Resources and Resourcefulness – Gender, Conflict, and Artisanal Mining Communities in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo
Publisher: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Date: 2015
Topics: Extractive Resources
Countries: Congo (DRC)
There are few things that evoke such passionate and divergent reactions as the issues surrounding gender, conflict and mining in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). At once reviled by international advocacy organizations and celebrated by local communities, mining is viewed as both the scourge and savior of a region wracked by decades of violence. This report will look at artisanal and small-scale (ASM) mining in North and South Kivu – two of the most conflict-affected provinces in the DRC. By taking a human rightsbased approach, this project aimed to examine issues specifically relating to gender, militarization of the extraction process and free and equal participation in political, judicial and economic systems. By speaking with a wide variety of actors who live and work in these communities, we attempt to identify issues that are common to mining-affected areas. While this report attempts to distill universal themes from the qualitative research, there are geological layers of complexity in these systems that no one message can easily capture and no one solution can easily address.