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STAKES / Cases / DR Congo

DR Congo · Brewing and beverages

The brewery kept its trucks moving by paying armed groups. Then it wrote a human rights policy.

A Dutch parent company's Congolese subsidiary paid illicit taxes to rebel groups for years. We ask whether the policy that followed changed the conflict footprint or only the reporting.

Aerial view of Bukavu on the shore of Lake Kivu, dense low-rise housing along the water.
Bukavu on Lake Kivu, 24 August 2015. The city sits at the southern tip of the lake, on the Rwandan border. Photo: MONUSCO Photos, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source

The ground

Eastern Congo has been at war, in one configuration or another, for three decades. Ethnic grievance, mineral revenue and an elite that profits from disorder have proved a durable combination. Companies that operate there make choices every week that a compliance manual written in Europe does not anticipate, starting with how a loaded truck gets from a depot to a town through territory somebody armed is taxing.

The corporate question

A Dutch brewing multinational runs its Congolese operation through a wholly owned subsidiary. Research published in 2013 documented payments to armed groups. The company subsequently built a body of policy and operational guidance for human rights risk in high-risk settings, which has since been cited as a reference point by other firms facing the same problem.

What we ask here

Does corporate human rights machinery change anything measurable on the ground? We interview supply chain staff, community organisations and local authorities along the same routes, and we ask the survey sample in Congo whether the company's presence has made their area safer, less safe, or neither. Congo is also our hardest access environment, and the security protocol is agreed before anyone travels.

Further reading

  1. Barkemeyer & Miklian. Responsible Business in Fragile Contexts: Comparing Perceptions from Domestic and Foreign Firms (2019). Sustainability. doi.org/10.3390/su11030598

Sector Brewing and beverages. Places Bukavu · Goma · Kisangani. Case lead Mark van Dorp. Work package WP2. Questions RQ4, RQ5, RQ7. Fieldwork window 2026.