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PEACE FOR MINERALS: DRC ACTIVISTS REFUSE AMERICAN BLACKMAIL  
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Marinella Correggia
May 5, 2025
Il Manifesto Global
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_ Congolese civil society rejects U.S.-brokered peace with Rwanda:
‘any agreement that strips the nation of its natural wealth would
constitute the crime of pillage.’ _

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The negotiation process toward a peace deal between the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda – mediated by the United
States – is still shrouded in secrecy. 

On Friday, May 2, exactly one week after Kinshasa and Kigali had
signed a “declaration of principles” in Washington, each capital
was supposed to deliver the elements of a draft framework built around
six pillars: territorial sovereignty, the fight against armed groups,
the mineral trade, the return of displaced people and refugees,
regional cooperation and the role of international forces.

The draft, however, is yet to materialize. The package under
discussion – with a final peace treaty projected for June – also
contains two bilateral economic deals with the U.S. One would channel
multi-billion-dollar American investments into Congolese mines and
related infrastructure. The other would reward Rwanda – long the
sponsor of the AFC/M23 militia now lording it over eastern Congo –
with development of its facilities to process, refine, and market
minerals extracted in the DRC, legally funnelled through Rwanda and
then exported to the United States. In short, Washington is giving its
blessing to Kigali’s well-known triangulation approach.

However, Congolese civil society is refusing to stay silent. In a
series of open letters addressed to international actors, it warns
that, after 30 years of war, it will not accept that the crimes
committed against the population should be forgotten, nor agree to the
fire-sale of the DRC’s national resources as the price of a
Kinshasa-Kigali accord.

Dozens of activists, scholars, jurists, researchers and doctors –
among them Nobel Peace laureate Denis Mukwege – have written to
President Félix Tshisekedi: “Ten million of our compatriots survive
today in the grip of armed violence and the terror of famine under the
yoke of the occupying Rwandan army and its allies, the AFC/M23,” a
tragedy “for which neighbouring states’ expansionist ambitions and
Congo’s own failures of governance bear joint responsibility.”

Hence their plea that the head of state “must not sell off the
country’s natural resources to the Kigali regime within the
framework of regional economic integration promoted under the aegis of
its U.S. patron.” They stress that “any agreement that strips the
nation of its natural wealth would constitute the crime of pillage.”
While they agree that “peace is the only perspective”, underground
riches and natural resources can contribute to that goal only in a
context of fairness. Under the Congolese Constitution, sovereignty
rests with the people: before signing anything, Tshisekedi must
consult the country’s “living forces,” parliament and civil
society.

For its part, the South Kivu Civil Society Coordination Office has
also written to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk
demanding “truth and justice” as the path to peace and
reconciliation under the rule of law. Since the AFC/M23 seized Bukavu
and other areas “under the powerless gaze of the Congolese
government,” murders, kidnappings, rapes and thefts have multiplied,
all with impunity. Jobs have vanished, along with even the bare
minimum of security. Backed by the Italian network Insieme per la Pace
in Congo, the activists ask Türk to “send investigators from other
countries to Bukavu to work with us, the protagonists of civil
society” to tamp down abuses, and to set in motion a path toward an
international criminal tribunal for the DRC, along with specialized
mixed chambers within Congolese courts.

A coalition of NGOs from eastern Congo has also written to Donald
Trump: “The Congolese people will be legitimately entitled to oppose
– by every lawful and factual means – any mineral deal that fails
to involve them directly and through their representatives in
parliament and civil society.”

Meanwhile, business-first diplomacy continues in Qatar, where Kinshasa
is negotiating both with the M23 and with Kigali. So much for the
mantra of “African solutions to African problems.”

Originally published
at [link removed] on 2025-05-04

_Il manifesto was founded in 1969 on the idea that truth and
freethinking are more important than everything else, including
profit. The paper pays for its editorial idealism in the form of lost
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There are no owners (il manifesto is a cooperative), and the editor
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filing dispatches from Paris, London, Berlin, Jerusalem, Havana, New
York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. _

* Democratic Republic of Congo
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* Rwanda
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* rare earth minerals
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* neo-colonialism
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* Trade Agreements
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