아프리카에 있어 천연자원과 무력 분쟁 -「내전의 정치, 경제학」관점에서 -

Abstract

For many developing countries, the extraction of natural resources has been a blessing, as their export can provide urgently needed development capital. For others, however, resource wealth has been a curse, as their population still faces extreme poverty and they have been haunted by corruption, government failure and violent conflict. While political and institutional deficits have been widely cited as sources for economic success or failure, and violent conflict. Numerous other countries (to name a few: Cambodia, Angola, Sierra Leone and Sudan) have been a stage for plunder, fights, corruption and mismanagement related to natural wealth in those countries. The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s richest countries in terms of natural wealth. The country received the ironic description ‘geological scandal’ because from as early as the time of the Belgian King Leopold II, the country has been plundered by national and international elites, rebel groups and companies. The illegal smuggling of diamonds out of the DRC in 2000 exceeded the total national state budget. Also nowadays, corruption scandals and mismanagement of the country’s natural wealth make it less likely that these stocks truly contribute to development and post-conflict reconstruction. The United Nations Security Council underlines in the context of its work on combating illegal resource exploitation that: the exploitation of natural resources from diamonds to timber can trigger or fuel conflicts but their effective management can also contribute to post-conflict recovery. The role resources played in the onset and duration of civil wars received growing attention in the past decade but the different mechanisms underlying this influence have to a large extent been disregarded. The aim of this essay is to test the natural resources are impact on civil wars. For this, I analysed the Sierra Leone and Democratic Republic of Congo as example of natural resources and violent conflict.