[ALToronto]

This topic has been mentioned in a couple of current threads, as a sideline to other discussions. I feel it is important enough to warrant its own space.

Most of us know that components of modern electronic devices use rare earth metals, especially tantalum and niobium (previously called columbium). Large deposits of these metals are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where a brutal civil war has been raging for at least the past 15 years. Militias fund their operations by taking over these mines and keeping most of the profits. So most companies who need these minerals have been trying to find other sources. This is well documented.

HOWEVER - there is another side to this story that most of us are unaware of. The following is a comment on yet another recent article about cellphones and conflict metals.

Link to article: http://www.mobiledia.com/news/121476.html

<quote>
Real people on the other end of this nonsense are starving and dying, and the militia are flourishing, both because of Dodd-Frank. This legislation is perhaps the greatest proactive tragedy committed against Africa by the west in a hundred years.

We are a Congolese-owned social enterprise mining company working with Chiefs and their tribes in the Congo. We provide a well documented and transparent path via an OECD compliant process. We have hundreds tons of coltan, but because of Dodd-Frank, there is a 100% embargo of legitimate artisanal mineral sales, throughout all of central Africa.

We have challenged every supporting organizaiton of Dodd-Frank to find just one legitimate buyer for these tribes. It has been 463 days now that these tribes are unable to make a living. 400,000 miners are now out of work, affecting 1 million people who depend on them for a living in the conflict area, and 10 million who depend on mining throughout the Congo (World Bank). Diseases only associated with starvation (Kwashiorkor) are now cropping up.

The history of legislation like Dodd-Frank which focus on symptoms instead of causes, is abysmal. Dodd-Frank uses the random hope strategy of legislation that assumes if you remove one source of revenue from a burglar, that the burglar will stop stealing – a profoundly na�ve assumption. If a burglar steals from houses, we'll just burn the houses down. Surely making it harder for the burglar to steal will reform the burglar and turn him into a law-abiding citizen.

Dodd-Frank has burned down the entire mining industry of 10 million Congolese in the random hope that it might catch a militia or two in its path. What is the result? Legitimate artisanal mining exports are 100% embargoed – nothing is moving. We know this because we represent these artisans and not a single smelter anywhere in the world is willing to buy these minerals.

The majority of Dodd-Frank minerals don't even come from the relatively small conflict area in the Congo, yet all of central Africa is being punished in hopes of reforming this militia.

How are the militia doing? The UN Panel of Experts and even Global Witness say smuggling by militia is documented to have increased significantly since Dodd-Frank. The burglar is doing just fine.

Dodd-Frank has a predecessor that didn't work, either. Dodd-Frank is being modeled after the Kimberley process, designed to stop militia from smuggling diamonds in Sierra Leone. Five years after it was implemented, studies showed massive fraud on a world-wide scale, and the militia were still doing just fine. Only a British military operation cleared them out. Global Witness, a founding member of Kimberley and a main proponent of Dodd-Frank, pulled out of the Kimberley process in November 2011 because, after 10 years, it still wasn't working. Yet they think Dodd-Frank should move ahead.

Dodd-Frank will have the exact same result, because as with Kimberley, it refuses to recognize that minerals are not the problem, criminals are the problem. Law-abiding miners are already being devastated by Dodd-Frank, the militia is better off than ever, and, as with Kimberley, the only thing that will rid us of them is a military operation.

The Dodd-Frank groupies that don't live there are all re-arranging deck chairs while the ship of the Congolese economy is burned and sunk by this disastrous law. They ignore history and plunge clumsily forward.

As Eric Kajemba, the leader of a Congolese civil-society group has said, “If the advocacy groups aren’t speaking for the people of eastern Congo, whom are they speaking for?”.

And as Aloys Tegera of the Pole Institute in Goma says, "They picked the wrong target."

Target the militia. They are the problem, not minerals.
<end quote>

What's an ethical consumer to do? It's a lot simpler to condemn work conditions in Chinese factories.

[xandermac]

I see this is a thread on Dodd-Frank rather than the issue of conflict minerals. So, I agree the legislation is flawed and think it needs to be repealed.


Sent from my iPhone4s using Tapatalk

[mithrazor]

That's actually a good question. What is an ethical consumer to do? Anything we can? Petition if nothing?

[ALToronto]

Dodd-Frank legislation is in response to public pressure to stay away from Congolese minerals. But most well-meaning people in the West, just like the legislators who drafted Dodd-Frank, don't know the full story. I didn't until 2 days ago, when I came across the article I linked to and the comment I quoted. This is so complex that simplistic solutions like boycotts only hurt the very people we mean to save from suffering.

I would like to see an articulate rebuttal to groups like Greenpeace and Enough! Project that shows the unfortunate effect of boycotts and Dodd-Frank. And I would like to see the executives of electronics companies explain why they are buying the materials they use - and not just with respect to $$.

[xandermac]

Dodd-Frank legislation is in response to public pressure to stay away from Congolese minerals.

The bill was actually in response to the financial meltdown and is so flawed as to be costing us jobs and preventing an economic recovery. However, it included a provision in its 2300 pages to address conflict mineral mining. Namely, for companies to "track" the use of conflict minerals in their production cycle. It does not prohibit their use, even though it should.

Some might also say its working.

UN says Dodd-Frank Congo conflict minerals bill is working - CSMonitor.com

Some might not

U.N. on Congo: Dodd-Frank conflict minerals law increases conflict | San Francisco Bay View

There are many reasons to repeal the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act but legislation regarding conflict mineral mining is a necessity regardless of what a special interest mining company would have us believe.

I don't know what the answer is or what that legislation should be (Dodd-Frank isn't it, in my opinion this is worth more than a line item in a financial Bill) but ignoring the issue hasn't helped. Companies need to be held accountable, forced to do better, forced to try and help the situation, to work with the government to try and find a solution. It's up to us to raise awareness and push these companies toward a solution.

[kbz1960]

The problem is while the little people out number the ones who profit and make laws and bills, the little people have no power no matter what they tell us. If something will benefit those in power, the ones in power are going to be in favor of it.

[alnamvet68]

Well, when you outsource virtually every facet of the American manufactuting/mining/agriculture/technological/etc economy to poor, politically unstable nations with an even poorer human rights records, what do you expect? With very few exceptions, virtually everything we consume, food wise and/or otherwise comes by way of far away places that many of us only visit as part of our military duties, and most certainly not a destination one would want to take the whole family to.