Global Consumers Are Indirectly Funding Conflict in Sudan and Congo

In size and scale, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo face the largest humanitarian crises and human rights in the world. Amazing numbers. In Sudan, more than 12 million people and 30 million were in urgent need of food and medical assistance. In the Congo, about 8 million people were forced to leave their homes, while 28 million people face acute food insecurity.

Mercy fatigue, excessive political news courses, and other factors that these two conflicts lead to a large extent from the world’s radar. But whether or not they know this, international consumers remain in deep contact with Sudan and the Congo.

In addition to a group of daily products, some of the most popular teams and sports championships in the world are associated with these conflicts. The United Arab Emirates and Rwanda – are the two main external contributors to the destruction of Sudan and the human Congo – inconsistent with the American National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Premier League teams, to name a few.

But this also creates a way for ordinary people to decline. The pressure on fans achieved a response to sports laundry arrangements earlier this month, as Bayern Munich announced changes in a care deal with Rwanda. Now the stage has been set for more work.

Behind sports, and The list of products that we consume that uses the components of the Congo or Sudan is countless. From Sudan, soda, energy drinks, cookies, cakes, baked family, desserts, water paints, pharmaceutical medications, lipstick, polishing shoes, incense, post stamps, and newspapers. From Congo, the menu includes electronics products (such as phones and laptops); Tin cans coins; Aircraft engines cultivated medical cameras and anything with a rechargeable battery, including electric and hybrid cars.

In Sudan, the media focuses on oil and gold, which has already fueled the conflict for decades. But there are other raw materials everywhere that connects this country with international consumers: the Arab gums. It is a natural material that is harvested from the acacia trees that are used to mix and intensify the ingredients in many of the above elements.

Sudan has become the largest source of gum in the world because of its wide groves, producing 80 percent of the world’s show. However, most of the Sudanese Arab gum is now trading from the rebel -controlled areas by a paramilitary group of genocide, rapid support forces, which increased the strengthening of the conflict. (AIPG, a group of pressure in the industry, said in a statement in January that “you see no evidence of links between the gums [arabic] Supply and competition chain [Sudanese] Forces. “))

In the Congo, the bonds are deeper and long -term. The history of exploitation began to find the slave shortly after reaching the Europeans to the shores of Africa, and they continued with ivory and rubber during the colonial era, then copper and uranium during the twentieth century. In the late 1990s, the demand for explosion in mobile phones, laptops and video game devices began. This led to an amazing increase in the price of the three TS – Tin, Tantalum, Tungstin – which aims to most electronic products. Some of the world’s largest deposits of these three minerals in the Congo.

This new source of requesting consumers was born another course of violent looting in the Congo. The result was one of the bloodiest wars in the world since the Second World War, which officially lasted from 1998-2003 but continues the effects of its ripples to this day. This time, Rwanda and Uganda led looting while multinational companies benefited. It is estimated that more than 5 million people perished as a result. Rwanda’s last invasion of the eastern Congo over the past year is the last chapter in these centuries that take the centuries -old raw materials. Rwanda and Uganda have thousands of forces in the Congo, and it was reported that it focused on the looting of the three TS and the amount of gold, which is worth billions.

Today, Green Technologies requests global demand for cobalt and copper, which are major components in lithium -ion batteries, raising new concerns about tremendous corruption, safety and children’s work in the vast Congo mines. The country produces more than 70 percent of the world cobalt, and the children of Congolese miners dig a good part of the show. China has become a major player in this last frenzy, although the United States is playing annex, as the Trump administration is negotiating a series of minerals and peace deals with the regimes in the Congo and Rwanda.

Today’s conflicts in Sudan and the Congo will not be almost dead or continuous if not the two main governments that you feed and benefit from. In the case of Sudan, it is the United Arab Emirates. In the Congo, it is the United Arab Emirates and Rwanda.

The United Arab Emirates is the largest importer of the gold conflict from both Sudan and the Congo, with a total of billions of dollars annually. Rwanda exports huge amounts of conflict -smuggled minerals from Congo to global markets. (The United Arab Emirates denied allegations of support for the rapid support forces as well as the import of gold conflict from Sudan and the Congo.

If Rwanda and the United Arab Emirates face continuous pressure, they may reconsider the extent and nature of their participation in Africa’s wars. However, so far, these governments are involved in prominent and successful efforts often to wash their reputation on the international stage.

For both countries, these efforts are often put on the international front and the international. It is a phenomenon sometimes called washing sports – cony using its participation in or hosting sporting events to whiten their reputation. Benito Musolini thought of hosting the 1934 World Cup in Italy and Adolf Hitler host the summer Olympics in 1936 in Germany.

Paul Kagame, authoritarian president, Paul Kagame, loves basketball and football, and thus continued partnerships with the US Professional League in the United States and football teams throughout Europe. Rwanda is participating in its sponsors and hosts a new tournament in the American Professional League in Africa, the African Basketball League, which holds some of the Playoff matches in a new square of $ 100 million in the capital of Rwanda. (When he is asked to comment, the US Professional League spokesman Mark Bass told Foreign policy“We believe that participation through sports is positive, and we will continue to follow up on US government guidance and policy in relation to more than 200 countries and regions worldwide where we have enriched fans.”

For football, Rwanda has partnerships with Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Atletico Madrid and Paris Saint -Germain (none of them responded to our requests to comment). The results include the phrase “Rwanda’s visit” printed on the sleeves of the shirt, while thousands of Rwandan forces oversee the looting of massive resources and human rights violations in the Congo.

United Arab Emirates is a much larger player in the world of sports washing. Emiratis deal with the Formula 1 race, golf, tennis, horse racing, wrestling, and other sports. Like Rwanda, the UAE leaders appear to have invested greatly in the American Professional League and Football League. The United Arab Emirates is explaining the American Professional League Championships in the season, the UAE Cup, the American Professional League. And the last sale of Los Angeles Lakers for $ 10 billion – the largest in the history of professional sports concession – may have been calmly secured with Emirati money. Just months before the sale, the US company that bought the team, Twg, raised $ 10 billion from Mubadala Capital, the investment arm of the Emirati sovereign wealth fund. (MUBADALA did not hold a direct share in Lakers. Twg and Mubadala did not respond to suspension requests.)

In football, Emirati investments are more clear. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President of the United Arab Emirates and the younger brother of the President of the Emirati, owns the Manchester City team, among other European clubs, and has concluded significant investment deals – as it responds for the sake of comments. His sports investment group is the main owner of the New York City football team, which will build a stadium worth $ 780 million in Queens directly from City Field, the baseball team in New York Mits. All this while claiming that the sheikh is a point of his government’s relationship with a militia committing ethnic cleansing and collective rape in Sudan.

In the face of these satirical efforts, what can ordinary consumers and sports fans do?

Regarding Banda, Arsenal supporters in the United Kingdom began a campaign – for peace – to end the unified Arsenal deal with Rwanda. They started the Casab campaign mainly that it would be better to visit anywhere in the world from Rwanda, to the North London neighborhood in Tottenham, the home of the Arsenal competitor, Tottenham Hotspur. Activists have a video clip entitled “Visit Tottenham”, which includes bleak shots from Tottenham as a way to ridicule the Rwanda logo on the uniform.

A group of Arsenal Trust supporters conducted a group of fans a survey of its members on whether they want the relationship between Rwanda and Arsenal and found that 90 percent of the respondents want the contract to end “as soon as possible or when the current contract ends in 2026”.

The first shift in shields came in early August. Bayern Munich has announced that it will reduce its brand “visiting Rwanda” and replace the care deal with an arrangement that focuses on supporting the development of young Rwandan soccer players. Besides the ducts about Arsenal that may fall Rwanda as a shepherd, this would help charging wind -up efforts in Europe and the United States.

Civil society, which is organized around the Emirates ties with collective atrocities at an early stage. He talked about Sudan, which is a non -governmental organization campaign to coordinate by international non -profit for international refugees, calling for the collusion of the UAE in Sudanese atrocities. In the tradition of the anti -apartheid movement, diamonds and minerals, conflict, and the rescue efforts of Darfur, activists will work over the coming years to influence the Emirati accounts of these cases torn by sedition.

Congo and Sudan problems are not just the problems of Congolese and Sudanese. They are also global problems that require global solutions. For a long time, Sudan and the Congo were stained with blood from the huge unrestricted greed, across patriotism. The awareness of how we are all involved, in the food we eat, the electronics products that we use, and the sport we see, is the first step towards fighting.