Working Toward a Conflict-Free Mineral Trade
Thu, Mar 4, 2010
By Melissa Pistilli—Exclusive to Tantalum investing News
With respect to companies that are responsible for what are now being called conflict minerals, I think the international community must start looking at steps we can take to try to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence here. —U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
The phrase “conflict minerals” is quickly becoming a much more familiar term as concerned consumers, organizations and politicians begin to raise public awareness of the role the mineral trade plays in fuelling the violence raging in the eastern provinces of the DR Congo.
While the “conflict” in the Congo has been labeled a war, Enough Project Co-Founder John Prendergast recently said it’s actually more “a business based on violent extortion.” Prendergast appropriately dubs it a “mafia-style economy.”
Unfortunately, it is not just the FDLR militia or the Congolese army who profit from this violent business of forced labor and institutionalized rape. Also profiting are the governments of the Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda as well as the companies that purchase and refine the metals, those that fabricate electronic components such as tantalum capacitors, and those that produce electronic devices like cell phones and laptops.
