America Must End Its Complicity in the Atrocities in the Congo

For nearly three decades, the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo have endured one of the deadliest humanitarian crises since World War II—fueled by foreign exploitation, state-backed armed groups, and the plunder of Congo’s vast mineral wealth. As the nation whose consumption drives this demand, the United States has a profound moral and legal responsibility to act. Campaigns such as Congo Week have exposed the direct link between the suffering of the Congolese people and the minerals that power our everyday lives—cobalt, coltan, and other resources extracted through forced labor, child labor, and militarized control. Every phone, every electric vehicle, every battery manufactured without accountability deepens the suffering of families who have lost everything to this brutal system. While Washington has taken minor steps—issuing limited sanctions and public condemnations—our government continues to tolerate policies and trade practices that enable war crimes and systematic looting. U.S. laws still exclude cobalt from conflict-mineral oversight, and our military cooperation with foreign actors implicated in atrocities continues unchecked. This is a betrayal of our commitments under international humanitarian law and the universal principles of human rights. We, your constituents, demand immediate and concrete action: 1. Expand and enforce targeted sanctions on corporations, intermediaries, and armed networks profiting from minerals linked to violence, trafficking, or forced labor. 2. Suspend all military cooperation with any government or security force complicit in backing armed groups inside the DRC until full withdrawal, accountability, and reparations are verified. 3. Close the cobalt loophole by requiring transparent, independently audited supply chains for all critical minerals, ensuring that U.S. markets no longer fund the suffering of Congolese communities. 4. Restore and expand humanitarian assistance to those displaced and traumatized by the violence, and fully support UN-led investigations and prosecutions for war crimes, sexual violence, and resource theft. 5. Elevate Congolese civil-society voices and grassroots movements in all U.S. diplomatic and economic engagements, recognizing their right to self-determination and justice. The United States must act not because it is convenient, but because it is right. Silence and inaction make us complicit in the ongoing genocide and exploitation of the Congolese people. International law demands accountability; human decency demands it even more urgently. History will remember whether our nation chose to uphold justice—or to look away while millions were killed for the minerals that sustain our comfort.