Democratic Republic of Congo Reports

An illegal charcoal cartel is helping to finance one of the most prominent militias in central Africa and destroying parts of Africa’s oldest national park. Nursing alliances with Congolese army and police units and operating remote trafficking rings in the sanctuaries of Congo’s protected forests, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) is a kingpin in Africa’s Great Lakes region’s organized crime networks and a continuing threat to human security ...

Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank 1502) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Conflict Minerals Rule have improved global minerals supply chain transparency and begun to help break links between the minerals trade and violent conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo) ...

Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank 1502) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Conflict Minerals Rule have improved global minerals supply chain transparency and begun to help break links between the minerals trade and violent conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. For nearly two decades, illicit mining and minerals trafficking – primarily in tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold (“3TG”) – have provided significant financing to a range of armed groups as well as corrupt and abusive elements of the Congolese army ...

The Enough Project urges the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to review the case, National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) et al. v. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), to ensure that a damaging recent decision on the issues of corporate free speech and peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo does not stand without review ...

Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is part of an onslaught of poaching in central Africa, and continues to pose a threat to local populations, across a swathe of central and east Africa, according to a new field-researched report by the Enough Project. The report, Tusk Wars: Inside the LRA and the Bloody Business of Ivory, tracks how ivory trafficking funds LRA operations and perpetuates violence against civilians. It uncovers new evidence of ivory trafficking into Sudan, including testimony by ex-LRA members of transactions with Sudanese merchants, as well as alleged trade with Sudan Armed Forces officers ...

New field research from the Enough Project shows that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is weakened to an unprecedented point, counting only 120 armed fighters in its ranks, scattered across three countries in central Africa. Despite its weakened state, the LRA continues to pose a threat to local populations in Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and in South Sudan, with 150 recorded attacks and 500 abductions of civilians for the first eight months of 2015 and 200,000 people displaced ...

Testimony of Sasha Lezhnev, Enough Project Associate Director of Policy, before the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations hearing on “Ridding Central Africa of Joseph Kony: Continuing U.S. Support,” given on September 30, 2015 ...

While significant progress has been made towards creating a conflict-free minerals trade in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, gold continues to fund armed commanders. Thanks to on the ground initiatives in Congo, international activist and industry pressure, and federal legislation in the United States, 70 percent of the 3T mines (tin, tantalum, and tungsten) are now free of armed groups and Congo’s army, according to the International Peace Information Service. However, only 35 percent of gold mines in eastern Congo are conflict-free, with abusive Congolese army commanders and armed groups still profiting from the trade ...

A trade in illegally mined and smuggled “conflict gold” is fueling both high-level military corruption and violent rebel groups in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to a new report by the Enough Project. “Congo’s Conflict Gold Rush: Bringing gold into the legal trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” by the Enough Project’s Fidel Bafilemba and Sasha Lezhnev, offers an in-depth portrait of the conflict gold supply chain, from muddy artisanal mines where gold is dug out with shovels and pick-axes, through illicit transport routes in Uganda, Burundi, and Dubai. Based on seven months of field research ...