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As US Firms Secure Deals for Congo's Minerals, Its Citizens Fight Back in Court
This legal challenge in the Congo highlights the stakes for millions of people around the world, including many Indigenous communities, who find their lands targeted by big powers for mineral extraction.
Feb 14, 2026
President Donald Trump hailed "historic" the agreement signed in Washington on December 4, 2025, between President Félix Tshisekedi of Congo and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame. Brokered by the US administration, this Washington Accord was supposed to end the devastating conflict in Congo that has taken millions of lives over the past three decades.
Alongside this deal, a Strategic Partnership Agreement was signed between the US and Congo. The agreement gives the US preferential access to Congolese mineral reserves, requires Congo to amend its laws and potentially its Constitution, and gives Washington a level of control over the management of mining resources through the establishment of a joint mechanism involving the two governments.
In October 2025, analyzing the pre-accord signed in June 2025 and a Regional Economic Integration Framework between Rwanda and Congo negotiated in the following months, the Oakland Institute released Shafted: The Scramble for Critical Minerals in the DRC. The report raised serious concerns about US maneuvers to control Congolese critical minerals under the guise of bringing peace to the region.
The Partnership Agreement signed in December makes these concerns legitimate. The Congolese people have been sidelined, with an agreement focused on extraction and exploitation of critical minerals and a peace deal that shockingly overlooks the need for justice and for holding perpetrators accountable. Soon after the signing of the deal, the US mining firms were already striking deals, while promises of peace and security remain wishful thinking with Rwanda and its proxy M23 continuing to occupy large swaths of land in mineral-rich eastern Congo. As a matter of fact, fighting has continued to rage with a fresh offensive launched by Rwanda and M23 in the days that followed the agreement, resulting in thousands of people killed and the capture of the strategic city of Uvira.
The lawyers and human rights defenders who have filed the case are urging the mobilization of Congolese people to preserve the sovereignty of their nation and calling on the international community to support their action and defend international law at a time it is under unprecedented threat.
While the prospect of peace remains uncertain, the government of Congo has not waited to take significant steps in the implementation of the agreement. Mid-January, it provided Washington with a shortlist of state-owned assets—including manganese, copper-cobalt, gold, and lithium projects—available to US investors. A major deal was announced soon after with US government-backed Orion Critical Mineral Consortium acquiring 40% of Glencore’s DRC copper and cobalt.
Congolese may legitimately wonder whether they are being fooled by the deal, seeing their mineral resources offered to the “peacemaker” whereas Rwanda, undeterred, continues its aggression and the extraction of Congolese minerals in Eastern Congo. This has led some to act.
On January 21, 2026, a collective of Congolese lawyers and human rights defenders filed a petition at the Constitutional Court of the Congo to challenge the constitutionality of the agreement. The lawyers argue that the partnership violates the Constitution since amendment of laws or the Constitution requires a democratic review and approval by the Congolese parliament or citizens through referendum. Specifically, it contravenes Article 214 of the Congo's Constitution, which sets out the ratification process for international agreements that involve amending national laws. The petition also contends that the agreement violates Articles 9 and 217, which uphold the principle of Congo’s sovereignty over natural resources, and Article 12, which upholds the principle of equality before the law.
According to Attorney Jean-Marie Kalonji, one of the plaintiffs: "By filing this case with the Constitutional Court, we are assuming our responsibility as Congolese citizens to protect the sovereignty of our country and safeguard our patrimony for future generations." The lawyers and human rights defenders who have filed the case are urging the mobilization of Congolese people to preserve the sovereignty of their nation and calling on the international community to support their action and defend international law at a time it is under unprecedented threat.
This legal challenge has major significance for Congo, a country that has large reserves of several critical minerals, such as copper and cobalt, and a long history of mineral extraction plagued by corruption, embezzlement, and predatory wars. The country’s mineral wealth has hardly benefited its people—still lagging behind most countries in terms of human development indicators such as access to health, education, and other standards of living. It is therefore totally legitimate for citizens to stand up for their basic rights and ensure that mining operations actually benefit the population.
Beyond Congo, this legal action has implications for other mineral-rich countries as global competition for the control of critical minerals intensifies and projections indicate steep increases in demand as well as shortfalls to be expected for some key minerals such as copper and lithium as early as the 2030s. Whereas China dominates both extraction and refinery activites, the US and other industrialized countries have set the supply of critical minerals as a vital priority for so-called green technologies as well as defense.
The 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned that mining has “severe environmental impacts” with “often […] few if any redistributive benefits for communities in regions where extraction takes place,” and instead of local development, the extraction of strategic minerals is often linked to violence, human rights abuses, and conflict. This legal challenge in the Congo highlights the stakes for millions of people around the world, including many Indigenous communities, who find their lands targeted by big powers for mineral extraction. It is essential that their rights are recognized and that they have a say in the future of their land—which is intertwined with their own future.
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Trump Admin Condemned for Pushing Big Oil Leases in Arctic Refuge
The Bureau of Land Management is seeking nominations for which parts of ANWR's Coastal Plane should be offered up to fossil fuel companies for potential drilling.
Feb 02, 2026
The Trump administration on Monday took the first step toward holding controversial oil and gas lease sales in the Coastal Plane of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The Bureau of Land Management announced on Monday that it was seeking nominations for which parts of ANWR's Coastal Plane should be offered up to fossil fuel companies for potential drilling, fulfilling a mandate passed by the US Senate in late 2025. However, the move goes against the wishes of Indigenous people who consider the plane sacred as well as conservationists, scientists, and many members of the American public who value US public lands for their beauty and wildlife.
“People have worked together for decades to defend the Arctic Refuge, because this unique landscape is too special to be sacrificed to the oil industry for profit," Earthjustice managing attorney Erik Grafe said in a statement. "Tripling down on oil development in the Arctic takes us in exactly the wrong direction in our existential fight to curb climate change and protect these critically important public lands."
The sales would continue US President Donald Trump's push to increase oil and gas production, including in Alaska, ramping up an agenda that has dominated both of his terms. The Senate's action in 2025 followed an October decision by the Department of the Interior (DOI) to open the Coastal Plane to drilling, overriding Biden-era protections. The DOI, led by pro-fossil fuel Doug Burgum, also reversed Biden administration protections for Alaska's Western Arctic.
"The Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling."
"The Trump administration spent 2025 waging an all-out assault on public lands in Alaska’s Arctic, while ignoring the voices of Indigenous communities that hold these lands sacred and jeopardizing the survival of Arctic wildlife," Grafe said. "We’ve already taken steps to challenge Interior’s overall leasing plan for the Arctic Refuge in court, and we’re prepared to continue the fight as this lease sale process grinds on.”
The Trump administration's plan for the Arctic faces wide opposition—public comments on nominations for portions of the Western Arctic to lease featured tens of thousands of calls for protection rather than exploitation.
However, opponents of the plan also noted it may not be as popular with the industry as Trump hopes. Lease sales in ANWR in 2021 and 2024 received little interest from oil and gas companies, with the latter not receiving a single bid.
“The Trump administration is hung up on oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Refuge because they cannot admit that the original Trump leasing plan—established following the 2017 Tax Act—was a complete and utter failure,” said Kristen Moreland, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, in a statement.
The Alaska Wilderness League appealed to the industry itself, noting that the area has some of the highest production costs on the continent while being an increasingly difficult place to work due to extreme weather and other changes caused by the climate crisis, an uncertain regulatory environment, competition from cheaper forms of renewable energy, and the fact that many Americans do not support drilling in the Arctic.
“Serious companies don’t gamble their future on the most remote, expensive, and controversial oil on Earth from one of the most unparalleled ecosystems left on this planet,” said league executive director Kristen Miller. “If companies are still looking to drill the Arctic Refuge in 2026, it’s a sign that they can’t read the writing on the wall: Smart money has already walked away.”
But whatever the decision of the oil and gas industry, Indigenous communities and their allies are determined to fight for the land that is home to polar bears, millions of birds, and the Porcupine caribou herd.
“We condemn these actions, and encourage officials in the Trump administration—and our representatives in the Alaska delegation—to acknowledge and accept what we as Gwich’in know, and what the majority of the American people agree on: The Arctic Refuge is no place for drilling," Moreland continued. "It deserves to be protected and preserved for the wildlife that depend on it, and for all our futures.”
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This Land Is... No One's Land
Our movements must question mythologies and admit contradictions if we intend to build a new world that’s sustainable, reciprocal, and inclusive for all.
Jan 25, 2026
As a guest on the 2019 podcast “Post-doom with Michael Dowd,” terrestrial ecologist Tom Wessels agrees humanity is entering a “bottleneck,” a condition that can afflict any species that ceases to live in relationship and reciprocity. Ballooning populations get stuck trying to claim space in an un-expandable hole, and many die.
This is what’s going through my head as I idle in an impossibly long single line of traffic on the road into Mount Kisco, New York. My kids are in the back of the car, asking for snacks. It is three days since Renee Good’s murder, 10 days since the end of the deadliest month in the deadliest year for people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
“No snacks,” I tell the kids, scanning for parking. “You should eat your meals. Then I wouldn’t have to throw away food and bring a buffet everywhere we go.”
Pedestrians pass our car with protest signs as car exhaust blows through the vents. I feel an unexpected pang of tenderness for our quiet kitchen table, its leftover bowls of cereal and uneaten peanut-butter toasts. I already know I’ll give in, as all mothers do, when they can, when their children want to eat.
This land is no one’s land. This land was not made for you and me. This land is part of us, as we are part of it.
“But we compost the food,” my 7-year-old says, “so it’s actually good for the Earth when we throw it away.”
Our eyes meet in the rearview mirror as I prepare a response, but then the car behind me beeps and I see a distant light has turned green.
We crawl past the demonstration and I honk in support. Upbeat `80s pop blares from a speaker, backdrop to the protesters’ screams, whistles, and bells. My three-year-old, already a musician, moves his head as close as his car seat will allow, trying to deconstruct the music and noises.
“Go again, mommy,” he says. But at that moment I find a miraculous spot, just down the street from the main event, open perhaps because of the one-hour limit on the meter. I claim the space anyway; lug the kids, coats, and backpack out of the car; lock the doors; fill the meter; and grab hands for the walk toward the protest.
A few steps into the journey, a woman asks if she can photograph my kids. I smile and say, "No thank you," covering their faces with my hands. Photos become a constant request over the next hour. Many people ask, but others just lift and click. My son picks up a sign in the grass and I read it to him: No Fascist USA. More phones point in our direction.
I survey the crowd and think of something Monique Cullars-Doty, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, said on the news the other day. “America has never addressed its love affair with white supremacy,” she said, connecting the ICE murder of Renee Good to the state-sanctioned violence that has assaulted Black and brown communities for centuries.
It is one thing to agree with this assessment—that white supremacy made colonialism possible, slavery imperative, resource hoarding commendable, ecological collapse acceptable, and ICE inevitable. It is quite another to admit our complicity, to connect our daily transgressions—a need for the latest gadget, an idling tailpipe, a thoughtless unkindness—to the generations of violence that made all this possible.
I squat in the wet grass and dig through the backpack, dipping my fingers deeper until I hear crinkling plastic. The kids hold out their hands expectantly and whisper, “Yes!” when their favorite granola bars emerge from the bag.
The music stops abruptly, and a woman with a kind face speaks over a microphone. She is Woody Guthrie’s granddaughter, simply by association evoking a simpler time, a sepia time, a time of acoustic guitar and faith in good intentions.
Thinking of her grandfather makes me think of mine—a Jewish Romanian immigrant’s son who stood with Black neighbors in 1950s Milwaukee when other Jewish neighbors, newly minted “white” by America’s slippery standards, wanted to prevent more Black families from moving in. My grandfather now floats above the scene, a beloved figure whose own people’s history was weaponized as justification for more land grabs and violence.
Guthrie’s granddaughter begins to sing:
This land is your land; This land is my land
And my blue-eyed son who loves music, the child I’ve always somehow felt the need to remind people is technically Jewish despite his blonde hair and last name, drops his snack, steps forward into the circle, and opens his mouth to sing along. A hundred phones rise in unison to capture the image.
I resist the urge to cover his face, crouch next to him, and try to join in. But the words catch in my throat.
My land. Your land.
As far as I can tell, not a single Indigenous Lenape person, the first peoples who walked this place now called Mt. Kisco, is present.
This land was made for you and me.
Behind the song circle is a vast cement parking lot, and before it a busy road. The bear, wild turkey, wolves, birds, and aquatic species once so abundant as to be considered eternal, are nowhere to be seen.
From California to the New York island
Places unnamable and unknowable, claimed in this song that once defined a movement, but never created a path or vision for us all.
And yet, here is my son singing, somber, understanding that what he’s participating in is important. And there is my daughter, running around behind the crowd, feeling the joy of community together, the freedom of cool air on her skin. The wrongness and the beauty of it all seem too hard to untangle, and I wonder if this is one way the bottleneck shows up—as the end of the road for a fundamental myth.
In the 2019 interview, Wessels addresses this. He speaks with curiosity about what might come next. Communities for much of human history were “…actually emotionally quite rich,” he says. “They had vibrant relationships within their clan community, they had a vibrant relationship with Mother Earth, they had stories and myths that made that linkage even stronger… so life could have been physically hard, but might have been experientially rich.”
Is there a way for us to treat our past myths with tenderness, while still recognizing where they went horribly wrong? Can we compost rather than discard them, and maintain the parts that serve? Can we teach our children new myths to carry them to a richer, more vibrant, gentle, reciprocal, and inclusive world?
This land is no one’s land. This land was not made for you and me. This land is part of us, as we are part of it.
The song ends, and worries of a parking ticket push a new world’s mythologies from my mind. I grab my son’s hand and scan for my daughter, whose silhouette I spot immediately. She’s reaching for the branches of an ancient fir tree by the road, drawn in by its shade and pungent scent, as so many have been before.
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