Chilling articles telling of egregious atrocities in eastern Congo have been littering every major newspaper for the past month. A report surfaced a week ago about 30 women who had been kept in a dungeon and were gang-raped for almost a month on the Congo-Angola border. Another report by the U.N. alleged that 300 civilians (both men and women) were raped in the span of three days by Congo’s own army, the FARDC. Yet another article, featured on the New York Times’ front page, revealed the incompetence of the UN’s Peacekeeping Mission in Congo (MONUC) because it failed to intervene when a village less than a mile away from the MONUC compound was raided, leading to the gang-rape of over 200 women.
Beginning with the mutilation and mass killings of King Leopold’s notorious regime funded by Congo’s rubber, the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo is littered with political corruption, egregious human rights abuses and a deadly resource curse. While the current conflict in eastern Congo is complex, the main contributing factor is the illicit mineral trade. The profits from minerals including tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold has funded numerous rebel groups, most notably Rwandan Hutu Interahamwe militia factions, the Lords Resistance Army of northern Uganda and the FARDC, which is largely unpaid. As these minerals are essential to the production and function of many electronic products, including computers, mp3 players and cell phones, companies like Apple, HP, Intel and RIM are indirectly funding these armed groups to perpetrate mass human rights violations against the people of the DRC. In the past twelve years, hundreds of thousands of women have been raped. In the last month alone, MONUC reported that 15,000 women were raped. Since 1998, 5.4 million have died as a result of this conflict and millions more have been displaced from their homes.
Through our current procurement policy, AU, like all electronic consumers, is indirectly and unknowingly complicit in the revenue stream that funds the paramilitary groups who are committing horrific atrocities in eastern Congo. Stanford University, Westminster College and Cornell University have all adopted more ethical procurement policies and as this movement towards conflict-free continues to gain momentum, it’s time for AU to do the same. As students, our tuition should be used toward the betterment of ourselves and our respective communities, not towards the destruction of the Congolese.
Carly Oboth Junior, School of International Service
Aaron Alberico Junior, School of Public Affairs
