This paper investigates the peacebuilding potential of resource-governance strategies adopted in and towards mining sectors in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It introduces three analytical perspectives on the links between resources and conflict.
Mining has been responsible for much of these countries’ post-colonial growth, but also for their downfall during the 1990s.
Key findings :
- Elements of the three different perspectives on natural resource conflict apply to these countries. The environmental scarcity thesis is applicable only in Sierra Leone, where unequal access to land contributed to youth grievances in the run up to civil war. The resource abundance thesis contributes greatly to understanding the link between resource and conflict in both Sierra Leone and the DRC. In both countries, pre-war governments were weakened and lost much of their credibility as a result of mismanagement and corruption in non-renewable resource sectors. Furthermore, easily extractable high-value resources provided revenues for armed parties in both countries to pursue war efforts and survive militarily, thereby intensifying and prolonging civil war. Equally relevant is the political ecology thesis, which helps explain the conflict volatility of both countries’ mining sectors. The modes of resource production and wealth generation in both countries continue to pose security risks as a result of elite capture, labour exploitation, extortion and expulsion of artisan producers and local communities.
- The analytical perspectives of the two case studies reveal three dimensions of resource conflict for which peacebuilding strategies are still needed: (a) armed groups actively fighting over resource deposits; (b) soldiers and ex-soldiers predating on informal resource-driven economies; and (c) informal resource-driven economies characterized by labour exploitation, expropriation and criminalization.
- In terms of curbing rebel groups’ access to natural resources and associated revenues, international intervention—by means of commodity sanctions and military enforcement of these sanctions—has been much more feasible in Sierra Leone than in the DRC. Contrasting geographical, political and economic conditions illustrate why the Security Council rebuffed the commodity sanctions recommended by UN experts. However, the case can still be made for selective commodity sanctions rather than full embargoes on each commodity that is in some way benefiting armed factions.
- Although there is a growing repertoire of resource-related policy instruments and initiatives to end war, their success in achieving long-term peace is disputed. Strategies to impede the trade in so-called conflict commodities are criticized for overemphasizing the economic dimensions of war and neglecting belligerents’ political grievances. In addition, post-conflict legal reforms in resource sectors tend to strengthen the grip of central authorities over resources, at the expense of local resource-users who have no legal documents to prove their claims.
- The use of positive incentives—such as granting belligerents’ control over and access to resource-rich areas, revenues, businesses or key government positions— is controversial. In a way, such incentives reward violence and possibly incite new rounds of violence by those who feel insufficiently accommodated.
- The resource-driven war economies of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone cannot be eliminated by stricter law enforcement alone but will require an approach that re-establishes and democratizes local governance, settles issues of land rights and acknowledges user rights of artisan producers.
- In the post-conflict period, the priorities of national governments have been to increase the volume of legal resource trade and to attract foreign investment in industrial extractive industries. Neither of these approaches helps communities and artisan producers to clarify and strengthen their rights in relation to external investors and the state. If left underdressed, local grievances associated with extractive industries risk jeopardizing the level of peace that has been achieved in Sierra Leone and most of the DRC.
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