GlobalPost

UNITED NATIONS — A Nevada-based company’s purchase of minerals looted from eastern Congo is helping to finance a decade-long war that has claimed the lives of millions of civilians, an unpublished United Nations report claims.

Niotan Inc., of Mound House, Nev., is the first American company to be identified as a buyer of conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is one of several companies cited in the U.N. study on how the illegal trade of the region’s vast mineral resources, including gold, has kept the war going by enriching both rebels and Congolese army units.

Many of the rare minerals are needed to make mobile phones and other consumer electronic devices.

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WASHINGTON — In an effort to shine a light on the darkness at the heart of the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II, the Enough Project traveled to eastern Congo to better understand how the 3Ts (Tin, Tantalum, and Tungsten) and gold make their way from Congo’s killing fields to our cell phones, laptops, MP3 players and video game systems. (Read more about the first American company to be indentified, in an upcoming U.N. report, as a buyer of conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo.)

What we found is that the conflict minerals supply chain is far less intimidating than the electronics industry would have consumers believe. In fact, the journey from mine to cell phone can be broken down into six major steps that make the supply chain relatively easy to understand.

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BOSTON — The war in Darfur is over? That’s what the outgoing general of the United Nations forces in that troubled African region says.

General Martin Agwai, who is leaving his post this week, said the vicious fighting over the past six years has subsided as the rebel groups have divided into insignificant factions. He says the Darfur region of Sudan now suffers more from low-level disputes and banditry, instead of war.

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