Ongoing pillage of resources taking human toll - UN

The illegal exploitation of natural resources in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is being consolidated in many areas, resulting in a ruinous effect on the civilian population, according to an interim report released on Friday at United Nations headquarters in New York, UN News reported.

Following two months of fact-finding within and around the Great Lakes region, particularly in eastern DRC, the UN panel of experts on the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth in the DRC issued a preliminary report of its findings to the Security Council.

The panel said that it had gained a better understanding of the varying roles of the different foreign armies and armed groups - both foreign and Congolese - in the exploitation of resources and in the country's continuing war.

With various strategies being employed to divert revenues for personal gain or to pay foreign armies - either to maintain their support against rival groups or to finance continuing, existing military operations - their immediate effect has been "the further collapse of most local economies and the deepening impoverishment of most Congolese families", according to the report.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian toll of this continuing exploitation is widespread, especially in eastern DRC. "Local populations, including children, are being conscripted and used as forced labour in the extraction of resources by some military forces in different regions," the report said.

Other tactics, such as the destruction of infrastructure for agricultural production, are allegedly used by different armed parties to force people to participate in extraction work, leading in part to increased food insecurity.

"Acute malnutrition rates are alarmingly high," the report noted. "While mortality levels vary greatly from place to place depending on the extent of conflict and the availability of health services, overall they are among the highest in the world."

Meanwhile, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, whose military has been repeatedly implicated in the plunder of DRC resources, was quick to dismiss continued accusations against his country. "We are told we are in Congo because of riches. Where is the richness? When I go there, all I see is a lot of poverty and forests," Museveni was quoted by Reuters as telling a news conference on Saturday.

"We've got too many minerals in Uganda, which we have failed to dig out," he continued. "How can we get capital to dig out minerals in the DRC while in the past 16 years we have been unable to get US $125 million to exploit over 230 million mt of phosphates in Uganda?"

The Security Council is due to discuss the panel's report this week. The panel resumed its activities on 18 February, after a several-month hiatus. Its current six-month mandate includes obtaining an evaluation of, and recommendations on, possible actions that could be taken by the UN Security Council, the international community, as well as transit countries and end-users, in order to help bring to an end the plunder of natural resources in the DRC.

A statement issued by the Security Council on 19 December 2001, when UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was requested to renew the panel's mandate, stated: "The Security Council notes with concern that the plundering of the natural resources and other forms of wealth of the DRC continues unabated. The Security Council strongly condemns these activities, which are perpetuating the conflict in the country, impeding the economic development of the DRC and exacerbating the suffering of its people"

A number of countries were implicated in the previous findings of the panel - particularly Rwanda and Uganda - which has convened three times since it began its work in September 2000.