The good and bad news about Congo's conflict minerals
gulfnews.com - 3 hours ago
On June 10, the Enough Project published a report claiming that 67 per
cent of tin, tantalum, and tungsten (3T) mines in eastern Congo are
now free of armed actors and declaring the minerals mined there
"conflict-free" (compared with a 2010 UN Group of Experts report
asserting that "almost every mineral deposit" in the area was
controlled by military groups).
The document came close on the heels of a June 2 deadline for US firms
to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the
provenance of minerals used in their products and to certify that they
do not contain "conflict minerals" from the Democratic Republic of
Congo or its neighbours. The BBC responded to the Enough Project's
report, calling it "rare good news" from the DRC and lauding it as
proof that consumer-led lobbying efforts in wealthy countries can have
real effects on under-developed countries.
However, the situation is not as rosy as such reactions may suggest.
First, describing the mines as "conflict-free" suggests that the
absence of armed groups and Congolese military from mines means that
miners no longer work under duress and are not forced to pay illegal
"taxes" at the mine site that can in turn fuel militia activity. Yet
the absence of armed individuals does not mean that miners are not
working under forced or inhumane conditions, that they are not being
extorted, or that non-state actors and individuals holding political
office are not benefiting illegally from mining in the region.
Indeed, a variety of actors are involved in Congo's mineral industry,
including politicians, Congolese and foreign entrepreneurs and
investors, Congolese mining companies, and multinational firms, and
eliminating extortion by armed groups and the military will not
necessarily affect illegal profits to others, who may subsequently
fund armed activity. While the route may be more circuitous, the
result is the same.
Indeed, the report concedes that some armed actors have simply
resorted to using proxies to extort money from miners, often friends
or family members. The absence of armed groups and Congolese military
in the mines themselves thus does not mean that they have disappeared
entirely from the mineral trade or that minerals are not indirectly
financing armed activity. In addition, extortion does not just occur
in mines, but also along roads, at checkpoints, with negotiants, and
at counters in nearby towns and provincial capitals where minerals are
bought, sold and smuggled. Extortion may thus continue to occur at
other points along the supply chain, and indeed, the report notes that
armed actors are still present along many key transport routes.
Third, the report remains vague on who does control the mines in the
absence of armed actors. In a couple of instances, it notes that mines
previously controlled by warlords or military actors are now subject
to ownership negotiations between the government, large multinational
companies, and community groups. Such negotiations do not, however,
mean that equitable solutions are being found. Indeed, the line
between politics, military and civil society in DRC is so blurred as
to be virtually non-existent in some cases.
While some mines may have previously been controlled by armed actors
"in the ground," it was often with the strong backing and protection
of political actors in Kinshasa or provincial capitals who will be
keen to participate in ownership discussions. Equally, community
groups are often unrepresentative or co-opted by military or political
actors, and the assumption that their participation in negotiations
will ensure that miners' interests are taken into account may not
hold. Finally, large multinational mining companies have in many
instances benefited from or fallen victim to corruption, a lack of
transparency, and instability in Congo, and as long as the country's
mining code remains under revision, it is unlikely that transparency
and fairness will prevail.
Perhaps most importantly, the use of the term "conflict-free" is
problematic. It is used largely to describe the electronics and other
products manufactured by western companies and consumed by western
populations. This, however, leaves out the Congolese themselves, many
of whose lives remain marked by personal and material insecurity.
While the report correctly stresses that much remains to be done, that
instability still plagues much of the region, and that there is an
acute need for broader security sector reform, the discourse that
implies that mines without military actors and minerals from those
mines are "conflict-free" minimises the many ways in which a variety
of actors sustain conflict in Congo and suggests that what matters
most in the search for peace in Congo is minerals.
However, minerals alone have never been the main source of conflict in
the DRC; instead, conflict is at its root linked to poor or absent
governance both nationally and regionally. This relatively narrow
conception of conflict is likely more of a problem with the Dodd-Frank
legislation that generated the SEC reporting requirement than with the
Enough Project's findings. Still, while it is surely good that a
significant number of 3T mines in eastern Congo are no longer directly
controlled by armed actors and that corporate responsibility about
mineral sourcing is on the rise, overall levels of violence in Eastern
Congo have not diminished significantly since the passage of
Dodd-Frank. Removing armed actors from mines is important, but doing
so will not solve problems that are, at their base, political.
-- Washington Post
Sarah Von Billerbeck is a lecturer in International Relations in the
Department of War Studies, King's College London, where she works on
post-conflict peacebuilding, UN peacekeeping, and DR Congo. She
previously worked for the United Nations in eastern Congo.
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