The Peacebuilding Commission has a "crucial role" to play "in ensuring that natural resources become an engine for sustainable development", especially in post-conflict settings. This was one outcome of the United Nations Security Council debate on the links between valuable natural resources – such as diamonds, timber or coltan – and violent conflict. It clearly recognized that "the exploitation, trafficking and illicit trade of natural resources have played a role in areas where they have contributed to the outbreak, escalation or continuation of armed conflict."
The Security Council has only recently taken up the issue of natural resource scarcity in its debate on climate change impacts (see ECC June Newsletter), but it has already been discussing the problem of wars fuelled by valuable natural resources since more than ten years. Only in April this year, the Council lifted its six-year-old embargo on the export of diamonds from Liberia that was intended to stop proceeds from the sale of conflict diamonds from fuelling wars across West Africa. Besides embargos, many speakers also highlighted democracy, good governance, rule of law, transparency, fair distribution of revenues and security sector reform as key issues for ensuring that resource revenues would stabilize post-conflict countries and contribute to development. To target conflict-related resources, speakers recognized the need for international approaches encompassing the whole supply chain and involving different stakeholders - including states, corporations, and NGOs. Speakers from the US, China, UK, Argentina and others referred to the Peacebuilding Commission as the main body for developing and implementing such a comprehensive approach. As the speaker from India stated: "The Peacebuilding Commission should be tasked with creating a consensus on the use of natural resources in post-conflict countries." The debate unfortunately fell short of discussing a 'conflict resources' definition. Global Witness has been lobbying for such a definition to create a legal basis that allows for quick action against resource-fuelled wars. (Moira Feil)

For the Security Council debate, including Presidential Statement and speakers' statements, see http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2007/sc9060.doc.htm

For more information on Global Witness' campaigns, see www.globalwitness.org

Published in:ECC-Newsletter, August 2007