#DRC, "Solution Country" to the climate crisis ? My colleague @jm_senga and I recently traveled for @amnesty to the South-East of the #DRC, where industrial mining of #cobalt threatens the survival of entire communities. 👇🏽THREAD 1/11
As @Precop27RDC comes to an end in Kinshasa and ahead of #COP27, Congolese and international policymakers must stop turning a blind eye to the fate of people at the frontline of industrial mining of strategic minerals… 2/11
The mining city of Kolwezi, in the former Katanga province, has all the features of a "sacrifice zone." There, multinationals extract #cobalt and #copper, 2 minerals that are driving the energy transition. 3/11
On the ground with local partner IBGDH, @amnesty interviewed over 100 families forcibly evicted from their homes and farmland due to the unbridled expansion of industrial #cobalt and #copper mines. 4/11
Downtown Kolwezi, the neighborhood of Cité Gécamines - one of the few urbanized areas with basic infrastructure (water, electricity, sewage) - is being erased from the map, by a #cobalt / #copper mine, operated a Chinese-Congolese joint-venture. 5/11
The people we spoke to report lacking access to information and effective consultation. 6/11
In February 2022, Mama C, mother of 9 children, showed us her house, walls and foundations were cracked due to nearby explosions of a nearby industrial mine. She was fighting to receive a fair compensation. 7/11
When we returned in September, there was nothing left but ruins. Faced with the intransigence of the company, the lethargy of the authorities & risk that the house would collapse during the rainy season, she gave up her fight & demolished her house to recover raw materials. 8/11
In a town north of Kolwezi, we spoke to dozens of farmers forcibly evicted from their lands without prior consultation. Some of the women who ventured out to collect their crops reported being assaulted by Congolese military officials. 9/11
Rights abuses seem to be the norm, not the exception. Thousands of people are affected. Kolwezi could disappear, leaving the fate of its more than 1M residents in the hands of multinationals. (The detailed report of Amnesty & IBGDH should be published by January 2023). 10/11
As the world moves away from fossil fuels, thousands of people risk becoming the collateral damage of strategic mineral exploitation. If the DRC is a solution country to the climate crisis, one must ask at what cost?
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