Natural Resources, Plunder and Reparations in the DRC: How the ICJ is Setting Precedents


May 19, 2016 | Eliana Cusato
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What might reparations for the illegal exploitation of natural resources in armed conflict look like? This question may soon be answered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the final episode of its long-running Armed Activities Case. In the meantime, Eliana Cusato considers the main legal findings of the ICJ in its landmark judgement, and the contribution of the World Court towards determining accountability for the pillage of natural resources.

The armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been one the longest and most violent since the end of the Cold War. According to some estimates, around 4m people have died in the conflict, which began in 1994 and ended with ceasefire agreements signed in 1999 and in 2002 (although some episodes of violence continued in 2006 and later). The role of natural resources in fuelling and financing the conflict in the DRC has been so significant that the case of the DRC can be regarded as the paradigm of the “resource curse”. The linkage between resources exploitation, violence and armed conflict in the DRC has attracted the attention of the UN Security Council and has been the object of a number of fact-finding reports conducted by the UN Panels of Experts and the Porter Commission, among others. The issue of illegal resource exploitation has been addressed by the ICJ in the landmark 2005 judgement in the Case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda (Armed Activities Case).