Amani Tom: Fostering Peace Through Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Can you tell us about yourself and your background?

{ AMT } I was born, raised, and educated in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and lost both my parents during my childhood. Growing up as an orphan was very difficult for me. After graduating in English and African Culture from the Higher Pedagogical Institute of Bukavu in the Eastern Congo, I embarked on a diversified range of academic trainings. I trained in Kingian Nonviolence with the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Peace and Nonviolence; learned about the management of health emergencies in large populations and international humanitarian law at Johns Hopkins University; participated in Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership; joined a program in partnership with the World Health Organization; and teamed up with the International National Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other public health institutions.

My  several years' experience working with national and international humanitarian and human rights organizations and the United Nations has exposed me to the misery and disaster that successive and ongoing wars and armed conflicts have created in my home country. I strongly believe in the power of education, and this is why I founded the Congo Peace School Program, which aims to provide mostly war–affected children in the Eastern Congo with quality education based on peace and active nonviolence. The goal is to ensure the children stay out of local militias and illegal mining operations and prepares them to take part in transformational leadership in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"I strongly believe in the power of education, and this is why I founded the Congo Peace School Program, which aims to provide mostly war–affected children in the Eastern Congo with quality education based on peace and active nonviolence."

Peace and nonviolence-oriented education is a powerful weapon to fight genocide and prevent civil and human rights violations and mass atrocities. I have been working tirelessly to address the issues that human and civil rights are confronted with in the Eastern Congo’s war-torn region. I have worked with several humanitarian and human rights organizations on the ground in the African Great Lakes region, including my past position as Country Coordinator with TAG International on a project countering trafficking in persons. I worked as an Impact Evaluation Consultant with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, a Country Representative with Jewish World Watch, a Civil Society and Community Development Program Assistance with the International Rescue Committee, a Field Research Liaison and Interpreter with Johns Hopkins University, a Field Research Consultant on conflict minerals with The Enough Project, and a Community Liaison and Interpreter with the UN’s Multinational Peacekeeping Forces in the Congo.

I have co-authored several publications, including a working paper on Conflict, Displacement, and Overlapping Vulnerabilities and an article entitled “The Bare Minimum: Due Diligence Reporting Shouldn’t Be a Question.”

Can you tell us about your organizations, Action Kivu and ABFEC, and what inspired you to create them? How have these organizations grown, and what are some of their goals and successes?

{ AMT } The ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo is considered the deadliest conflict in the world since World War II. I have experienced and witnessed first-hand very traumatic experiences that come as consequences of a war motivated by economics. I decided not to stand idly by watching, and instead founded the Congolese organization Action for the Welfare of Women and Children in Congo (ABFEC). I am also the founding Director of Action Kivu, which works in partnership with ABFEC, with the purpose to provide direct assistance to survivors of the ongoing conflict and give them the tools to be agents of sustainable peace and change. ABFEC advocates homegrown and sustainable solutions by caring individuals. Our entrepreneurial programs and the Congo Peace School are located in Mumosho, a village outside of Bukavu (the capital city of South Kivu), which is a region of Congo that borders Rwanda and Burundi.

These organizations are dedicated to repairing the harm done by years of continued violence and neglect in this region. We focus on women and children, who are the most at risk and whose wellbeing will make the biggest impact in their community. As there is an ongoing armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo that creates extreme poverty and political instability, livelihoods are shattered and communities are torn apart as innocent people are forced to flee the violence, living as internally displaced people and refugees. In the midst of this, militias recruit child soldiers, smuggle strategic minerals, and use sexual violence as a weapon of war. ABFEC helps amplify the voices of communities from the Eastern Congo to let the world know what is happening there.

I was inspired to create Action for the Welfare of Women and Children in Congo with the intent that it would become a human–rights–oriented organization giving voiceless children, women, and communities the capacity to discover their sense of agency, become aware of their rights, and claim them in active, nonviolent ways. Since 2005, ABFEC has been growing gradually, having started with just five war–affected children enrolled in an educational assistance program. Today, there is an entire holistic education  program through the Congo Peace School serving more than 600 enrolled students, giving them an opportunity to access quality education while preventing them from being used in forced child labor and illegal mining operations.

The Peace School’s educational approach is rooted in equality and peace: it is a one-of-a-kind preschool, primary, and secondary school that provides quality education integrated with nonviolence principles derived from the University of Rhode Island’s Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, based on the teachings of Martin Luther King, Jr. The school serves vulnerable children and orphans and prepares them for constructive, peaceful leadership to influence the future of their nation and our world.  

"We consider mental health to be a basic human right, and that’s why the school program was integrated with mental health interventions." 

Since the opening of the school program almost six years ago, I have seen children coming with very significant symptoms of the various traumatic experiences they have gone through. In the beginning, they are often experiencing a state of constant fear, isolation, irritability, sleeplessness, nightmares, constant headaches, lack of concentration, aggressiveness, low and irregular school attendance, very poor performances at school in the early days, and suicidal thoughts. We consider mental health to be a basic human right, and that’s why the school program was integrated with mental health interventions. This has significantly contributed to the students’ improvement—to the point that, over the six years in operation, the drop-out rate is 0%, school attendance is 99%, and matriculation from both elementary and secondary school has reached 100%.

ABFEC has implemented several programs within the education for these children, including: Early childhood development programs, elementary and secondary education, peace and nonviolence , gender equality and equity, youth empowerment, climate change education, regenerative farming, and a food security educational program. These programs are all about human rights in action.

As you’ve described, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been through colonization, deadly wars, and now the proliferation of armed groups that pillage the country’s natural resources through mining. Can you tell us about the impacts of these factors on the local communities, environment, and living conditions? 

{ AMT } It is a very unfortunate situation for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The reality is that history has been repeating itself over and over again through the perpetuation of undocumented and untold human rights violations, mass atrocities, and crimes against humanity.

Between 1885 to 1908, King Leopold II of the Belgium ruled the Congo as his personal dominion. During this period, the country was forced to endure the systematic and brutal economic exploitation of its natural resources, especially ivory and rubber, via forced labor. Each person working on the rubber plantation had to meet a daily rubber quota, and if they did not meet their quota, their relatives were killed, dismembered, or sold as slaves.

These inhumane practices resulted in the death of 10 million people and has resulted in a hidden history of genocide—simply because there was high demand for rubber to power the economy of the automobile industry revolution. Similar practices are happening today in the same territory, perpetuated by feuding foreign and local militias that seek control over the strategic minerals essential to the tech industry and the ‘’green’’ energy transition. These endless and deadly conflicts in the previous and present centuries have all been centered on the extraction of natural resources. Local communities in the DRC, especially in the eastern region of the country, are left very vulnerable because the world needs strategic minerals to power the technology industry.

Consequently, over seven million people are currently internally displaced and 500–600 are forced into refugee status on a daily basis. Rape continues to be used as a weapon of war and we continue to see child soldiers, and as a result the number of children who are out of school increases on a daily basis. We see forced child labor in multiple mining operations, and people are working in very dire conditions with, in most cases, no personal protection equipment—in addition to very poor payment. Local communities are evicted with no compulsory purchase request order if minerals are discovered within their land. There is a complete lack of road infrastructure, even in territories where mining operations have been taking place for years. And because of fraud and smuggling, many mining companies operate illegally and never pay taxes to the government. Consequently, local communities end up remaining in extreme poverty, despite the fact that their country is extremely rich with abundant precious minerals.

"We see forced child labor in multiple mining operations, and people are working in very dire conditions with, in most cases, no personal protection equipment—in addition to very  poor payment."

If we take the example of Eastern Congo’s South Kivu province only, there are more than 147 illegal mining companies in operation. The products of their mining operations leave the country through fraud and smuggling, which is not only a huge economic shortfall for the entire country, but also an economic crime that leaves thousands of children behind with severe malnutrition and communities with no access to clean water and to healthcare.

Illegal, uncontrolled, and unregulated mining operations are a threat to human health and the environment. Diggers risk their lives underground on a daily basis in toxic pits of cobalt, tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold, facing a severe lack of oxygen. Landslides occur regularly because the necessary precautions are not undertaken, causing in the deaths of many diggers, who are then unable to be buried properly since their bodies cannot be found. If they are not underground, they are in deep rivers using dredges to extract gold, resulting in numerous drownings. The threat is not limited only to humans, but also directly to the environment. Trees are savagely cut down in search of minerals, and the chemical products used to clean the minerals cause the water in the rivers to become toxic—destroying the ecosystems inside and outside of the rivers.

Looking at the growing global demand for cobalt, used most popularly in smartphones, we can see how the Congo’s environment will suffer, especially if precautions are not taken to ensure sustainability. How can the world imagine a successful transition to green energy if we do not act with responsibility, ethics, and moral leadership at all levels of the supply chain, from the pits to the final consumers?

The World Bank has been helping to improve the living conditions and standards of the people in the Democratic Republic of Congo through efforts to fight poverty, doing so via improvements to education, energy, healthcare, and other social services.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is among the five poorest nations in the world. An estimated 74.6% of Congolese people lived on less than $2.15 a day in 2023. About one in six people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa lives in DRC. It is a very shocking and paradoxical situation for a country with abundant precious minerals. The country contains thousands of acres of arable and fertile land, but it cannot be cultivated due to a lack of safety. Whenever and wherever people try to farm, they are ultimately unable to harvest because of the presence of armed groups who force them to flee their homes and then steal their crops.

There is a pressing need for good governance inside the country and an end the culture of impunity for whoever is involved directly or indirectly in corruption and crimes. From a human rights perspective, the Democratic Republic of Congo is a context whereby every single individual has their own experience in suffering and loss as a result of the crimes that have been committed on their territory. The member states of the United Nations must come together as one to address the grave human rights violations which have been being committed on the Congolese territory. Although some of these crimes has already been documented through the UN Mapping Report, it is clear that there is lack of political will in bringing those responsible to justice.

We must also consider reforms to the mining sector that ensure local, regional, and international compliance not only with responsible and ethical sourcing frameworks, but also with human rights and labor rights frameworks. There is an existing OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas, but it is unfortunately not respected in many affected countries. 

What have you been researching during your time with the Carr Center as a Human Rights Defender and Fellow, and what are you interested in exploring further?

{ AMT } It has been a great honor being a Fellow with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy for a year now. I have been researching the situation of human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo with a particular focus on the eastern region of the country, looking at the lack of transparency in the country’s strategic minerals supply chain. It has become clear that the search for control over these minerals—especially the “3 Ts + Gold,” which represents Tin, Tantalum, Tungsten, and Gold—is one of the root causes of the ongoing violence in the country, with these minerals acting as key economic drivers at the center of the ongoing armed violence.

What has been happening in the DRC is unfortunately an under–reported human rights crisis that needs global attention given the strategic geopolitics of the country, its people, the abundant natural resources available—especially the minerals and their role in powering the economy of the global technology industry—the role the country has to play in climate change and global warming mitigation given the size of its rainforest (which is the second largest after the Amazon Rainforest), and the need for sustainable positive peace and food security in the Sub-Saharan African region.

"What has been happening in the DRC is unfortunately an under–reported human rights crisis that needs global attention given the strategic geopolitics of the country, its people, the abundant natural resources available..."

To imagine a successful global transition to green electricity, as well as ethical and  responsible mineral sourcing, the DRC needs to be at peace. Countries like China have to stop their imperialistic approaches in our modern times. Given that the human rights situation on the ground in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has continued to worsen, I do not want to stand idly by watching. I will continue fighting for education as a basic human right, even for war–affected children, through the Congo Peace School, and would like to continue exploring further how the minerals are fueling the conflict and putting human rights at high risk.

As a human right defender, I want to continue raising awareness and sounding the alarm about the ongoing human rights crisis in the DRC.