Mark Lancaster is Shadow Minister for International Development and, as the main Conservative team on Project Umubano base themselves in Rwanda, has travelled north to neighbouring war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. There he is seeing for himself the impact that years of conflict have had on the World Heritage site of Virunga National Park, which straddles Northern Rwanda, Uganda and Eastern DRC and is home to some of the worlds’ last remaining mountain gorillas.
In the wake of the Rwandan genocide, 15 years of violent conflict in Eastern Congo has produced one of the worst humanitarian tragedies in recent history. Fighting between a multitude of rebel militias and government troops, the breakdown of the rule of law and the gradual destruction of all social infrastructure are believed to have contributed to an estimated 5 million civilian deaths. Whilst many may argue that today the ‘war’ is over, as the armed militias continue to rampage across vast tracks of the Eastern Congo, what is clear is that the humanitarian crisis certainly is not.
Disputes over natural resources have always been an underlying cause of armed conflict. Natural forests in particular harbour some of the more established armed groups in the region such as the Hutu FDLR and until recently at least, the Tutsi CNDP as well. All wars need to be paid for and Illegal trafficking of forest resources, in particular charcoal, provides these groups with one of their primary sources of income. In 2008 alone, the annual turnover of illegal charcoal was estimated at over US$30m, much of which is channelled through the armed groups which control the trade, 92% of the charcoal used in Goma and Northern Rwanda comes from Virunga national park.
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