In Support Of Dodd-Frank Conflict Minerals Regulation

IRIN’s recent article, Who pays the hidden price for Congo’s conflict-free minerals (read the report in the Solitaire April 2017 issue), offers a compelling story that highlights some real challenges facing many Congolese people today.

- Sasha Lezhnev

Unfortunately, it misses the broader importance and impact of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank law: supply chain transparency for the minerals trade, and the breaking of the links between minerals and deadly armed groups in eastern Congo.

Dodd-Frank 1502 is a hard-won demonstration of the United States’ support for corporate transparency in environments where opacity and the lack of rule of law have cost lives and spurred brutality.

The article focuses on Kisengo, a different region of Congo than the area that led the US Congress to pass DoddFrank 1502. The Kivu provinces, where the deadliest war since World War II has brutalised communities, is home to the bulk of tin, tantalum, tungsten mining in Congo, and has major gold deposits also.

Fuel for conflict

The minerals have been a major fuel for conflict in the Kivus. Dodd-Frank 1502 has largely de-linked three out of the four conflict minerals from armed group violence. Seventy-nine per cent of miners at tin, tantalum, and tungsten mines surveyed in three conflict-affected provinces in eastern Congo now work at conflict-free mines, according to a study by the International Peace Information Service (IPIS) in October 2016.

This is a major change compared to 2010, the year that Dodd-Frank passed, when the UN stated that nearly every mine in the Kivus was controlled by a military group.