Valuable Resources: Women, Conflict, and Modern Mining in RwandaLaine Munir, African Leadership University/ University of Rwanda's Center of Excellence in BiodiversityResearch Grant, 2020 Rich in minerals like tin, tantalum, and tungsten (3T), Rwanda has been closing informal artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operations in favor of larger, corporate mining enterprises over the last decade. The government and companies argue that this increase in legal regulation improves outcomes through enhanced protection against gender-based violence (GBV) and discriminatory employment for the estimated fifty thousand women living near mining sites. This exploratory research project, “Women, Conflict, and Modern Mining in Rwanda” (WCMM), inquires whether increased legalization of 3T mining operations could somehow alter physical, structural, or environmental violence against women during this formalization process. Based on qualitative content analysis in NVivo, the findings drew directly from sixty semistructured interviews, eighteen focus group discussions, and twelve participant observations, and indirectly from twelve mapmaking workshops with women who are full-time employees, seasonal miners, and farmers near six extraction sites. The goal was to understand better how rural women fare during Rwanda’s state formalization of the extraction process and to use participatory action research (PAR) to give voices to their experiences with economic, physical, and environmental violence. Three salient findings emerged. The goal was to understand better how rural women fare during Rwanda's state formalization of the extraction process and to use participatory action research (PAR) to give voices to their experiences with economic, physical, and environmental violence. First, state formalization of 3T mineral extraction, moving from ASM to legalized and more extensive operations, changes the justice pathways for women seeking remedies for mining-related grievances. It alters the postcolonial landscape of legal pluralism in extractive communities. On the one hand, legal mining instills codified rules to keep women physically safe, to implement gender quotas, and to close the gender wage gap. Legal employment also positions women to report crimes without fear of being investigated for informal labor practices. Yet the avenues for remedying a wrong are more nebulous for those working in official operations. Women miners often do not know the private security actors nor understand the internal structures for elevating a complaint at an office. Meanwhile, women reported feeling comfortable taking some violations to their customary local leaders, who they know personally and who are imbued with traditional norms about GBV. Thus, the formalization of mining has not given women formalized access to justice for mining-related conflicts. Instead, it changes their challenges from localized stigma and traditional norms with local leaders to distancing and unclear pathways vis-à-vis company management. This project’s second line of inquiry examined how cooperative business models, rather than direct company employment, might mitigate economic and physical violence against women in extractive industries. Through feminist political ecology’s intersectionality framework, the study asked how cooperatives might improve women’s outcomes: financial gains, gender violence reduction, and legal awareness and empowerment. This study finds that the selected mining cooperative, a case study, does not improve women’s financial outcomes or lower violence rates more than private companies in Rwanda. However, cooperative work may expand women’s rights conceptions and legal consciousness. Cooperative members demonstrated a greater understanding of supply chains, government functions, and conflict resolution pathways. Together, these outcomes indicate that Rwanda’s formalization of 3T extraction could be a promising avenue for reducing GBV in mining communities, but that such legal reforms must be clearly translated into awareness, behavior modification, and enforcement at the company and local levels.
