The Nexus of Conflict, Mining, and Violence in Eastern DRC

Sep 30, 2025 | Ashley Nunes
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After decades of bloodshed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, President Félix Tshisekedi recently demanded the country’s parliament and the international community recognize the massacres in the provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri as genocide. At the 60^th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which opened Sept. 8, in Geneva, Tshisekedi pressed the international community to confront the mass atrocities taking place in the DRC. Violence there today, as in years past, is driven by a struggle over the region’s mineral wealth coupled with postcolonial instability. Tshisekedi’s claims of genocide in the DRC define the competition over its resources as a motive for the increasing violence, a problem without a simple solution.