All That Glitters is Not Gold: Dubai, Congo and the Illicit Trade of Conflict Minerals
Publisher: Partnership Africa Canada
Date: 2014
Topics: Extractive Resources, Governance
Countries: Congo (DRC)
Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) has released a report that seeks to better understand the illicit trade of gold, and to a lesser degree, diamonds, emanating from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the role industry and state actors play - primarily in neighboring countries and the United Arab Emirates - in facilitating this illegality. According to PAC, its report, titled "All that Glitters is Not Gold: Dubai, Congo and the Illicit Trade of Conflict Minerals," focuses on DRC as the diamond- and gold-producing country has been the site of often-violent extraction of valuable natural resources for over a century. More recently, gold mines in eastern DRC have been at the epicenter of a protracted armed conflict that has claimed millions of lives and economically destabilized the Great Lakes region for the last decade. PAC notes that despite being mineral rich, DRC's underdevelopment is directly linked to a "myriad of inter-related factors" including corruption, armed conflict, political instability, poor domestic enforcement capacity and a lack of fiscal instruments to realize the full potential of its mineral wealth.