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Abstract

Throughout the Congo wars, the pervasive activities of extractive industries have deepened economic inequalities and eviscerated the ecological rights of victimized communities while perpetuating a tragic legacy of gross human rights abuses in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo . Increasingly, however, affected communities are carrying out violent and nonviolent campaigns against mining companies and other extractive industries whose activities jeopardize community livelihoods. Using the analytical framework of collective participation and drawing on qualitative data from 20 semi-structured interviews with community activists in the chieftaincy of Wamuzimu in 2022, this paper argues that community resistance against extractive industries is a potential pathway for advancing bottom-up environmental accountability for the actions of extractive actors in eastern Congo. Thus, rather than narrowly studying community resistance as an anomaly, this article contends that peacebuilding and transitional justice scholars in the DR of Congo could draw nuanced and valuable insights by exploring its underlying motivations, limitations, and potential contributions to foregrounding the environmental accountability of extractive industries. This can be used to address recurring human rights violations at the individual and community levels caused by their activities in areas where the regulating state apparatus is nonexistent or has weakened legitimacy.

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