"Why our hype can harm: Congo Edition"

I came across an article today entitled Dangerous Tales: Dominant narratives on the Congo and their unintended consequences (gated version here). What did it conclude?

The dominant narratives have oriented international programmes on the ground toward three main goals – regulating trade of minerals, providing care to victims of sexual violence, and helping the state extend its authority – at the expense of all the other necessary measures ... because of these exclusive focuses, the international efforts have exacerbated the problems that they aimed to combat: the attempts to control the exploitation of resources have enabled armed groups to strengthen their control over mines; the disproportionate attention to sexual violence has raised the status of sexual abuse to an effective bargaining tool for combatants; and the state reconstruction programmes have boosted the capacity of an authoritarian regime to oppress its population.

The title of this post was taken from a post by Chris Blattman which directed me to the paper. As he notes

Simple stories make for very effective advocacy. The problem with simple narratives, arise, however, when they drive simple-headed policy.