The New Blood Diamonds?

Electronics makers are pressed to stop using 'conflict minerals' from mines controlled by armed groups in DR Congo.

As featured on Fortune.com

First there were "blood diamonds," the gems that fueled conflict and human rights abuses in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Then there was "conflict cocoa," the chocolate source that's harvested by children and funds civil war in Ivory Coast. Now concern is rising about the minerals that go into common consumer electronics. Could that be a BloodBerry or a Conflict Cell in your pocket?

A new pressure-group campaign and pending legislation in Congress aim to increase awareness of "conflict minerals" from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and push companies to rid their supply chains of them. In question are ores mined by violent armed groups in the country's eastern region that can turn up in nearly any electronic product - like smart phones, MP3 players, and laptop computers. Activists say that buying products that contain the minerals indirectly allows outlaw factions to continue a conflict characterized by its brutality, including the murder of civilians, violence against women and conscription of child soldiers.

"The consumer electronics industry is the largest end user of the minerals that are fueling the fighting in eastern Congo," says John Norris, executive director of the Enough Project, an Africa-focused advocacy group and leader of the coalition. "These companies have an obligation to ensure they are not financing armed groups by demanding more information and better behavior from their suppliers."

Consumer electronics companies have been aware of the issue for some time, but they have generally focused on only one of the ores coming from the region, coltan. Coltan is a colloquial African word for ore containing tantalum, which is used in electricity-storing capacitors, common in electronics. The Enough Project says it sent letters to 21 large electronics companies last month asking them to audit their supply chains for tin, tungsten and gold as well, using some kind of independently verifiable tracing system.

In Congress, Sen. Sam Brownback is partnering with Sen. Russ Feingold and Sen. Dick Durbin to revise legislation that Brownback introduced last year addressing the issue. Set to be introduced by April 4, the new bill would require companies that use minerals mined in the region to disclose sourcing to the SEC.

"In Congo, many people - especially young children and women - are suffering at the hands of armed groups who are trying to make a profit from mining 'conflict minerals' like coltan," Brownback said in a statement to Fortune. "I hope my colleagues and I are able to pass legislation that will bring accountability and transparency to the supply chain of minerals used in the manufacturing of many electronic devices, and that the legislation will ultimately save lives."

There's no question that the minerals fund armed groups in the largely lawless region. The factions - which include a mix of renegade Congolese army troops, Rwanda-influenced Tutsi rebels and fugitive Hutu fighters from the 1994 Rwandan genocide - control mines that generate an estimated $144 million to $218 million each, according to the Enough Project and reports by the United Nations, Global Witness and others. Since 1998, more than 5.4 million people have been killed in DR Congo's conflict, according to the International Rescue Committee, making it the deadliest on earth since World War II. The UN estimates that 200,000 women have been raped and the armed factions still active in the country's east have used children for mining, fighting and other work, according to Human Rights Watch, the UN and others.

Minerals from eastern DR Congo are shipped mainly to middlemen in Malaysia, Thailand, China and India, according to Enough. The companies buy the same minerals elsewhere and mix them together, but Congolese ore, although a small percentage of the total, is cheaper, according to Resource Investor. Once processed, the refined metals are bought by electronics manufacturing companies, turned into usable components (e.g., circuit boards containing tin), and put into electronic devices ranging from cell phones to digital cameras to televisions.

David Sullivan of Enough says they are appealing to electronics companies, users of the minerals, and not the middlemen, because they have the greatest leverage. "It is unrealistic to expect the average consumer to go to a smelter in Thailand," Sullivan says. "It is realistic for a consumer to ask for peace of mind that their purchases are not underwriting the worst sexual violence in the world."

Some companies already have policies on minerals from DR Congo. Motorola, Apple, HP, Nokia and RIM bar suppliers from selling them Congolese coltan. "Mining activities that fuel conflict are unacceptable," Motorola wrote in response to Enough's request.

HP also said it would work on the issue. "We take very seriously the issue of the social and environmental conditions associated with our electronics industry supply chain," says Judy Glazer, director of HP's global social and environmental responsibility operations.

But even if the companies want to help, it's not easy. There's no certification system for minerals from the region. "Short of banning all minerals coming from the Eastern Congo or coming from Central Africa, it's going to be very difficult to set up a system on the ground that will be able to distinguish between good and bad minerals," says Jason Stearns, a former UN DR Congo investigator. And simply avoiding minerals from the region isn't perfect either, both because rebels profit from other sources, like charcoal sales and bribery; plus, legitimately mined minerals are a critical economic driver for the region.

Many of the big companies are members of the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, which have a joint workgroup focused on mineral issues like those from DR Congo. A report by the groups last year noted the challenges of getting rid of illegally mined minerals, mainly because there's no mechanism to differentiate between "good" and "bad" sources. The report outlined goals to address the problem, including the commissioning of "supply chain transparency models" for tin, tantalum and cobalt, but notes it would do so "without identifying their commercial relationships," at odds with Enough's proposal.

Previous efforts to clean up supply chains have had mixed results. The Kimberley Process, a joint government, industry and nonprofit initiative that certifies shipments of rough diamonds as "conflict-free," was largely successful, now covering most of the world's diamonds. But the chocolate industry's response to criticism over child labor on cocoa farms in West Africa, a voluntary protocol by which companies would wean themselves from child labor, then certify as much, hasn't significantly changed practices in Ivory Coast and elsewhere.

Criticisms of the Bashir warrant

I think even the strongest supporters of the ICC and its intervention in Sudan were a bit taken aback by the swiftness and severity of Khartoum's reaction to the arrest warrant issued this week for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. By instantly expelling 13 of the largest aid organizations working in the country, he has put at risk the lives of millions of people who depend on the basic services these groups provide—and, some would say, the ICC itself, and especially Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the court's chief prosecutor, are partially complicit as well.

Just last week, Nicholas Kristof dismissed worries of such harsh consequences in his New York Times column. He wrote on February 25:

There has been concern that Mr. Bashir will lash out by expelling aid workers or that Sudan’s fragile north-south peace agreement will become unglued if Mr. Bashir is ousted. Those fears are overblown. Time and again, Mr. Bashir has responded to pressure and scrutiny by improving his behavior and increasing his cooperation with the United Nations and Western countries.

Well, maybe not. It's early, and I think it's still premature to draw too many conclusions about how the game has changed, but there's certainly no shortage of critiques out there of the ICC's approach, many of them worth reading.

Amanda Taub at Wronging Rights has an excellent (and, as usual, quite funny—"JEM and the Holograms," anyone?) post, questioning how this one arrest could be worth the consequences. One key point she makes is that the trial that could conceivably come of this is just the tip of the pyramid that constitutes justice; but the international community is trying to crown a structure without building its foundation.

In the domestic legal systems that most of this blog's readers grew up with, prosecutions don't happen in a vacuum. There are police to call, witness protection programs to enter, civil courts from which to seek restitution, and stable (even elected! so fancy!) governments to lean on. In many cases, there are even more bells and whistles. Insurance! A free press! Due process rights!

The people of Darfur lack those protections. Instead, they have relied for years on the charity of international humanitarian organizations whose presence was contingent on the grace of Khartoum, its military, and the various rebel groups. Those organizations weren't always able to protect them before, though they certainly made a valiant effort. They'll be considerably less able to now that they've been forcibly expelled from the country.

William Easterly strikes a similar note over at Aid Watch (with the help of a video clip of the ever-insightful Andrew Mwenda), tying this argument to a parallel debate on foreign aid—he asks whether the ICC indictment "really helps to make Sudan's leader accountable to outsiders," rather than to Sudanese themselves, including the victims of his abuses?

Julie Flint takes this point and runs with it at Making Sense of Darfur. She writes that this move by the ICC really runs counter to justice and violates the Rome Statute proviso that prosecutions act in the interest of victims.

If [Ocampo] wanted to indict President Bashir–a reversal, by the way, of his initial thinking–why did it have to be now? What was the hurry? UNAMID is not yet at full strength and its protection capacity is modest. The biggest NGOs in Darfur, whose mere presence has at times served the war-displaced well, are now gone–and with them the witness they were able to bear as well as the food and medicines and water they provided. What can be more unjust than further, unnecessary suffering for Darfurians?

Flint also asks the important question about why the indictment was made public?

Why Moreno Ocampo decided to name his suspects - and then to give away his game plan by announcing he might take them off planes - is best known to him. His decision to use public applications rather than sealed warrants was widely opposed with the Court itself. But listening to and calmly weighing criticism is not one of the Prosecutor’s strongest points.

And, of course, also at Making Sense of Darfur, Alex de Waal weighed in on the topic. One of the more persuasive arguments I've heard in favor of the ICC is the empirical one: the track record of previous arrest warrants for sitting leaders (see: Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor) isn't actually so bad. But de Waal points out that Sudan isn't Serbia or Liberia—in fact, it's more like Uganda, where, initially, the ICC indictment brought Joseph Kony to the table... until he realized that, no matter what, it wasn't going away. And back into the bush he went. De Waal writes:

Milosevic was in the process of losing a war against NATO and Taylor was in the process of being eased out of power (with a promise of safe asylum). The one international policy towards Sudan that has really worked–the CPA–is focused on a negotiated transition. Milosevic and Taylor ran one-man dictatorships which crumbled when they were removed. Bashir is not a one-man dictatorship–on the contrary he has been overshadowed by his lieutenants for most of the last 20 years–so the idea that his replacement by one of his colleagues would represent a democratic transformation is not well-founded.

So what to make of all this? As I say above, I'm wary of being so quick to condemn the ICC, though, of course, the early signs aren't good. But I think we need to see how this plays out. Everything Bashir does is calculated. I still think it's possible he's setting up a situation where he can reinstate the NGOs, putting himself in a position to claim he's made a concession without actually giving anything up. It's tit for tat, really—his opponents added leverage with the indictment, so he's doing the same to balance things out. This actually might be a shrewd move—since the ICC warrant is neither reversible (except for the one-year stay, which seems unlikely) nor necessarily actionable, I'm not sure how much effect it has beyond symbolism; on the other hand, Bashir has hold of a very real lever with his control of the humanitarian establishment in Sudan. He can perhaps claim some sort of moral high ground by reversing the expulsions in the face of a warrant for his arrest.

On a more principled level—and Amanda Taub and Julie Flint imply a similar sentiment—I also just feel like somehow this is selling Darfurians short. It's almost ironic that, in indicting Bashir, the international community is in fact granting him rights—i.e., of due process—that most Sudanese lack. Justice is so much bigger than this trial could ever be, and it can take many different forms, as well. Why go all in now—the stakes are so high, but the pot seems so small. As Taub writes in her post, the base of the pyramid consists of social norms, basic rights and liberties, security, and judicial institutions. Why gamble it all on catching one man when there's no indication doing so will help build this pyramid, with the structures that will secure real justice for people in Darfur and throughout Sudan, now and into the future?

Oh, and also kudos to Derek, at Wicked Karibu, for the best headline on the subject: The ICC's waltz with Bashir.

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring

Though the protracted war in Northern Uganda languished for nearly two decades without any real acknowledgment beyond the country's borders, the original Invisible Children documentary and the campus movement it spawned can be credited as among the first large-scale efforts to bring more attention to the subject. Still, it's very much worth reading Chris Blattman's sage, but critical, perspective on the group's approach—his takedown doesn't pull punches (if I can mix a wrestling metaphor with a boxing one... close enough, right?), but it's right on:

There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. It’s often not an accidental choice of words, even if it’s unwitting. It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming. The saving attitude pervades too many aid failures, not to mention military interventions. The list is long.

One consequence, whether it’s IC or Save Darfur, is a lot of dangerously ill-prepared young people embarking on missions to save the children of this or that war zone. At best it’s hubris and egocentric. More often, though, it leads to bad programs, misallocated resources, or ill-conceived military adventures. There’s lots of room for intelligent advocacy.

I've written more than once about celebrity advocacy, disaster pornography, and the like. This pretty much falls into that genre. As most critics will note (look at the comments to Blattman's post), IC at least deserves praise for making a heartfelt effort to raise awareness for something important, and doing quite a good job at it. No doubt, their young, hip approach to the cause has been a significant part of their success. And some say that this is more than enough—so what if they smooth over the details or miss them altogether, isn't some awareness better than none at all?

One, I think that's a false choice—no one suggests they should have stayed at home, just that their approach could be more sophisticated. But, even so, I'm not that sure some awareness is better than none: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing."

I'm mostly concerned about two possible externalities of efforts like these: misunderstanding and paternalism. If the point of advocacy is to effect policy change, then I think we have to ask, what shape will this change take? Not to preach heresy in the age of Obama, but change, alone, is not enough. If the advocacy is misinformed and patronizing, why is there any reason to think the policies it begets will not be as well? In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill discusses public intervention in private matters—a distinct concern, but for the same reason, and with the same outcome: “The strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that, when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly and in the wrong place.” The logic here is that the public rarely understands personal problems, so its intervention has a bad track record. The same, I would think, could be said of misguided activism.

Case in point: Invisible Children. As one commenter to Blattman's post writes:

I talked with aid workers in Gulu and the rest of Uganda in the first half of 2007, and IC was met with unrestrained and unparalleled scorn. I was told their NGO was an outcast in northern Uganda--"nobody in the NGO community even knows what they *do*" is, if I recall correctly, an exact quote.

I had a similar experience, though it was put to me as something like: "Gulu is overrun with frat boys." (In fairness, that may have more been in reference to those hoping to film the next Invisible Children, rather than those who made the original.)

My point, I suppose, is that there's a dangerous tendency in the U.S. to fetishize causes. This is why celebrities flock to them and groups like IC print trendy T-shirts that read, "i heart the LRA." It would be one thing if such efforts tended to lead to smarter policy outcomes or more robust and appropriate interventions. But they don't. Instead, we end up trying to save people who don't need or want saving, and even if they did, we wouldn't know how.

Bashir and the ICC

Yesterday, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir; Bashir is charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, pillaging, and mass displacement. The much-anticipated announcement came after months of deliberations since the ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, requested the indictment. The U.N. Security Council has the power to stay the charge for up to one year, but no such action has thus far been taken. The three-judge panel ruled against charging Bashir with the crime of genocide.

Immediately following news of the decision, the Sudanese government ordered several of the largest humanitarian organizations working in Darfur to close down operations. According to the AP, at least 10 groups have been expelled, including MSF, Oxfam, IRC, CARE, and Save-UK. The move will affect hundreds of thousands—potentially millions—of people in the western Darfur region, as well as in north and east Sudan, who depend on critical services provided by NGOs in displacement camps and in the absence of government infrastructure, including vital water, health, and sanitation facilities. An abrupt pullout could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.

It's hard to see, exactly, how this all plays out. It's possible that Khartoum is bluffing, or that calmer voices in the U.N. or A.U. will prevail and can broker a deal to allow the agencies to continue operations. If not, though, it seems unlikely that the Security Council, having abstained from intervention before the issuance of Bashir's arrest warrant, will opt for a stay at this point, especially since it will appear as if the three Western veto powers capitulated in the face of Khartoum's threats. More likely, it seems to me, this could lead to something along the lines of tougher sanctions—or, probably less likely, as Nicholas Kristof is suggesting, targeted military strikes on Sudan's air force. But what will that mean, in the short-term, for the thousands of people in northern Sudan who have been left suddenly without basic social services? Eastern Chad, for one, is probably in store for a new influx of refugees into its already overcrowded and under-equipped camps. A mass cross-border exodus has the potential to be disastrous, given the already rickety state of things in Chad, but hopefully the international community is better prepared to deal with such a situation today than it was, say, in Eastern Congo in 1994. 

Still, though, the number of wild cards in Sudan's deck right now is worrying: the coarse relations with and similar instability in neighboring Chad and CAR; the tenuous peace in South Sudan; the ongoing rebellions in Darfur; the rapid withdrawal of humanitarian assistance; and now the open question as to what effect having a fugitive for a president might have on politics within Khartoum. The destabilizing forces weighing on Sudan seem to grow by the day.

Reflections on Alison Des Forges

Dr. Alison Des Forges, an expert on the Great Lakes, revered as both an academic and an activist, died Thursday night; she was among the 49 passengers and crew aboard the Continental Airlines flight that crashed outside Buffalo, New York.

Des Forges was regarded as one of the foremost experts on Rwanda, Burundi, and DR Congo. A number of her colleagues have posted online their memories of her and her tireless work.

On his blog for the New Yorker, George Packer remembers her for her compassion, generosity, but especially her humility:

Apparently, anything Des Forges did that was connected with Rwanda, she did with all her might. And she managed to do it without the self-righteous territoriality that is the occupational vice of human-rights experts. Her attachment to the country and its people seemed neither saintly nor professional, but entirely human.

At African Arguments, Tatiana Carayannis strikes a similar note:

Alison was that rare breed of analyst who moves easily from university lecture halls, to high-level policy meetings, to modest hostels in the field, with the same unpretentiousness that she brought home to Buffalo. She had a kind grandmotherly smile that invited nervous first-year graduate students to approach her, and a devilish twinkle in her eye that always made me think that she had something really good up her sleeve that would win her the argument at just the right moment.

Des Forges's account of the Rwandan Genocide, Leave None to Tell the Story—written for Human Rights Watch, with which she continued to work—is perhaps the most definitive retelling of the event. It is one of the truly essential readings on the topic, along with Prunier's Rwanda Crisis, Mamdani's When Victims Become Killers, and Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You...

As both Tatiana Carayannis and Kenneth Roth (in the HRW statement) point out, as a testament to her principles, Des Forges not only unearthed the detailed story of crimes committed by Hutu extremists during the genocide, but pushed further and shed light on the atrocities of the Tutsi RPF as well, to the point that the Rwandan government (under President Paul Kagame, former leader of the RPF), eventually banned her from the country.

Gawker Stalker: Africa edition

I think Derek, over at Wicked Karibu, may have stumbled upon the next big Internet fad: celebrity sightings in Africa.

Ben Affleck in Eastern DRC! (Time). Leonardo Di Caprio in Meru, Kenya! (Youtube)

This will certainly make for a very conflicted George Clooney, for one. He's both an ardent detractor of celeb-spotting websites, as well as a very (willingly) visible advocate for more robust intervention in Darfur.

[Wicked Karibu: Celebrity sightings]

Revisiting the post on Kenya's vote

Last week I wrote about a controversy, highlighted by the New York Times, wherein IRI, an American democracy-promotion organization, is accused of concealing the results of an exit poll conducted during Kenya's 2007 presidential election. The poll showed Raila Odinga ahead of Mwai Kibaki, the ultimate winner, by a substantial margin—evidence, perhaps, that the vote was flawed.

I just wanted to revisit the subject for a moment to note a couple comments we received on that post—in particular, from Clark Gibson, one of the architects of the suppressed study, mentioned in the original Times article.

Prof. Gibson makes a couple very important points. Foremost, he offers some good evidence to counter the claim by IRI that there were legitimate reasons at the time to question the validity of the poll. He writes:

I believe our exit poll was, outside of perhaps South Africa, the most rigorous ever staged on the continent. The actual results of the exit poll were Odinga 46.07%, Kibaki 40.17%, Kalonzo 10.22%. The margin of error was 1.32. Since IRI’s original reviewer did not review the actual 5,495 surveys, his comments are barely relevant; we had technical responses to all of them, and none imperil the results. We also have no idea how IRI came up with the "2% off" figure. They did not have any discussions with us during any of their "reviews." I doubt the accuracy of their reviews because of this, as they would need guidance about many features of the poll. They have not made public any of the methods they used in their reviews. We are happy to provide our procedures and methods to anyone. We are scientists, not activists.

In response, another commenter, called "Jackie IRI"—who I can only assume is from IRI—wrote:

Wilson Strategies, at the request of IRI, did in fact review more than 6,000 questionnaires through the re-entry of the data. After the data was re-entered it showed a 6 point spread between Odinga and Kibaki (46.8 – 40.7%) as opposed to the original 8 point spread (48.5 – 40.9%) reported on January 31, 2008.

First of all, I just want to say how much we appreciate both Prof. Gibson's and Jackie's comments—this kind of debate is exactly what Africa Matters was made for.

That said, and a few other commenters have implied they may feel the same, I have trouble seeing the logic of this counter-argument. First, as Prof. Gibson notes, it's unclear where the apparently original, eight-point-spread figures come from, which Jackie alludes to and IRI has referenced elsewhere; the figures he cites (46.07% – 40.17%) are within a percentage point of both the "correct" figures cited by Jackie (46.8% – 40.7%) and those reported on the official version of the poll released by IRI (46.4% – 40.3%). Second, Jackie notes, contrary to Prof. Gibson's claim, that the reviewer did in fact look at "more than 6,000 questionnaires"—Prof. Gibson wrote, though, that there were only 5,495 total surveys; the poll report confirms that, overall, only 5,503 interviews were conducted. Something doesn't add up.

Michael Goldfarb, of the Weekly Standard, wrote an article in defense of IRI, the gist of which is that the Times is pursuing a vendetta against the organization. IRI, likewise, has posted two versions of a letter to the editor on its site (sent and printed), written by IRI director Lorne Craner, claiming that even here, the Times removed factual information from the published version, presumably in pursuit of its agenda.

But all of this seems besides the point. Fair or not, the Times's coverage poses a question that IRI has yet to satisfactorily answer—why was the poll swept under the rug?

To me, this issue isn't even necessarily troublesome just because of the prospect of the U.S. meddling in foreign elections. More so, I find the very idea that stability counts more than democracy to be worrisome. In some ways, it doesn't even matter whether IRI had benign motivations or not—even if one accepts their explanation at face value, it still strikes me as misguided. IRI has claimed that it pulled the poll because of questions about its accuracy—"the first bad poll we put out is the last we put out," Craner says. I understand the drive for total accuracy, of course, but do pollsters during American elections show anything near this kind of caution? As Prof. Gibson notes in his comment, this is just a poll—it's not an actual vote count. When independent polls get covered up, simply in the name of not rocking the boat, free elections are in trouble.

No one ever said democracy was smooth sailing—authoritarianism is always going to win on that count. But there are more important things at stake, in my view. Let's stop playing the stability trump card in Africa.