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Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC)
By Ainsley Sullivan
The DRC Crisis: What's Currently Happening?
DRC is and has been facing a humanitarian crisis since the late 1800s.
Approximately 6 million lives have been claimed by the crisis in recent history.
It has never experienced political stability since the 1880s, and the Eastern part of the country is the most affected by the turmoil.
It is facing rampant corruption in the government, legal, and business sectors, human rights violations, famine, disease outbreaks, war with Rwanda, and mass displacement.
Corruption
The current President, Felix Tshisekedi, has been accused of rigging the Congo’s 2019 election due to leaked vote counts from the Catholic Church and the Independent National Electoral Commission.
He ran on a platform of reducing corruption and bolstering the economy, though there have been no reforms of the scale he promised during the campaign.
Despite a lower than average unemployment rate (4.54% is the 2023 figure as reported by The World Bank), the extreme poverty rate (meaning people who survive on less than 2.15$ per day) seems to be semi consistent among sources as approximately 75% of the 112.6 million populace.
Furthermore, multiple organizations have branded him an authoritarian and demanded he take action against domestic and foreign militia and human rights abuses taking place in the working sector, as the Eastern part of the country is facing ongoing conflict between the Congolese army and allied groups against Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group, where the latter is occupying several cities.
Aid money meant to alleviate the hunger, disease, and human rights violations has been rerouted and stolen on a multitude of occasions, which doesn’t help the already dire situation.
Famine
Though the entire country is famine-stricken, the eastern provinces like North Kivu are particularly hard to hit because of the M23 military occupation and dense forest that covers the country, making aid inaccessible to many. this along with Government corruption and theft of funds makes foreign and local aid much more difficult.
Disease Outbreaks
Thousands of cases of measles, cholera, and Mpox circulate throughout the country every year. Additionally, according to the World Health Organization, the DRC has experienced six Ebola outbreaks since 2018 (2022 figure). The DRC is the 11th largest country on the planet and is covered by 60% rainforest, meaning that vaccines are hard to come by since they cannot be travelled without refrigeration and many people live in hard to reach areas, nor do volunteers have the funds to reach these areas.
Plans for universal healthcare are in the works in the government but it is one of the (monetarily) poorest countries, so this may be difficult, especially when considering the entire country has less than 10 thousand doctors.
Cobalt Mines
Perhaps the most well-known issue the DRC faces is in its mining industry. It is a resource-rich country which has made it a target for multinational corporations to avoid their own country’s labour laws.
A majority of companies mining in the DRC are transnational, though there are some significant state-owned companies. This doesn’t make much of a difference since bribery of government officials is common, and companies like Glencore Mining have had to pay large fines for bribery.
Child labour is reportedly extremely common in these mines and so are health complications, as prolonged exposure to cobalt (such as breathing in, mining, and touching for multiple hours per day) is extremely toxic, causing extensive damage to the heart, blood, lungs, and liver. It doesn’t help that there aren’t uniforms or safety precautions taken.
History (How the DRC Evolved Alongside Crisis)
CONGO FREE STATE:
In early 1885 King Leopold II, under the guise of philanthropy, took the Congo Free State as personal property to use for rubber production. Those who did not comply were often shot, tortured, sexually assaulted, and in some cases, their villages destroyed entirely. Their land was stripped for resources and globalised with no benefit to locals. Under Leopold II’s reign, 10 million Congolese died of famine, disease, and slaughter.
BELGIAN CONGO:
Eventually, after international outcry against this violence, Belgium annexed the Congo as a colony, and it became Belgian Congo in 1908. There was slightly less brutality, but resources were still being exploited and natives were treated as second-class citizens.
REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO:
In 1960, The Republic of the Congo gained freedom after international pressures, growing nationalism, and conflicts. It was a quick, poorly planned departure that left a power vacuum. Both USSR and American sides in the Cold War backed different sides of the conflict, which culminated in the first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo being assassinated (both Belgium and the US are implicated in this).
ZAIRE:
Then came Zaire, a country with only one president over 3 decades that soonafter fell due to political tensions and the Rwandan genocide, which saw the country being used militarily by the Hutu. This, along with the fact that the country had never been stable, led to its fall.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO:
Finally, the DRC emerged in 1997 and has been affected by recent and old history. They have no previous political stability to return to, which makes this crisis particularly hard to solve for humanitarian experts.
Why the History Matters
To understand how we arrived at one of the worst humanitarian disasters modern history has faced, the deep history of violence in the country must be understood.
The Congolese struggle can be understood through the lens of brutality at the hands of colonial actors.
The country is still being stripped and exploited for resources, hence why learning about how long that’s been going on is important.
