Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: why is there so little being said about this crisis?
Foto: Agência Opheia/Reprodução Instagram
The conflict ravaging the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is one of the largest and most complex humanitarian crises of our time. The violence is not limited to ethnic disputes, it is deeply tied to the extraction of minerals that are essential for the energy transition and for the global tech industry—such as cobalt, used in batteries for electric vehicles and electronic devices.
While international powers maintain a strong economic presence in the region, political neglect and scarce media coverage are contributing to the invisibility of the Congolese population’s suffering. To better understand the conflict and the reasons for its omission from public debate, Conectas spoke to Pedro Borges, co-founder of Alma Preta Jornalismo. Borges, who is a journalist and human rights activist, stressed that the conflict in the DRC “is part of the discussion surrounding energy transition.” “This is a very current debate and is a strong motive for the conflict.
We get the impression that it is a matter of a group of Africans—Black people—who are fighting over a disagreement, they have some issue with each other, they don’t like each other. In reality this is not the case. This explains nothing,” he says.
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See the full interview below:
Conectas: What was your experience like covering the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? What motivated your reporting, and what were the main challenges?
Pedro Borges: I think there is an explicit dynamic at play when it comes to the lack of coverage about what is happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in other African countries. So I think there is a journalistic issue here—a matter of journalistic criteria.
And, as journalists, we see a very large gap. For journalists working on human rights and racial issues, the gaps in coverage of race in Brazil are huge, with significant blind spots.
This can also be seen at the international level. Anything to do with the African continent is marked by a huge gap. We see a global scenario with many wars, and wars have been dominating what is discussed. But, the wars on the African continent are not part of the discussion. So, I think this is one of the reasons.
There is also the fact that the conflict in the DRC is deeply rooted in the discussion surrounding energy transition. This is a very current debate taking place there and it is a conflict that is driven by this, so I think those were the main motives.
Regarding challenges—there are many challenges. There is the challenge of language. I had to learn some basic French to be able to communicate with the Congolese, but not all of them speak French. So, I often had to rely on colleagues who were with me, who would kind of interpret from French into Lingala or Swahili, I least in the places I went to.
Another challenge is safety. I was traveling to a country in conflict. So I had to prepare well—including a training course I did with the Brazilian army–a training course with CECOPAB (The Brazilian Joint Peace Operations Training Center). Brazil sends military personnel to the United Nations and has a training center. I had to prepare very well, and I also had to get organized with safety equipment. There is always a lot of preparation on a first trip, especially when you go alone. Even though you are well prepared, it is the first trip, so you need to be very careful.
As well as this I faced significant challenges regarding health, because it is a country that has outbreaks of disease. And there are diseases there that have been eradicated in Brazil, but that we have to deal with over there. So I had to be prepared for that.
I’m sure you can understand the many challenges and preparations involved in reporting of this kind. And I think there is the challenge of the reporting in itself, which is that you need to know the history of the country, a large country and one that also contains a wide range of diversity. So, there are challenges in terms of journalism, such as finding sources. There is not great transparency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, so not even fact-checking is particularly straightforward. These are all difficult aspects of this work.
Conectas: How do you assess the response of the international community, especially in light of the humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people in the country?
Pedro Borges: Well, the international community is utterly remiss when it comes to what is happening there. The international community is there, but I find it careless—and even racist—to hold onto the belief that this conflict is purely and simply an ethnic one.
When we frame it like this, we are giving the impression that it is a matter of a group of Africans—Black people—who are fighting over a disagreement, they have some issue with each other, they don’t like each other. In reality this is not the case. This explains nothing.
There is an interest on the part of this so-called international community—which often boils down to Europe and the United States—but there is silence on the political arena, in the public arena and in the realm of debate. However, the international community are overwhelmingly in evidence on the economic front. So they are there, represented by big corporations, multinationals, agents and embassies that are highly active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. So it is also careless to say that they are unaware of the situation.
In fact, they are well aware of what they are doing. These countries are very much in evidence and play a significant role. Monusco is the largest UN peacekeeping mission. So, how can we claim that the international community is not there? What is lacking is the political will to bring this conflict to an end, because many people make a great deal of money from it.
Conectas: Given the low level of coverage of the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by the traditional media, both locally and internationally, how does Alma Preta seek to break with this pattern and what concrete actions can Brazilian civil society take?
Pedro Borges: Well, I am a Black journalist, a member of Alma Preta, and one of its founders. I think that all of us—and others too—share the same frustration: nobody is covering this. The Brazilian corporate media and commercial outlets don’t cover it. And not even what we might call the progressive or independent press is covering it. So I thought: if they aren’t going to cover this issue, then we should go and do it ourselves, right? Let’s go there and report on this as Alma Preta. That’s really it—we came into being with this purpose: to do the kind of reporting that the corporate press does not do.
We have thrown ourselves into this reporting and we continue to do so. I don’t whether we have managed to break the silence—that’s probably something best judged by others. Still, we do feel that there have been some interesting repercussions, in certain spaces in Brazil, and we remain committed to this work. I think this kind of coverage has influenced some people, some important people. So, in that sense, I think it’s fair to say that we have made some inroads through our reporting. And we have also had some experiences with the corporate press where we’ve been able to achieve really wide reach.
For example, I can tell you about an episode of “O Assunto” that we took part in on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in an interview with Natuza Nery. We reached a very large audience because we are talking about the most listened-to daily podcast in Latin America. I believe this is how we have been trying to break this silence.
The press is part of society though, isn’t it? The press and society feed into each other, right? So there is little public demand, but there is also little coverage, and the press will say that this issue doesn’t get much traction, that audiences are low. It is a vicious cycle. In fact, it is clear that there is no interest on the part of the Brazilian press in doing this kind of reporting. And circling back to what I said at the beginning, I don’t think the Brazilian press is going to cover this because these are African countries, these are Black people. There is no sense of shared humanity on the part of the public or on the part of these media outlets. These are not, then, people who are considered worthy of a feature story or of a report that would expose the atrocities that are taking place, and then perhaps question the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Itamaraty) and the Brazilian government about the expulsions.
It is worth nothing that recently the Brazilian president, Lula, attended the opening of the UN General Assembly where he delivered a speech addressing a number of points. One of the most important points was when he spoke about multilateralism. He spoke at length about the violence taking place in Gaza and on related matters, but he did not speak out about the conflicts taking place on the African continent. At the same UN General Assembly, the president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo took the floor and spoke about the silent genocide of which the Congolese people are victims. I think this says a lot not only about Brazil as a country but also about Brazilian society. The choices made by the Brazilian president are very much aligned with what Brazilian society expects from him. Not even progressive sectors and the press and so on, are likely to call on the Brazilian president to speak out on this issue because it is not regarded as important.
