Blog Posts in Violence Against Women
Share Your Enough Moment
In their forthcoming book, The Enough Moment, John Prendergast and Don Cheadle present the stories of celebrities, activists and survivors who have dedicated their lives to advocating for human rights in Africa. It all begins with an "Enough Moment" -- an experience in your life when you realize you have to stand up, speak out, and organize with others on vital human rights issues in Africa.
The book hits stores Sept. 7, but you don’t have to wait to share your own Enough Moment. We’re interested in hearing your story now, so we’re gathering video versions of personal Enough Moments.
Just begin the video by introducing yourself: Tell us your name, where you live, and what you do. In three minutes or less, describe how you are involved in fighting for human rights in Africa, and the moment in your life that prompted you to take action.
Most importantly, be yourself. Film your video in a simple, natural environment. It's just you, on camera, sharing your story.
Want to see an example? Here's Enough's own Mari Wright sharing her Enough Moment.
When you're finished with your video, upload it to YouTube with the tag "enoughmoment." Please title it “[your name]’s Enough Moment.” For example, John would title his video “John Prendergast’s Enough Moment.” Finally, email the link to us at yourmoment@enoughproject.org.
Later this summer, we'll be launching a special Web site, www.enoughmoment.org, where your video will appear alongside other Enough Moments from celebrities, activists, and survivors.
To learn more about the book and to pre-order your own copy, click here.
Thank you, and we look forward to hearing about your Enough Moment.
Why We Should Care About the Congo
This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.
Deep in the mountains that separate the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Rwanda, largely hidden from public view, a war has been raging for the past 14 years. In this gruesome conflict, rape is frequently the weapon of choice, and a wide array of armed groups with many different patrons fight mercilessly for control of mineral riches.
There is no easy solution to ending the war in Congo, which has claimed more than five million lives, making it the most lethal conflict since World War II. But the Wall Street reform legislation signed into law by President Obama includes a far-reaching provision designed to reduce the horrific violence. Building on the work of a coalition of a dozen major humanitarian organizations and industry pioneers, the bill establishes a new mechanism that will limit the ability of armed groups to profit from the illicit mining and sale of cassiterite, coltan, and wolframite and other "conflict minerals."
My colleagues and I have been working for months to pass this provision, and by partnering with the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, and several other key allies in the House and Senate, including Rep. McDermott and Senators Brownback, Dodd, Durbin, and Feingold, we were able to secure broad, bipartisan support for a requirement that companies doing business in the Congo and adjoining countries disclose both the provenance of the minerals they use and the efforts they have taken to ensure that their dollars do not directly or indirectly support armed groups that employ rape as a tool of war and otherwise perpetuate the conflict.
Let there be no mistake: this is only one critical step of many that must be taken to stop one of the world's longest running wars. But it is a major step.
To be effective, this action must be paired with other efforts. By companies, who will need to build on the work of peers who have already started to develop conflict-free supply chains for the minerals they use. By consumers, who will need to make conscientious choices about the products they buy. By regulators, who will need to ensure that the disclosure process is taken seriously, and that loopholes are not reopened. And by Congress, which will need to carefully monitor the effectiveness of the new mechanism, and take other steps to enhance the ability of the United States to work for peace in places like Congo.
Several of those efforts are currently under consideration in the Foreign Affairs Committee. One that is a particularly high priority for me would overhaul U.S. foreign assistance programs for the first time since 1961, thus enabling our nation to more effectively and efficiently target and deliver our aid dollars.
In these difficult economic times, it is sometimes hard to understand why we should care about what happens in faraway and largely forgotten places like the Congo. But in our increasingly globalized world, conflicts in even distant corners of the world can create ripple effects – from mass migrations and the spread of infectious disease, to deforestation and the depletion of other key natural resources – that impact the current and future well-being of Americans.
Despite the difficult challenges we face here at home, Americans are a generous and compassionate people. Our values compel us to fight injustice wherever it occurs, and to reduce the suffering of innocents. The men, women, and children of the Congo have endured unimaginable hardships for more than a dozen years, and it is time for us to act. The conflict minerals provision in the just-passed Wall Street reform bill is an important first step in changing the situation in that beleaguered country.
The author is the Democratic Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He represents the 28th District of California.
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)
Reforming Wall Street and Ending the World's Deadliest War
This post originally appeared on Huffington Post.
Score a win for the grassroots against special interests. Last week, thousands of people across the country wrote and called their senators asking them to support a section in the Wall Street reform bill that addressed 'conflict minerals' from Congo, the new blood diamonds. They even posted thousands of comments on senators' Facebook pages, requesting that they not pander to special interests and pass this important provision. And while the final victory is yet to come, they won the battle.
As we speak, conflict minerals are helping fuel the deadliest war in the world since World War II, the conflict in eastern Congo in which 1,100 women are raped every month, and 1,500 people die every day. The main armed groups that orchestrate the violence make hundreds of millions of dollars by trading in four minerals - the 3 Ts of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold. These minerals are then bought by electronics and jewelry companies and are used in our cell phones, laptops, and gold necklaces.
We just returned from Congo and remember one woman in particular, Jane, who was raped seven times in a row by a group of militia commanders. Jane asked us to tell the U.S. government and companies to do all they could to help end this war.
Fed up that consumer purchases are contributing to Congo's bloody crisis, Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced a bipartisan bill two years ago to try to combat the conflict minerals trade. Since then, these courageous senators have traveled to the war zone in Congo, worked tirelessly to bring attention to the issue through Congressional hearings and briefings, and have made every effort to involve companies in a solution. A bipartisan coalition has since joined them, with Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) introducing a House conflict minerals bill last November, and Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) co-sponsoring the Brownback-Durbin bill.
But the conflict minerals campaign is now a grassroots civic movement, not simply a Washington-led effort. With thousands of wall postings, a recent Facebook campaign drew the attention of several key senators and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof; Stanford University's board just passed a conflict-free electronics resolution, and several campuses have promised to follow; 60 Minutes aired a segment on conflict gold that won the "Liberty for Media" award; the "I'm a Mac, and I have a Dirty Little Secret" video has had over 400,000 views in less than a week; and scores of protestors picketed the opening of Apple's first store in Washington, D.C., two weeks ago. People across America see the urgency of this issue: we do not want rape and conflict inside our cell phones.
The Brownback amendment that is currently part of the financial reform bill will make companies accountable for making sure they do not source minerals from conflict areas. Companies that source from Congo or neighboring countries will have to conduct an audit to make sure that they did not source from a conflict mine. This tracing and auditing is possible - Intel and Motorola are already starting credible audits on one of the minerals, tantalum. Moreover, the process is inexpensive: the audits will only cost one penny per product, according to electronics companies.
Last week, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) led a brave effort to keep the Brownback amendment in the bill, together with the bill co-sponsors and Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA). Special interests lobbied heavily against the provision, arguing that it was too expensive and would unfairly undercut American business. Yet the majority of the companies that use these minerals are listed on U.S. stock exchanges, including foreign companies, so it would actually set a level playing field for industry. Moreover, U.S. regulations help set global standards, and this audit provision would set a common standard for minerals supply and smelting companies around the world.
But the real question that Americans asked themselves last week was: Is one additional penny for a cell phone really too much to pay for accountability? A clear majority said no, and they weighed in with their elected representatives to say so. It's now time for Congress to listen to its constituents and finish this fight on Wall Street reform.
Photo: Miner panning for gold (Sasha Lezhnev)
Leading Policy Voices Speak Out on Conflict Minerals
Enough was pleased to organize a top-notch panel this week to discuss the issue of Congo’s conflict minerals. The Congolese Ambassador to the United States Faida Mitifu joined the top State Department official engaged on the issue, Under Secretary for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs Robert Hormats, and Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) for a conversation with Enough’s John Prendergast and David Sullivan about efforts on the part of the two governments to end the trade in conflict minerals, one of a number of issues driving Congo’s long war in the east.
Here are some photos from the event:
Congressman McDermott has championed the conflict minerals issue on Capitol Hill, authoring the Congo Minerals Trade Act (H.R. 4128) that helped form the basis of the conflict minerals language -- soon up for a vote in the financial reform bill. It’s “not too much to ask” that companies track whether the minerals in their products come from conflict mines, the congressman said.
Under Secretary Hormats called conflict minerals “one of the great moral issues of our times” in his comprehensive remarks. He spoke of his recent effort to convince the G-8 to urge the Congolese government to improve governance and accountability in the region, highlighted the personal dedication of Secretary Hillary Clinton, and noted the direct responsibility of the private sector.
Without naming names, Hormats commended some companies for taking the initiative to clean up their supply chains. But, he noted, “[N]ot all actors in this trade have clean hands.”
“[W]e are looking at companies and individuals suspect of supporting or contributing to illegal armed groups through the illicit trade of natural resources,” Hormats said. “Under U.N. Resolution 1857, all Member States, the United States included, must impose sanctions on those who fall in this category. We will not shrink from this responsibility.” He said that one U.S. company has already been “warned.”
This discussion of sanctions is a key component in the effort to stem the trade in conflict minerals and one that, because of its sensitive nature, is sometimes passed over in official remarks. Seeing it frankly addressed by Under Secretary Hormats was an encouraging sign.
Ambassador Faida Mitifu rightly raised the point that the issue of conflict minerals is not new and was first addressed by a local organization in eastern Congo, whose report spurred attention from the United Nation in 1999. Even apart from the dramatic human toll of the conflict, the Congolese government must work to make the minerals trade transparent because it is currently losing significant revenue, she said.
The full event was captured on video, and Under Secretary Hormats blogged about it as well.
The event, featuring two ambassadors and a congressman, provided a rare glimpse into all of the diplomatic and policy work taking place behind the scenes. Separately, the confluence of an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times, a celebrity-made video, and a piece by actress Brooke Smith and John Prendergast on the front page of the Huffington Post prompted consumer awareness – and as a result, industry awareness at the highest levels – to take off this week. It’s a pretty dynamite combination that is making headway to ensure that the social justice issue of conflict minerals won’t go away – until the problem is tackled.
