Resources Workshop on Africa’s Great Lakes Region to End

The high-level workshop jointly organized by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), United Nations Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and the German Development Agency will conclude today.

Due to the high availability of natural resources, the Great Lakes region in Africa is a major site of illegal smuggling of minerals which, in turn, are used to finance various militant groups such as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and Platform Five (P5). Today, the 12 representatives of the ICGLR will gather to present concrete measures to collectively tackle issues concerning regional security.

The ICGLR will act under the guidance of the UN Security Council to increase its regional investigations during the short-term. In this context the member states are prepared to provide more capital for the organization to conduct such endeavors. However, increasing enforcement to curb such activities will be a difficult task for the ICGLR as rebel groups will resort increasingly to violence because of strict enforcement. Therefore, expect a rise in the groups’ criminal activities including kidnapping and extortion, indicating that the struggle between such groups and the states in which they operate such as the Democratic Republic of Congo will intensify in the medium-term.

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