NAIROBI: Smuggling of ivory, gold and timber worth over a billion dollars a year is fuelling war by funding dozens of rebel groups in Democratic Republic of Congo, a UN report warned on Friday.
"Militarised criminal groups with transnational links are involved in large-scale smuggling" of "gold, minerals, timber, charcoal and wildlife products such as ivory" of up to $1.3 billion (1.2 billion euros) each year from eastern DRC, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said.
The revenues finance at least 25 armed groups -- but up to 49 according to some estimates -- that "increasingly fuel the conflict" in the war-torn region, the report read.
Control over the mineral-rich areas is a key factor in strife that has raged in eastern DRC's two Kivu provinces for decades, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians.
"These resources lost to criminal gangs and fuelling the conflict could have been used to build schools, roads, hospitals and a future for the Congolese people," said Martin Kobler, UN chief in DRC, and head of the 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping force, MONUSCO.
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