The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) holds an estimated $24 trillion in untapped mineral deposits, including vast reserves of cobalt, coltan and copper, making it one of the most mineral-rich countries in the world, yet its population remains among the world’s most impoverished. This is not a mere coincidence, nor is it merely the result of governance failures deliberately cultivated by external actors. It is the outcome of a continued, centuries long, legally sanctioned system of extraction: one constructed by colonial powers and maintained today through international trade deals, corporate supply chains and deliberate geopolitical destabilisation. Understanding the DRC´s situation requires examining not only economic inequality, but the specific legal tools that enabled and continue to perpetuate this cycle.
Law as a Tool for Colonial Legitimacy
International law, far from being a neutral arbiter of justice, has historically served as an instrument for colonial conquest. One of the earliest examples of this were the works of the sixteenth century Spanish jurist Francisco de Vitoria, in which he created the early concepts of sovereignty, not for the protection of Indigenous Peoples, but to more effectively govern and assimilate them under European rule. By selectively incorporating Indigenous populations into the emerging framework of international law, colonial powers were able to cloak their dominance in the language of ‘neutral’ legality.
Similarly, the doctrine of terra nullius, ‘nobody's land’ , drew on the broader European tradition that declared territories without European-recognised statehood as legally unoccupied and therefore available to seize. This piece of legal fiction applied to lands despite them being densely populated and self-governing. It provided the foundational justification for the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, where European powers divided the African continent between themselves with no consultation or regard for its inhabitants. It was under this legal cloak that Belgian King Leopold II was permitted to claim the Congo, not as a Belgian colony, but as a private estate, unleashing one of the most brutal regimes of mutilation, forced labour and mass death upon the Congolese people.
The Deliberate Suppression of Congolese Self-Determination
The violence did not come to an end with formal decolonisation. When the DRC gained independence, its first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, immediately aimed to redirect the country's vast wealth toward benefitting its own people. His vision was clear: that Congolese resources should serve Congolese citizens. Within a year, he was assassinated, with the direct involvement of the CIA and complicity of Belgian intelligence, with a thinly veiled justification of preventing ‘ communist influence’ in a ‘ resource-rich’ region. The phrasing itself is telling, where Lumumba's crime, in the eyes of Western powers, was not ideological but rather that he threatened to interrupt their flow of profit.
Lumumba’s assassination catapulted decades of rule under Mobutu Sese Seko, a domestic regime actively bankrolled by Western governments precisely because it upheld the extractive economy. This pattern, where external powers sustain instability whenever genuine local governance might redirect resource wealth, has continued to define Western engagement with the DRC.
The Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The 1994 Rwandan genocide has itself been considered a catastrophe, shaped in part by geopolitical influence and Western negligence. But its aftermath extended far beyond Rwanda's borders. In 1996 Rwanda invaded the eastern DRC, facilitated by diplomatic inaction, the passivity of the United Nations, and Western military support. While the initial stated aim was to pursue Hutu genocidaires that had fled across the border, the invasion became a vehicle for the systematic plundering of eastern DRC’s mineral wealth; a region holding vast reserves of cobalt, coltan and gold.
The consequences of this destabilisation persist today. Militia groups, many serving as proxies for regional and international interests, continue to control mining operations across eastern DRC. The EU–Rwanda mineral agreements serve as a striking contemporary example: rather than engaging with the DRC directly and equitably, the European Union (EU) has entered into supply agreements with Rwanda, a country with minimal mineral reserves of its own, effectively facilitating the extraction of conflict minerals. This arrangement deprives the DRC of revenue whilst actively incentivising the continuation of the conflicts that make true independent Congolese governance impossible.
Cobalt, Corporate Complicity, and the Limits of Sustainability Law
More than 60 per cent of the world's cobalt supply originates in the DRC. Cobalt is crucial to lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles. These technologies are marketed as innovations for a clean sustainable future by corporations like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla. Yet the supply chains feeding these products come directly from mines where young children work in life-threatening conditions and where communities bear severe environmental degradation without meaningful compensation.
This cannot be described as a case of mere ignorance. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Tesla and other corporations are named in the International Rights Advocates lawsuit, grounded in field research by anti-slavery economist Siddharth Kara, clarifying that these corporations have long been aware of the conditions in their supply chains and despite this, continue sourcing Congolese cobalt. The gap between corporate sustainability commitments and supply chain reality is not just hypocritical but is also a structural feature of an economic system that has always placed its true costs onto the Global South.
Breaking the Cycle: Redesigning the Legal Architecture
The DRC does not lack resources, but rather lacks geopolitical freedom to benefit from them. International law, trade agreements and corporate accountability frameworks continue to be designed to serve the shareholders of resource-extracting nations rather than the people of resource-rich nations. Meaningful change would require a fundamental reorientation of these frameworks, one in which the EU, home-state legislators and international bodies hold corporations accountable not just for what they report, but for what their supply chains produce on the ground in eastern DRC.
Yet, the political obstacles are formidable. The EU’s own mineral agreements, such as the deal with Rwanda, suggest that even actors with formal human rights commitments prioritise supply security over accountability. Whether existing legal tools, such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, can bridge the gap between stated values and supply chain reality remains an open question. If the legal architecture remains designed by and for the powerful, the DRC’s wealth will continue to flow outward, and its people will continue to pay the price.
