Congo conflict minerals banned from US
A new United States law is aiming at ensuring that smart phones are not helping fund wars by buying minerals from Congo and neighboring countries.
The provision is part of the financial reform bill passed this week and requires large companies such as Apple and Intel to give out an annual report where they have to give the origin of the minerals they use during the manufacturing process. The Democratic Republic of Congo has a lot of resources, including cobalt, gold and copper and some American companies use to buy minerals used for jewelry, computers or mobile phone production from the eastern part of the country, where government forces have been battling rebels for years. The money obtained from selling the mineral are allegedly used for funding the militants. The provision does not mention any penalty for using conflict minerals, but companies have to disclose where their minerals come from and have to investigate further to see if there is any connection between the seller and the conflict areas. There reports are to be published on each company’s website.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a researcher at the Makerere University from Uganda, says that this will eventually protect the interests of the Congolese and that this way larger companies will appear to do the export trades, the minerals are going to be certified and smuggling will disappear. He also says that this law will probably not prevent the bigger companies from buying a part of their supplies from there, but at least a part of the rebel funding will disappear. In order for the law to be effective, the United States will have to work with the Congolese authorities and human rights groups. The human rights activists have been fighting now for years against the conflict minerals and believe that they are to blame for funding more than a decade of violence, which has made at least 5 million victims among the Congolese people. Besides the dead ones, there are hundreds of thousands of women and girls that have been raped by the rebels. This legislation is intended to help save thousands of lives and protect the Congolese women.
