicts over minerals can be attained. For such resolution, local, national, and regional leadership is necessary to address the complex interplay of ethnic, regional, and political grievances.
Conflict minerals lie at the heart of instability in the DRC. The exploitation of tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold and other resources continues to bankroll corrupt national governments, greedy corporations, and brutal armed militias. Natural wealth perpetuates humanitarian catastrophe.
The M23 militia’s resurgence – capturing territory and killing and torturing civilians with apparent support from the Rwandan government – starkly illustrates how competition over mineral wealth fuels regional conflict. Ultimately, ensuring lasting peace will require a reckoning with the role conflict minerals have in intensifying and sustaining conflict.
The Great Rift Valley was aptly named. Over a century into the wars and genocides that have cost millions of lives in Central Africa since the nineteenth century, the extraordinary natural wealth of the Great Rift Valley remains a curse rather than a blessing.
In this moment, with delayed peace talks and rising fears of all-out regional warfare, international preventive action is more vital than ever. Do African and world leaders have the courage, the imagination, and the will to take preventive action?
Genocide Watch recommends that:
The United Nations should coordinate sustained peace talks between the governments of the DRC, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda and M23 leaders to negotiate a peace agreement, taking into account the role of conflict minerals.
The Government of the DRC should enforce stricter mining laws, ensure transparency in contracts, and establish independent agencies to monitor corruption and mining governance.
Mining revenues should be taxed to benefit local communities, support honest public officials, and prosecute corrupt officials involved in illegal mining.
Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and other neighboring countries should cooperate with the DRC to establish regulated distribution, dismantle smuggling networks, stop illicit mineral flows, enforce regional certification schemes, and cease all support to armed militias.
Multinational corporations should conduct full supply chain audits, invest in traceability tools, support local development, and publicly commit to conflict-free sourcing with a code of ethics.
International organizations and donors should fund oversight and reform efforts in the DRC, legally enforce corporate accountability, expand sanctions against minerals traffickers, and increase pressure on neighboring states to enforce corporate transparency.
Civil society organizations in the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda should monitor mining abuses, report on corruption, and raise awareness both domestically and internationally.
