Congo’s Conflict Minerals: U.S. Legislation and Impacts on the Ground
DEVELOPMENTS
The world’s deadliest conflict has persisted in remote regions of eastern Congo, in part because more than a decade of international efforts to negotiate peace had neglected to address the profit motivations fueling the violence. That changed on July 23, 2010, when President Obama signed into law the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and its requirements for companies trading in Congo’s conflict minerals.
Congressional action on Congo is in part the result of a growing grassroots movement determined to bring an end to the war. This movement is fed up with a “see no evil” approach from the end users of Congo’s minerals, particularly consumer electronics companies for whom minerals plentiful in Congo are critical.
Demanding greater due diligence from the economic actors capable of staunching the flow of funds to Congo’s warring parties is not a new concept, but the political will generated by U.S. legislation is unprecedented. The question is whether the United States Government, including Secretary of State Clinton, will use this opportunity to permanently shift the economic incentives in the Great Lakes region away from violence and toward peace.
BACKGROUND
Congo’s conflict is complex and rooted in a long history of greed and grievance. The trade in eastern Congo’s lucrative mineral resources—the ores that produce tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold—has been a major source of revenue to armed groups on all sides of the conflict. It has connected the militias of North and South Kivu to a global supply chain that produces not just cell phones, but also hybrid automobiles, jet engines, and an array of high-tech equipment. Congo is not the sole source for such minerals – and, in some cases, Congo’s minerals constitute a minor portion of global production – but they are a major source of revenue for rebels and rights abusers.
Despite all of the recent interest, the linkages between the war in Congo and the high-tech industry is not news. The first United Nations panel tasked with examining these linkages was formed more than a decade ago. At this time, Congo was embroiled in what was called Africa’s World War, pitting nine countries and an array of rebel groups and proxy forces against one another, and with systematic looting of the country’s natural resources on all sides of the battlefield. It was the trade in tantalum ore (known in Congo as ‘coltan’) that first caught the world’s attention, as a price spike caused in part by the U.S. tech boom had directly contributed to escalating violence in Congo.
During the 2000s, the appearance of political progress toward the resolution of Congo’s conflict belied continuing insecurity and atrocities on the ground, particularly in North and South Kivu. The withdrawal of foreign armies gave way to the increased use of proxy rebel groups and the fomentation and fragmentation of an alphabet soup of militias. A transitional government and internationally-supported elections in 2006 did not succeed in reducing tensions around land, citizenship, and ethnicity in eastern Congo. U.N. peacekeepers lacked both the will and the means to protect civilians from violence. And foreign rebel groups, notably the Rwandan FDLR, continue to wreak havoc in eastern Congo and provide a pretext for continuing intervention and resource extraction by Congo’s neighbors.
For civilians on the ground in eastern Congo, little has changed. Armed groups on all sides, including the Congolese national army—itself a barely functional collection of former rebels—prey upon civilian populations, often terrorizing through systematic sexual violence. Congo momentarily attracts headlines when the violence threatens major towns, as it did in Goma in 2008, or when it reaches particularly galling levels of brutality, as with the mass rape of 250 people in Luvungi this past summer. But for the most part, the response from the world has been to look the other way.
This situation has until recently been particularly true for the end users of Congo’s mineral wealth. Although reports by the United Nations and international and Congolese NGOs continued to expose the linkages between the mineral trade and the violence, attention to the issue waned, especially after the price of tantalum plummeted. However, Congo’s pragmatic armed groups responded by shifting toward more valuable resources, including tin and gold.
So what changed to bring about such a shift, including the passage of the U.S. legislation? On the one hand, investigations of the conflict minerals supply chain have helped to clarify the responsibility that industry has to prevent tainted supplies from entering their products. U.N. investigators and NGOs have demonstrated that not only are international metals traders and processors purchasing supplies from conflict regions, in many cases they have pre-financed such purchases and dealt directly with actors linked to violence.
Another factor has been leadership from government, with Secretary of State Clinton traveling to eastern Congo and committing the United States to action, and with personal leadership from a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill. And most importantly, citizens and consumers have raised their voices: students at Stanford University successfully pushed the school to adopt a conflict minerals policy. The Catholic Church, spurred by Congolese clergy, lobbied relentlessly for the legislation. And activists protested electronics companies, both in person and via Facebook.
ANALYSIS
U.S. legislation is hardly a silver bullet solution to Congo’s woes. The legislation’s provisions are currently being translated into regulations by the Securities and Exchanges Commission, and absent sustained pressure, could be watered down to the point of irrelevance. But electronics companies are already developing a system to audit their suppliers, which should eventually result in the exclusion of conflict sources from the global markets. At the same time, greater due diligence by companies to trace and audit their supply chains will not tangibly impact the situation on the ground unless accompanied by other efforts. These efforts include reforming Congo’s predatory army, dismantling the remaining rebel groups, and imposing a measure of accountability in a place where a culture of impunity for atrocities has prevailed.
Consumer demand for conflict-free products has already catalyzed dramatic change. President Kabila’s decision to impose a mining ban—albeit an inadequate solution that is difficult to enforce and could simply lead to increased smuggling—at least begins to recognize the nature of the problem in eastern Congo.
The crucial next steps will be for the United States to help push Congo and its neighbors toward legitimately exporting their minerals wealth peacefully. One piece of the puzzle is a certification scheme for minerals, building on lessons learned from blood diamonds. The governments of the region have approved such a system, but it will need resources and scrutiny from the United States and others to ensure it is robust and effective. The other key is using the leverage afforded by our commercial connections to Congo to demand substantive efforts to reform the army and all the other key elements of a comprehensive policy.
David Sullivan is the Policy Manager at the Enough Project, which seeks to “build a permanent constituency to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity.”
