Blog Posts in Conflict Minerals
Clinton Reaffirms U.S. Support to End Conflict Minerals Trade
Just a day after President Obama signed into law legislation that will demand U.S. companies to be transparent about the origins of certain minerals in their products, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed the U.S.’s support and efforts toward ending the conflict minerals trade, one that is contributing to ongoing violence and atrocities in eastern Congo. The secretary said of the situation in Congo:
“[T]he trade in ‘conflict minerals’…has funded a cycle of conflict there that has left more than 5 million people dead since 1998, displaced countless more, and spawned an epidemic of sexual and gender-based violence.”
The statement, a brief summary of the U.S.’s “holistic strategy” toward the deadly minerals trade since the issue hit Clinton’s agenda just a year ago, serves as a reminder of the long road ahead in fully ending the trade—one that will depend on the efforts of the Congolese government, neighboring governments, and the U.N. Security Council. It’s also evidence of the influence of the Congo advocacy movement, which rallied behind the conflict minerals legislation and pushed for Congress to act despite a challenging legislative climate.
Obama Signs Financial Reform, Ushering in New Law on Conflict Minerals
With President Obama’s signature, the highly anticipated bill on financial reform became law today, and with it, the United States also took a significant step to address the mineral trade fueling conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The financial regulation bill includes a provision requiring U.S. companies that import products containing certain minerals to file an annual report declaring whether they source their minerals from Congo or one of the nine surrounding countries, since much of Congo’s mineral wealth is smuggled out of the region through its neighbors. If a company declares that its supply chain passes through the region, it will have to report what steps it is taking to trace the origin of the minerals and ensure that its purchases don’t fund armed groups responsible for atrocities in eastern Congo.
While the provision doesn’t ban companies from importing conflict minerals into the United States, companies will have to publish this information on their websites. Consumers will then be able to choose which products to buy based on a company’s track record in Congo, not to mention give advocacy groups information to organize around.
“The consequence is a market-driven one. Consumers can make their choices,” said Rory Anderson of World Vision, quoted today in a front page story in The Washington Post. “Do they want their electronic products to be funding gang rape in central Africa? I don’t think most Americans would want that,” she said.
One of the key Congressional champions of conflict minerals legislation is Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA). The Conflict Minerals Trade Act, which he co-sponsored last year with Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf (R), was a precursor to today’s law. “Making something like this happen in Washington, D.C. in this climate (…) you don’t understand how difficult it is (to do) what we were trying to do,” said McDermott this morning at an event he hosted for advocacy organizations, to recognize the success made possible by the collective effort of advocates in Congress and in the grassroots movement active across the country. Both the congressman and Enough’s John Prendergast, who spoke at the gathering, praised the indispensable work of activists who kept up the pressure on their elected officials to move the bill through Congress. Here’s a clip:
Congressman McDermott is one of a bipartisan group of representatives and senators who pushed Congress to take action on an important element driving the decade-long war in Congo that is marked by atrocious human rights crimes, including an epidemic of rape. Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Russ Feingold (D-WI), Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA), and Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Chairmen Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Barney Frank (D-MA), who ushered the bill through both houses of Congress deserve special praise for taking a major step to ending the neglected conflict in eastern Congo.
With the news last week that the Senate had passed the financial reform bill, sending it to President Obama’s desk, the Congolese government issued a statement commending the U.S. Congress for its effort to help Congo tackle an issue that has long plagued its eastern region. Translated from its original French version, the statement said that the bill helps address the sensitive topic of blood minerals “while reinforcing our commitment to develop responsible business practices that allow our people to make real dividends from resources in the soil and below the ground of the Republic.”
Now that the bill is signed, the Securities and Exchange Commission has nine months to devise the regulations to implement the law. Industry groups attempted to gut the conflict minerals language from the draft bill, and they will surely fight hard to water down the provision at this stage.
There’s a long road ahead, no doubt littered with ploys by those who currently benefit from the trade in conflict minerals. But consensus is clearly building around the belief that cutting off militias in eastern Congo from a key source of funding is good not just for Congolese civilians and the Congolese government, but also for U.S. consumers and companies that prioritize social responsibility.
Congo Gold Episode of ‘60 Minutes’ Nominated for Emmy
Nominations are out for the 62nd annual Emmy Awards, and Enough is thrilled and honored to learn that the Congo Gold episode of CBS’ “60 Minutes” was nominated for television’s biggest award of the year. The Enough team in Washington and in Africa’s Great Lakes region collaborated with “60 Minutes” producers Solly Granatstein and Nicole Young and correspondent Scott Pelley to research and shoot the documentary. Enough Co-founder John Prendergast and our newest addition to the field team – eastern Congo researcher Fidel Bafilemba – both appear in the piece.
In consultation with Enough and Human Rights Watch, the “60 Minutes” crew investigated the trail of Congo’s conflict gold from rebel-held mines through Uganda and on to U.S. consumers. They also captured footage illustrating the conditions in gold mines, where children as young as 11 work to pull the valuable metal out of the earth. Watch the segment:
CBS also featured an extended interview with John Prendergast and this collection of photos by Enough consultant Sasha Lezhnev.
Since it aired last November, the Congo Gold segment has proved to be an important resource for spreading the word about the conflict in eastern Congo and the role of the minerals trade in fueling the fighting. It helped galvanize the growing movement of Congo advocates across the United States, and provided a valuable illustration of the problem to members of Congress, who succeeded in including a landmark provision about conflict minerals in the financial reform legislation passed yesterday.
We wish our friends at “60 Minutes” the very best at the award ceremony on July 31.
Congress Passes Conflict Minerals Legislation
Today, Congo activists, U.S. consumers, and the people of Congo won an incredible victory against long odds. Congress passed the Wall Street reform bill with the inclusion of a key provision on conflict minerals. The conflict minerals language requires companies that use tin, tungsten, tantalum, or gold in their products to file a disclosure report with the Securities and Exchange Commission detailing whether these materials originated in Congo or its adjoining countries. And thanks to you, the bill requires companies to audit these reports to actually prove whether they are sourcing from conflict mines or not.
While passage of the conflict minerals provision is not a cure-all for completely ending the war in Congo, it is a huge step forward. This new law – once it is signed by President Obama – begins to eliminate the source of funding that allows armed militias to continue to terrorize and humiliate communities, cause countless deaths, and commit widespread sexual violence and rape.
While the fight is not over, activists should be very proud of this impressive victory and deserve to relish in this moment. Across the United States, Congo activists, members of the diaspora, and concerned consumers – the growing movement across America that sees the urgency in ending the world’s deadliest war – rallied around the passage of this legislation. They overran the Facebook pages of elected officials, followed up with phone calls, met face-to-face with their representatives, and called on industry leaders to clean up their supply chain. Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Russ Feingold (D-WI), Representatives Jim McDermott (D-WA), Howard Berman (D-CA), and Donald Payne (D-NJ), Chairmen Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Barney Frank (D-MA), and many other brave members of Congress also deserve special praise for taking a major step to ending the neglected conflict in eastern Congo. These are just some examples of the creative advocacy that has helped elevate the issue of conflict minerals to reach today’s tipping point.
From the day President Obama signs the bill, the Securities and Exchange Commission will have nine months to promulgate regulations implementing the new law. It will be up to us to ensure that these regulations are as strong as possible. While the jewelry and manufacturing lobbyists were caught off guard by the conflict minerals language and weighed in too late to remove the language, you can be sure industries will fight to make sure the regulations implementing the law are as weak as possible. As this story continues to develop, we’ll be coming to you with new ways of getting engaged. Please stick with us.
Congratulations on today’s exciting victory!
Photo: Tin ore (Sasha Lezhnev)
Jewelry Lobbyists Try to Gut Conflict Minerals Provision from Bill Just Ahead of Vote
Amid the news that the requisite 60 votes had been secured to pass the financial reform bill yesterday, we also got word that some industries that benefit from the unregulated trade in minerals from eastern Congo had undertaken a last-ditch lobbying effort to have the conflict minerals provision removed from the legislation. Put simply, a claim made publicly by Jewelers of America that conflict minerals are “too hard to trace” is misleading and contradicts the actions and statements of jewelers and electronics companies. Jewelers of America, or JA, is the leading U.S. jewelry retail association.
An alert sent around by JA warned jewelry retailers that the conflict minerals provision in the financial reform bill would be a “nightmare” to the industry because it would require companies to hire third party firms to audit their supply chain. The Jewelers of America pressed members of the industry to contact their senators and urge them to strike the minerals trade provision.
The real nightmare is in eastern Congo, where the conflict has led to the deaths of six million people – making it the deadliest war in the world since the Holocaust. The war is being fueled by a trade in four minerals: tin, tantalum, gold, and tungsten. Armed groups in Congo continue to massacre villages and rape women in large numbers, sustaining themselves by controlling minerals mines and trading routes. Seeing the urgency of this situation, thousands of Americans wrote to their senators through Facebook last month urging support for a strong conflict minerals amendment.
The bill provision would help stop this deadly trade by enacting supply chain disclosure requirements for publicly traded companies and ensure that consumers in the U.S. would be protected from purchasing products that contain conflict minerals. Section 1502 of the financial reform bill would require companies for which columbite-tantalite, cassiterite, gold, or wolframite is necessary to the functionality or production of their products to disclose in their annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission whether: (1) the minerals originated or may have originated in the Congo or an adjoining country; and (2) provide a description of measures taken by the company, which shall include an independent audit, to exercise due diligence on the source and chain of custody of activities involving such minerals to ensure they did not directly or indirectly finance or benefit armed groups in the Congo.
This legislation has been in discussion for the past two years, and Congress is taking a landmark step to protect American consumers from unwittingly perpetuating the violence in eastern Congo. They have a right to know whether their purchases are funding groups responsible for killing and rape. This provision in the bill will enable consumers to make decisions about which products to buy based on the companies’ track record in Africa’s Great Lakes region.
Jewelers and electronics companies can trace and audit their minerals back to smelters and mines. We have been to the mines, and traders showed us exactly whom they were selling to. With the new requirements in the Wall Street reform bill, companies will finally be forced to disclose where they are getting these minerals from, and if they are paying off armed militias in the process.
Contrary to some jewelers’ stated inability to trace their gold supply chains, traceability is, in fact, possible and reasonable, as evidenced by actions taken by some leaders in the industry. Tiffany & Co. is already able to trace its jewelry supply back to its mines of origin, and Walmart has a “Love Earth” jewelry line that is fully traceable back to mines in Utah and Nevada. Electronics companies are also already starting to trace and audit their tantalum suppliers. Interestingly, Jewelers of America’s own CEO Matt Runci had this exchange on CBS’ “60 Minutes” last year:
"What effect would it have if Walmart simply declared that it would demand traceability all the way to the mine for all the gold that it sells?" asked Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes.”
"There's no question in my mind that commercial pressure can and should and must be brought to bear," Runci said.
The provision is relevant and germane to financial reform. Investors have been concerned about the conflict minerals trade, and a cumulative group of investment firms worth $200 billion issued a public statement in April 2010 about the need for supply chain reform. Read their statement here.
We’re reaching out to the large, bipartisan group of senators who have long stood on the side of American consumers and civilians in eastern Congo, and we are encouraging them to see through the claims of those who would like to see the conflict minerals provision killed. The latest word is that final vote on the financial reform bill will take place Thursday, and we hope to soon bring you news that this crucial legislation is headed to President Obama’s desk. Please stay tuned.
Photo: Child mining gold in eastern Congo (Sasha Lezhnev)
