Sheriff writes: "Efforts by the United States to
reduce the devastating violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by
regulating the trade in conflict minerals are proving difficult to enforce as
illegal armed groups and corrupt members of the national military continue to create
instability in the region."
Gold, seen here, along with tantalum, tungsten and tin extracted from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, are considered conflict minerals. (photo: Adriane Ohanesian/Reuters)
The Losing Battle Against Conflict Minerals
By
Natasja Sheriff, Al Jazeera America
14 September 15
Minerals from countries where
sales fund corruption and violence continue to enter the US, as oversight
proves tricky
Efforts by the United States to reduce the devastating
violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by regulating the trade in
conflict minerals — a group of four minerals, mined in Congo and neighboring
countries, where they help to finance conflict there — are proving difficult to
enforce as illegal armed groups and corrupt members of the national military
continue to create instability in the region, according to a report released this summer by the Government
Accountability Office.
"We do see these armed groups are still present
and they are most likely still benefiting from the mineral trade," Evie
Francq, a DRC researcher with Amnesty International, told Al Jazeera America by
phone from Nairobi.
"What we see is there are still very big
displacements of the population, people that are fleeing abuses by rebel
groups," said Francq, adding that civilians have also become caught up in
army operations against those groups, like the Democratic Force for the
Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
"Often civilians are targeted either by the armed
group or by the [Congolese] army because they're suspected of giving
information about the group to the army, or about different groups that are
fighting against each other," she said.
In the last three weeks, the UN refugee agency has
registered an influx of people at its camps in North Kivu where military
operations against the FDLR and other armed groups are creating a humanitarian
situation there, according to Gloria Ramirez, spokesperson for UNHCR in
Goma.
The four conflict minerals — tantalum, tin, tungsten
(3TG) and gold — are used in all kinds of everyday items, from mobile phones to
food containers. Tantalum
is widely used in electronic equipment, such as mobile phones, and laptops, as
well as camera lenses and medical implants.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is believed to
produce around 20 per cent of the
world’s tantalum, although the US imports more than half of its supplies from
Brazil, Canada and Australia. In the DRC, armed groups use revenue from the
trade in these minerals to finance their operations, and it’s this link that
U.S. lawmakers and advocates want to break.
The DRC has been mired in war and upheaval since it
gained independence from Belgium in 1960, but violence escalated following the
1994 genocide in Rwanda, which spilled over into neighboring Congo, then called
Zaire. Two wars followed, between 1996 and 2003, drawing in nine African
nations, until a transitional government was formed and a peace deal brokered
in 2003.
Much of the country is now at peace. But in eastern
Congo, the conflict continues, a shifting power struggle involving foreign
armies and more than 50 armed groups, each with their own
motivations and ideologies. According to the UN refugee agency, the fighting displaced more
than 3 million people within the country in 2014. Human rights groups continue
to document abuses by both
armed groups and the Congolese army, including killings and mass rapes.
In 2010, the US government attempted to intervene in
the conflict by introducing a provision under the Dodd-Frank Act, aimed at
stymieing the flow of funds from the exploitation of the country’s rich mineral
resources to violent armed groups.
Consumers' right to know
In 2010, the US government attempted to intervene in
the conflict by introducing a provision under the Dodd-Frank Act, aimed at
stymieing the flow of funds from the exploitation of the country’s rich mineral
resources to violent armed groups.
Under the law, public companies must investigate where
the minerals in their products are coming from and report their findings
annually to the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), declaring whether or
not their products contain one of the conflict minerals from the DRC or
adjoining countries.
The idea that companies should be checking to see if
their supply chains are free of conflict minerals is nothing new or radical,
says Chris Albin-Lackey at Human Rights Watch.
"The thing that is really unique about
Dodd-Frank, and the reason it attracts so much attention," said
Albin-Lackey, "is because it represents the first time that a government
has taken that principle of human rights due diligence and made it a legal
requirement for companies operating not just on US soil but overseas."
Consumers don’t know if the products they buy have
somehow contributed to conflict in some part of the world, said Albin-Lackey.
"It has to be the responsibility of the companies
that are sourcing and purchasing these minerals to make serious investigations
about whether their supply chains are tangled up in really serious human rights
problems or not."
But a review of 147 companies that submitted conflict
mineral reports in 2014, the first year they were required to do so since the
introduction of the rule, found that more than two-thirds of companies could
not identify the source of the minerals in their products and none of those
companies were able to say for certain whether the minerals had financed or
benefited armed groups, according to the GAO report.
That’s not surprising, says Carly Oboth, policy
advisor on conflict minerals with the advocacy group Global Witness.
"This is a process and it does take years,"
said Oboth. "It takes a bit of time for companies to get to
grips with
their supply chain, to better understand where all the minerals are coming
from."
In April this year, Global Witness together with
Amnesty International reported that 79 out
of 100 companies they analysed failed to meet the law’s requirements to check
and report on the use of conflict minerals in their products.
More than 1300 companies filed disclosures in 2014,
many household names among them, including Barnes & Noble, Google, Colgate,
Kraft Foods, Apple and JC Penney. In a report filed by
Google, the company states, "we have reason to believe that a portion of
the 3TG used in our products originated from the Covered Countries, but we have
not identified any instances of sourcing that directly or indirectly supported
conflict in the Covered Countries."
Neither Google or Barnes & Noble responded to a
request to discuss the SEC disclosure.
Major industry pushback
Since the introduction of Dodd-Frank, a number of
schemes have sprung up as part of efforts to certify mines as 'conflict-free' -
demilitarized and free from the control of armed groups - and to track and
trace minerals along the supply chain, directly from the source.
But according to the GAO report, efforts to certify
mines, and the minerals they produce, are severely restricted by conditions on
the ground. Mining areas in eastern DRC "continue to be plagued by
insecurity because of the presence and activities of armed groups and some
corrupt members of the national military," the authors write. Local
officials attempt to monitor the mines with little training and often for no
pay, but their efforts are crippled by corruption, lack of infrastructure, and
poorly maintained or non-existent roads.
US agencies told GAO they have validated 140 mines
sites this year in eastern Congo and USAID says that revenues for
artisanal miners, traders and exporters are up 200 per cent, thanks to
conflict-free supply chains, which are bringing in tax revenue for the
country’s government. Still, "smuggling remains prolific and
[that] instances of fraud call into question the integrity of traceability
mechanisms," according to the GAO report. The UN Group of Experts report finding tags -from the ITRI Tin
Supply Chain Initiative (iTSCi), one of the largest
traceability schemes, for sale in the DRC and Rwanda. If the scheme is to work,
the bar-coded tags should only be available at audited, conflict free, mines
and smelters, where they are attached to bags of minerals and logged for
tracking.
Industry groups, like the National Association of
Manufacturers, have pushed back against the law since its introduction,
and in August they achieved a minor victory when two members of a three judge
Appeals Court panel found part of the provision
unconstitutional, citing the First Amendment.
Although the disclosure rule
still stands, companies will no longer have to declare if their products are
“DRC conflict free” or not.
"Basically they'll file their [disclosure forms],
they'll indicate what supply-chain due diligence they did, and then they can
probably say whatever they want about whether they're conflict-free or not
conflict-free. They don't have to say anything. Which kind of guts the purpose
of the rule," said Celia Taylor, Director of the International Legal
Studies Program at the University of Denver.
But there has also been pushback from other groups,
including academics and international observers who have long argued that the
Dodd-Frank provision is fundamentally flawed. In September 2014, 70 of these
critics published an open letter condemning
the regulation. The law, they say, is based on an oversimplified understanding
of both the country and the ongoing conflict, it’s impossible to implement, and
it’s causing more harm than good.
"I think the evidence is growing that the regulation
has had a lot of unintended consequences," Laura Seay, Assistant Professor
of Government at Colby College, told Al Jazeera America. In a 2012 report, Seay described how
the Dodd-Frank rule led to a ban on small-scale mining, introduced by Congo’s
President Joseph Kabila, and a de facto boycott of minerals exports from Congo.
"People lost their livelihoods…we saw some of
those people join rebel groups," says Seay.
While acknowledging that it’s impossible to attribute
all of these changes to Dodd-Frank alone, Seay argues that the rule created the
momentum for both the ban and the boycott.
"There are all these competing perspectives.
There are multiple schemes. There are multiple regulations," Seay said.
"All of this is collectively seen by the Congolese as part of the same
phenomenon and they certainly blame this law for all of the problems that have
happened."
Seay isn’t opposed to cleaning up the Congolese
mineral trade, the problem is the all or nothing approach to the way companies
report to the SEC. "Either their products are conflict free or they're not
and there's really no incentive in there to be making progress," says
Seay.
Reporting incremental progress towards conflict free
minerals might encourage companies to stay in Congo, she suggests, instead of
shaming companies who can’t say they are 100% conflict free. But ultimately,
Seay would rather see a stronger diplomatic approach to the conflict and more
funding for reform.
Other sources of violence
Despite often desperate and dangerous working conditions,
serious health risks, and rampant exploitation of child labor, mining provides
a vital source of income for millions of men, and women, in the DRC.
"What I've seen working for over 5 years in artisanal
mining towns in eastern DRC is that mining has the potential to be a remarkable
driver of economic recovery in a place where so many systems of livelihood have
been destroyed by long-term war," Jocelyn Kelly, Director of the Women in
War program at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, told Al Jazeera America in
an interview.
Reducing the conflict to a simple cause and effect
between violence, resource exploitation and human rights abuses has been
particularly damaging for women. The sexual abuse of women in eastern Congo is
an issue that’s hard to overstate, said Kelly. But, she added, oversimplifying
the problem overlooks much more important, complex and often pervasive forms of
abuse women face.
"I think a common misconception in artisanal
mining towns is that the armed groups are responsible for all of the challenges
and abuses in these areas," said Kelly.
"In fact, what we have found is that armed
[groups] are not in a majority of mining towns at all,” said Kelly. “"Even
when they are present, it is often the national military and not rebel groups
who are consolidating control and who are extorting civilians for money."
Lauren Wolfe, Director of the Women Under Siege
project, wrote in February 2015 that
efforts to regulate minerals and thereby reduce the conflict that has raged in
Congo for decades, "was not leading to change for [these] women and other
low-level miners."
Like Kelly, Wolfe’s reporting has also revealed
that rape is mostly perpetrated by civilians, a finding echoed by the final
report of the UN Group of Experts on the DRC.
So where does that leave conscientious consumers, and
well-intentioned efforts to try to intervene in a conflict that has claimed so
many lives?
"I think that we as western consumers have to
remember that ultimately the situation in the Congo isn't about us," said
Seay.
"Congo's problems are fundamentally not about the
economic issues here. It’s about the need for political settlement, and the
need for security sector reform, and the need to build institutions, the
long-term processes of state building, and including everyone under the banner
of what's considered citizenship. And until you get that, you're not going to
get any kind of regulation that works in the mineral sector."
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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