Minerals and Conflict
Publisher: USAID
Date: 2005
Topics: Conflict Prevention, Renewable Resources
Countries: Congo (DRC), Sierra Leone
This toolkit is part of a series that explores how development assistance can address key risk factors associated with conflict. One area that is receiving increasing attention is the relationship between natural resources and violence. In many recent conflicts, valuable or scarce resources — land, water, timber, or minerals — have played a central role in both causing and sustaining violence. In particular, valuable minerals took center stage after "conflict diamonds" or "blood diamonds" became a prominent feature of Sierra Leone's civil war. Unfortunately, competition over minerals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has followed a similarly brutal course.