Ask the Expert: David Sullivan on Conflict Minerals

What is the Conflict Minerals Trade Act?

The Conflict Minerals Trade Act is a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Jim McDermott from Washington. This bill is an important first step toward ensuring that a multimillion dollar trade in minerals can stop financing the deadliest war in the world since World War II, which is happening right now in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. The trade in conflict minerals--the three Ts, tin, tantalum, and tungsten, as well as gold--these are minerals that are used in our electronics products, such as cell phones, and laptops, and digital cameras, has been financing groups and military units committing some of the worst military atrocities in the world in Eastern Congo. This bill would help to develop the means to ensure that this multimillion dollar trade stops financing these armed groups and helps to end the conflict there.

Why is this bill important?

The Conflict Minerals Trade Act is important because, until now, electronics companies, who are the makers of our cell phones and laptops, and who are the principal end users of these minerals that have been financing the war in Eastern Congo have said that there's no way for them to trace their raw materials back to the mines of origin because the supply chains that move these minerals from the mines all the way to our mobile phones and other gadgets are just too long and complex. But this bill creates a pretty innovative, but pragmatic set of systems where you have auditors who are auditing the key actors in the supply chain who know exactly where these minerals are coming from. And then import declarations that require companies that are importing goods that contain these minerals into the United States to actually go on the record and say whether or not their minerals contain conflict minerals.

What else should the Obama administration do about Congo?

There are three key steps that the Obama administration can take to support a comprehensive solution to the crisis in Eastern Congo. First, they need to support efforts to reform Congo's army, which is among the most predatory in the world and continues to abuse and prey upon the populations that it's supposed to be protecting. Second, the U.S. should support a comprehensive counterinsurgency against some of the worst rebel groups operating in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, including the FDLR militias, whose leadership actually planned the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Third, the Obama administration can help to support holding war criminals to account in Eastern Congo. In that part of the world, people have committed some of the worst atrocities, including the systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, and impunity has reigned. The Obama administration can support the International Criminal Court and also support efforts to reform Congo's own justice center so we can start holding those war criminals to account.