http://www.washingtonpost.com/
The following is a guest post by Christoph Vogel and Ben Radley. Vogel is an Independent Analyst and a PhD candidate at the University of Zurich. Radley is a Director for Heartland Alliance and a PhD student at the International Institute of Social Studies.
When we think of the Congo today, we may think of bloody resource wars where women are being raped by armed groups to gain access to and control of the country’s minerals. If we do so, it’s because of the work of numerous NGOs, advocacy organizations, and activists such as the Enough Project or the “no blood in my mobile” campaign, who have been campaigning for several years to reduce conflict in the eastern Congo by “cleaning up” the region’s mineral trade. The struggle against so-called “conflict minerals” has literally become, borrowing Autesserre’s words, a lopsided “dominant narrative” spanning policy discourses and practical engagement in the sector.
The most significant policy result of this work to date, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, was passed by the Congress and signed into law in July 2010. It requires companies registered on the U.S. stock market to report on an annual basis whether their minerals have been sourced from the eastern DRC or neighboring countries, and thus, potentially financing conflict. This has in turn led to recent announcements by electronics giants including Apple and Intel that more of their products will be “conflict-free” in the future.
In the meantime, a coalition of around 70 Congolese leaders and international experts argue that, in the Congo itself, the movement risks contributing to, rather than alleviating, the very conflicts it sets out to address. While not calling to keep transparency and regulation at the lowest level, their open letter urges governments, companies, and other stakeholders to carefully rethink and increase their engagement on the issue.
More than four years after the signing of the Dodd-Frank Act, only a small fraction of the hundreds of mining sites in the eastern DRC have been reached by practical measures emanating from Dodd-Frank legislation, such as supply chain traceability or mineral export certification. As of now, four areas (Nyabibwe, Rubaya, Lemera, and Nzibira) have been introduced into traceability schemes allowing for legal trade in tin, tantalum, and tungsten (3T) minerals.
While they include around 30 mining sites, the overwhelming majority of mining sites (far more than 1000 across the provinces of North and South Kivu alone) has not become part of the bagging-and-tagging system iTSCi, put in place by the international tin industry body ITRI. The result is a de facto embargo targeting the lion’s share of Congolese mining communities, while at the same time violence and the presence of armed groups have not significantly decreased in the region.
As other traceability schemes have not yet become operational, iTSCi (and its partner projects such as Motorola’s “Solutions for Hope” initiative which seems to be engaging a little more constructively on the ground) represents the only legal way for Congolese to sell “conflict-free” minerals to international markets. Hence, a large part of the local mining economy remains “beyond the pale, forced into either illegality or collapse as certain international buyers have responded to the legislation by going ‘Congo-free.’”
For the rest of this column, click here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/10/in-eastern-congo-economic-colonialism-in-the-guise-of-ethical-consumption/