A young boy takes a break from mining gold at Mongbwalu.
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Men work at the Chudja mine.
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A local miner breaks up rocks in a gold mine near Mongbwalu.
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Mongbwalu miners walk home along a dirt road.
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Men mine for gold on March 27, 2006, in Mongbwalu. Working in mines is dangerous, and workers are poorly compensated. For example, the diamond industry is worth about $900 million annually and provides work for 1 million people, but many diggers earn less than $1 a day.
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Children play on the streets of Mongbwalu. 42 percent of Congolese children aged 5 to 14 are child laborers.
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A Mongbwalu boy mines for gold.
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A woman carries wood along a dirt road in Mongbwalu. The shocking statistics on rape and violence in the Congo -- 48 rapes occur each hour -- have attracted international attention, including boycotts by many U.S. companies of Congolese minerals. But there has been little concrete action from the U.S. government, other than the State Department allotting $17 million for medical care, legal support, and counseling for rape victims. All of this may simply push Congo closer toward trading partners like China (which signed a $9 billion "ore-for-infrastructure" deal with Congo in 2008) who may care less about human rights and corporate social responsibility.
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FP’s Ravi Agrawal spoke to experts with very different perspectives for insights. Nadia Schadlow was a deputy national security advisor in the Trump administration and is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a longtime advocate for ending so-called forever wars. Perhaps surprisingly, Wertheim was more critical of Biden’s foreign policy—specifically on China—than was Schadlow. Is that because Biden has largely doubled down on former President Donald Trump’s China policies?
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