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CASE STUDY
Democratic Republic of Congo: Illegal exploitation of natural resources
The DRC is rated by CITES as one of the two most prob-
lematic countries in Africa for illegal exploitation of natural
resources, from ivory to elephants. In some sites in the
country, 90% of elephant carcasses discovered had been
poached.
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Ivory is considered to be hunted and traded by
militants for weapons, ammunition, food, and other mate-
rials required to sustain insurgent movements. The Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA), Janjaweed, the Democratic Forces
for the Defence of Rwanda (FDLR), Mai-Mai Morgan, and
various local armed militias regularly poach elephants and
hippos for ivory in the DRC. Many of these same groups
are directly implicated in illicit timber, charcoal, gold, and
mineral trades and have been connected to serious human
rights abuses including mass murder, recruitment of child
soldiers, kidnapping, forced labour, sex slavery, mass looting,
and displacement. These armed groups hunt elephants by
organizing and supplying locals to hunt the animals. Impor-
tantly, ivory is a commodity available to lower level fighters
who are unable to benefit from more lucrative taxation
schemes controlled by militant group leaders.
Garamba National Park is located along the northern border
with South Sudan. The LRA and Sudanese poaching gangs
use it actively, and local poachers who operate with impunity
in the insecure environment, also blame the militias. Most
of Garamba is too dangerous to patrol. Park rangers can only
conduct foot patrols in the southern third of the park, south of
the Garamba River.
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By 2013 the park’s population of 22,000
elephants had decreased by 90% to around 2,000 animals.
The park was home to the last wild populations of Northern
White Rhinoceros in the world before being poached to
extinction in the 2000s by Sudanese poaching gangs, possibly
Janjaweed.
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Travelling in gangs of dozens of hunters and
porters, the Sudanese poachers, typically armed with AK-47s,
poach elephants in and around the park.
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The LRA, operating
on direct orders from their leader Joseph Kony, hunt elephants
in order to trade ivory to transnational criminal groups for
guns, ammunitions, food, and other supplies. In 2009, the
group attacked the park headquarters, killing 17 of the park’s
staff.
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Ugandan forces linked caches of tusks found in the
Central African Republic CAR to the LRA.
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