(Kinshasa) Amnesty International accuses multinationals of having engaged in forced evictions, threats, acts of intimidation and deception against local populations at cobalt and copper extraction sites in the south-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a report published Tuesday.
In this report entitled “Fueling change or the status quo? », Amnesty and the Initiative for Good Governance and Human Rights (IBGDH), an organization based in the DRC, analyze the human rights impact of four projects in the mining region of Kolwezi (Copper and Cobalt Mine of Kolwezi, Mutoshi Mine, Metalkol RTR and Kamoa-Kakula Mine).
The two organizations believe that the race to expand these mining operations has led to the forced expulsion of people from their homes and fields.
These evictions, “carried out when companies seek to expand industrial mines […]are destroying lives and must stop immediately,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
Instead of benefiting from the growth of the mining sector, people living in the Kolwezi region “are being forced to leave their homes and agricultural lands to allow the expansion of large-scale industrial mining projects”, according to this report.
These evictions are often carried out by “mining operators who have little consideration for the rights of the populations concerned and just as little respect for national laws intended to limit forced evictions linked to the mining sector”.
Entire villages were destroyed, like that of Mukumbi, the report indicates.
“The whole village was burned, we couldn’t salvage anything. Nobody had any money anymore. We had nothing to survive. We spent nights and nights in the bush,” Kanini Maska, a former resident, told Amnesty.
“This expulsion shattered my dreams […]I lost everything and I live constantly with the fear of losing everything, even if I settled somewhere again,” explained Papy Mpanga, another former resident of the village.
The DRC is Africa’s largest mining producer and supplies more than 70% of the world’s cobalt, a crucial metal for batteries used in electronics and electric cars.
Amnesty International says it recognizes the importance of rechargeable batteries in the energy transition. However, writes the NGO, “decarbonizing the global economy must not lead to new violations of human rights”.