IBAHRI and British parliamentarians publish report on sexual violence, minerals and child labour in the DRC
A new report titled Responses to Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (‘the Report’) has been published by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) and the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on International Law, Justice and Accountability – a cross-party group in the United Kingdom’s Parliament that focuses on the application of international law standards to ensure justice and accountability for core international crimes.
Dr Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Prize laureate from east Congo, world-renowned gynaecologist and human rights activist, wrote in the Report: ‘Women and girls have paid and continue to pay a very high price in this forgotten war and neglected crisis. The systematic recourse to rape and gender-based violence, including sexual slavery and forced pregnancy, used by all combatant forces – Congolese and foreign armies or armed groups – has been characterised by the widespread and systematic nature of these most heinous crimes.’
The Report includes several recommendations for the UK government to address the issue of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), including:
- by pursuing further avenues for justice and accountability;
- conducting education and awareness-raising campaigns;
- driving forward legislative reforms and policy changes;
- imposing financial regulations and sanctions; and
- closely monitoring the situation.
The DRC has been at war for more than three decades. According to the United Nations, the DRC has experienced an explosion of sexual violence with more than 113,000 recorded cases in 2023, with the figure reported to have doubled in 2024.
On 19 June, the day commemorating the UN International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict, an in-depth discussion of the Report was held in the UK Houses of Parliament in London, with a panel of experts. The session, titled ‘Conflict-related Sexual Violence, Conflict Minerals, and Child Labour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, was chaired by Lord Alton of Liverpool. Discussing the interrelated subjects were Brendan O’Hara MP, Chair of the APPG on International Law, Justice and Accountability, Sara Elizabeth Dill, Partner at Anethum Global and Co-Vice Chair of the IBA War Crimes Committee, as well as Mark Preston and Carl Beech, co-founders of the Freedom and Justice Partnership.
Mr O’Hara said that the violence in the DRC surrounds the mining industry. He stated: ‘Conflict related sexual violence is a weapon of choice. Not only does it break a victim, it breaks a family, it breaks a community and, all too often, it breaks a community for generations to come.’ He went on to explain how targeting mining industries and Western mining corporations will assist in putting an end to CRSV in the DRC, and the importance of sharing the findings of the Report. Mr O’Hara concluded by saying: ‘Whether you act on it or not, you cannot say that you did not know it was happening.’
Ms Dill spoke on the challenges and best practices in prevention, investigation, prosecution, and reconciliation of CRSV. She began by addressing the multiple forms of violence women suffer across the world and how CRSV has become a tool to terrorise civilians, dismantle communities and reinforce gender hierarchies. Regarding the DRC specifically, she told the parliamentary guests that many rape survivors are facing an additional health crisis as the number of HIV cases is rising amongst them.
Ms Dill remarked: ‘In the DRC, CRSV is being used deliberately by insurgents and, alarmingly, by elements of the state. In North Kivu, the M23 offensive triggered a 700 per cent increase in cases in just one month […] this horror is compounded by stigma, trauma and the near-total collapse of justice. Survivors are blamed, silenced [and] ostracised. Some are forced to marry their rapists. Children as young as three have suffered these atrocities.’
Ms Dill called for the urgent need for holistic peacebuilding measures to be implemented in the UK and stressed the importance of having women at the table for peace processes, post-conflict rebuilding and transitional justice. She also proposed a joint initiative with the European Union and the African Union to support the DRC in fully implementing reparation laws. The importance of funding to assist with attaining accountability was underscored, with Ms Dill proposing the seizing of assets of those responsible to be used for reparation and the funding of task forces to build relationships between policemen, judges and victim-survivor advocates.
Ms Dill said: ‘Justice must be real, focused and visible for survivors. We cannot wait for the next atrocity or lengthy justice process. Even if convictions are achieved, the trauma remains. Let us act firmly, humanely, and without delay. Let us ensure that the survivors of Congo are never again forgotten or abandoned.’
Mr Preston spoke on the exploitation of children, explaining that the DRC is responsible for more than 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt extraction and that 20 per cent is mined using a method known as ‘artisanal mining’, ‘a polite phrase that obscures a brutal reality’ of 40,000 children working in abysmal conditions.
Mr Preston described what he saw when he visited mines with his friend Carl Beech. ‘We saw children, some as young as six or seven, toiling with hand tools in toxic dust. It is a place where teenage boys scrape a living from the earth without gloves, masks, or even shoes. No safety. No contracts. No dignity. Only danger and exploitation under the control of armed men. This hell on rare earth is, in short, a vacuum. And in that vacuum, we must acknowledge the uncomfortable reality that current corporate frameworks and international policies are at best performative and at worst complicit.’ Mr Preston concluded: ‘[O]ur modernity must be matched by our morality. That the batteries powering our future should not be tainted by the exploitation of their today.’. Click here to read his full remarks.
Mr Beech spoke of having to feign being an investor in mining to gain access. He described the scenes in the mines as being like ‘Dante’s inferno, without the fire’ and that the area was full of corporate mining machines, ‘as far as the eye can see’. He also described scenes of cobalt being mined by children with their bare hands and spades and tipping it into trucks, each truck holding $1m worth of cobalt. He told further of mothers with newborns strapped to their backs wading through toxic water and shovelling cobalt.
Expanding on the situation, Mr Beech told the audience that there were holes in the ground that were dug by children without safety equipment. He said that many of the children collapsed, so he and others were likely walking on their graves. He explained how most of the children are homeless, without identities or birth certificates so, technically, not existing, and that they are struggling to make enough money to feed themselves. Some of the children develop lung diseases or rare cancers due to exposure to toxins in the mines, Mr Beech said.
Measures that should be introduced Mr Beech suggested are giving the children digital identities; introducing harsh penalties on companies who are inactive in improving the situation; and launching an educational campaign to ensure that the public knows what cobalt is, where it comes from, and to avoid products, such as cars and phones, that use cobalt mined from these exploitive areas.
In his concluding remarks, Lord Alton said: ‘[The] UK is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. If the consumers at least knew the goods they were buying were made using child and slave labour, if people at least knew what they were buying and it was marked in a way [that shows how] it had been manufactured, then at least that would empower people to make other decisions, even if it costs more money.’
The IBAHRI provides secretariat to the APPG on International Law, Justice and Accountability and IBAHRI Director Baroness Helena Kennedy LT KC is the Vice Chair.
ENDS
Contact: IBAHRI@int-bar.org
Notes to the Editor
Click here to download the report.
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The International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), established in 1995 under Founding Honorary President Nelson Mandela, is an autonomous and financially independent entity, working to promote, protect and enforce human rights under a just rule of law, and to preserve the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession worldwide.
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The International Bar Association (IBA), the global voice of the legal profession, is the foremost organisation for international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies. Established in 1947, shortly after the creation of the United Nations, it was born out of the conviction that an organisation made up of the world's bar associations could contribute to global stability and peace through the administration of justice.
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