Anvil Case Study

The result of the class action law suit from the attack on the village of Kilwa was that several Congolese military troops were charged for arbitrary detention, rape, looting and shelling the town with mortar bombs which destroyed several homes. Also three Anvil employees were charged for facilitating the attacks on Kilwa. Although Anvil itself was not charged with any crimes committed. Latter on in the trial the Anvil employees and Congolese troops were acquitted of their charges because they were declared that they were fighting against a rebel group in order to protect the village. This legal outcome that Anvil and the Congolese troops faced is unjust because although they were fighting rebels their main goal was to secure the coltan mine

More corporate social responsibility should be taken to ensure that the Congolese are being protected against the atrocities they are facing. The biggest problem that is happening in the DRC is that transnational corporations like Anvil are exploiting coltan and gaining massive amounts of economic profit whereas the DRC is hardly benefiting from the mining of coltan. This problem that the DRC is facing is defined by Richard Auty as the ‘resource curse’. The DRC is estimated to contain $24 trillion dollars’ worth of valuable minerals such as coltan and gold, this equals the combined GDP of both Europe and the United States (Carpenter 2012: 5). Although the DRC contains trillions of dollars in natural resources, the country stands 150 out of 174 as regards to per capita annual income and its GDP declined 5.8% per year from 1997 until 2000 and a further 4.1% in 2001, listing it as one of the poorest countries in Africa (ibid 5). . This raises many questions as to why the DRC has an abundant amount of resources they but is considered one of the poorest countries in

The transnational corporation’s exploitation of the DRC’s resources is the main factor for the huge conflict because they have economic interests in continuing the civil war in the the DRC and fuel the fighting so they can maintain easy access over the extraction of Coltan in the DRC (ibid 9). The demand for coltan by transnational corporations that they use in phones, computers, and medical technology is funding the rebels and civil war that is killing millions of people. The reality that transnational corporations are fortifying the conflict in the DRC is absolutely terrifying because they are driven to create conflict in the DRC so that they can make money by extracting Coltan. We can classify the act of what transnational corporation are doing in the DRC by supporting rebel groups as the ‘resource curse’ because transnational corporations are gaining all the profit from the extraction of coltan whereas the DRC people are not benefiting from their own resources and are facing large scale poverty, displacement, and casualties. Although many advocates of foreign mining argue that it creates local employment, provides economic opportunities, and that mining companies often invest considerable resources in improving local health and education services, while also investing in