Wars need money. Natural resources such as timber, diamonds and minerals play an increasingly prominent role in providing this money, which is often used to fund armies and militias who murder, rape and commit other human rights abuses against civilians.
Global Witness' Natural Resources in Conflict team works to break the links between natural resources and conflict by influencing international, regional and national policies after carrying out in-depth investigations. Our work consists of:
Campaigning to prevent future conflicts, and curbing current ones, by denying combatants any income from the trade in natural resources. Global Witness' past successes in this field include closing off the lucrative timber trade of both Charles Taylor's despotic regime in Liberia and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the conflict diamonds campaign, which gave rise to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme to prevent the trade in conflict diamonds, all of which have hastened the end of some of the world's most brutal wars. Currently, Global Witness is researching the trade in diamonds and cocoa in Cote d'Ivoire.
Working in post-conflict countries such as Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to ensure that crucial investment in the natural resource sector is equitable, sustainable, transparent and non-corrupt, and brings long-term benefit to the state and the population, thereby helping to prevent the seeds of future conflict.
Reforming international policy, especially pushing for the international community, at UN level, to adopt a definition of conflict resources which could be used to trigger action to prevent natural resources from fuelling conflict, and which could form the basis of revised national laws allowing people who trade in conflict resources to be prosecuted.
Global Witness' Natural Resources in Conflict team works to break the links between natural resources and conflict by influencing international, regional and national policies after carrying out in-depth investigations. Our work consists of:
Campaigning to prevent future conflicts, and curbing current ones, by denying combatants any income from the trade in natural resources. Global Witness' past successes in this field include closing off the lucrative timber trade of both Charles Taylor's despotic regime in Liberia and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the conflict diamonds campaign, which gave rise to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme to prevent the trade in conflict diamonds, all of which have hastened the end of some of the world's most brutal wars. Currently, Global Witness is researching the trade in diamonds and cocoa in Cote d'Ivoire.
Working in post-conflict countries such as Liberia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to ensure that crucial investment in the natural resource sector is equitable, sustainable, transparent and non-corrupt, and brings long-term benefit to the state and the population, thereby helping to prevent the seeds of future conflict.
Reforming international policy, especially pushing for the international community, at UN level, to adopt a definition of conflict resources which could be used to trigger action to prevent natural resources from fuelling conflict, and which could form the basis of revised national laws allowing people who trade in conflict resources to be prosecuted.
