NGO Initiatives

The nature of artisanal mining has brought attention to NGOs and several research institutions that started several campaigns to increase public awareness. At the beginning, the focus was more towards the dramatic fall in the population of eastern low land gorilla, being linked to artisanal and small-scale mining activities in the Congo’s Kahuzi-Biéga National Park. In mid-2001, several companies operating in Congo started receiving letters calling for stopping the use of tantalum from fragile ecosystems and the campaign of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, supported by the engagement of the actor Leonardo Di Caprio in supporting ‘gorilla friendly’ mobile phones increased the international focus towards this situation.

Following the first initiative, in the same year a group of 18 Belgian NGOs launched the first “conflict minerals” campaign focused on DRC towards highlighting the issue of coltan trade, due to its widespread use in mobile phones. Through the campaign “No blood on My Mobile”, they wanted to show how the private sector was impacting the war in Congo. This initiative was supported by a broad range of international NGOs given the emphasis on human rights conditions.

The NGO involvement from the first beginning made the whole situation aware in the world and having celebrities supporting the case helped as well. The fact that companies started receiving letters to stop using minerals from fragile areas meant that their attitudes towards the whole situation was rather reactive than proactive, waiting for laws to be implemented first and then be compliant. 

For a few years, the situation in the DRC wasn’t addressed by other parties, but in 2007 an UK-based NGO Global Witness renewed the attention to the conflict minerals issue, filling a complaint under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises against the British mineral trading company Afrimex. The company was accused for funding conflict and strengthening the rebels’ capacity via payments to the RCD rebel group and as an outcome, it stopped trading minerals from Congo.

For more than 20 years, Global Witness has run pioneering campaigns and in-depth investigations to break the links between minerals and conflict, corruption and human rights abuses. Their work on the minerals tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold in particular, has shone a spotlight on the eastern DRC, where these minerals have in part funded conflict and instability with civilians bearing the brunt of the violence.

According to Global witness:
“Companies must regularly and proactively conduct checks on supply chains to ensure that the minerals they use, trade, and invest in have not contributed to conflict or human rights abuses. Then they must report on their findings and take action to mitigate risk. 

This process, known as supply chain due diligence, is essential to ensuring the products we buy are made with materials sourced responsibly and fairly. Governments must support implementation of responsible sourcing practices, develop and enforce relevant laws and take action to hold companies and individuals accountable when they fail to act responsibly”.

Following Global Witness’ initiative, another organization reacted, the Dutch organization SOMO (Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations) which launched the Make IT Fair project in cooperation with several partners from all over Europe. Their aim was to raise awareness among younger consumers about sourcing practices of the electronics industry. In several reports, the organization addressed misbehavior of companies in the copper and cobalt supply chains in Zambia, platinum mining in South Africa, and tin mining in Indonesia (Make IT Fair, 2008).

NGOs always tried to raise awareness regarding companies’ attitudes in the mining industry. The case of Afrimex brings to light that there is a need for intervention from various sides in order for the corporate sector to be compliant and respect the guidelines. Misbehavior attitudes mentioned by the Dutch organization enforces more the need of companies be more proactive and find their way in a field that is still evolving.

In the next year, the US-based Enough NGO started a project focusing on conflict minerals in East Congo, called Raise Hope for Congo.

Their first approach was focused on the sexual violence component of Congo’s natural resources war, but later they started to raise attention to security and livelihood issues in the region. In the US, the focus on the conflict minerals increased due to these NGOs campaigns and they started drafting their first act towards it in mid-2009. This act proved to be a very important stepping stone for the emergence of conflict minerals governance.

First Reactions

A first positive reaction to Dodd-Frank Act came from Canada, where a bill was proposed requiring Canadian companies to perform due diligence before purchasing minerals from Congo in order to make sure it wasn’t benefitting any armed group. Following Canada’s initiative, many other conflict mineral initiatives responded to the Dodd-Frank Act. Such an example is the Resolution 1952 which extended the arm embargo, travel bans and asset freeze for a year with the purpose of forcing companies exercise due diligence by applying the guidelines.

In 2009, the European Union launched the “OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas” to provide companies with due diligence recommendations for responsible global supply chains of minerals. It is intended to serve as a tool to cultivate transparent mineral supply chains and sustainable corporate engagement in the minerals sector, while enabling countries to benefit from their natural mineral resources (OECD Due diligence report 2009). The guidance provides detailed recommendations to help companies respect human rights and avoid contributing to conflict through their mineral purchasing decisions and practices.

The European Parliament in late 2010 requesting the European Commission to consider a European-version of the conflict-minerals provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, considering sanctions on those supporting illegal armed groups in the DRC and on ways to support the OECD Due Diligence Guidelines. Three months later, the European Commission announced they were working on a proposal that included a mandatory country-by-country disclosure of money flows between the extractive industries and governments, but the proposal was merely focused on financial transparency and did not demand transparency on the sourcing of conflict minerals.

In October 2011, the State of California passed a law requiring public companies to comply with the Section 1502 in order to become a vendor to the state government of California. Later that year, the UNSC passed the Resolution 2021, extending the arms embargo and related sanctions for another year in order to assist the relevant parties in the implementation of the due diligence guidelines.

The reaction from the EU enforced the idea of the critical situation in the DRC and the need to have a similar due diligence system for the European companies operating in Congo. This attitude proves that the conflict became a global issue and the need for corporate sector to intervene accordingly, making sure it’s part of their strategy being socially responsible.

Governmental initiatives

An interesting perspective to look at is how the Congolese government replied to all these initiatives. The government was aware of the legislative developments and NGO campaigns at the international level. Due to that, the Congolese Ministry of Mines set up a number of work groups in an attempt to coordinate several traceability and certification efforts. Of the three different working groups, the so-called Groupe Thématique des Mines coordinates activities taking place between the Congolese government and the various international partners, including conflict mineral initiatives operating on the ground within Congolese borders.

In addition, the Congolese government has revised the Congolese Code Minier (2002) and its sub-part, the Reglement Minier (2003) in order to support efforts that aim to foster traceability, certification, and due diligence in the conflict mineral supply chains. One revision has resulted in a Traceability Procedures Manual for Mining Products, intended to be used by actors in the upstream supply chain: miners, negotiators, mineral processors, customs and relevant government bodies in the DRC.

The second revision led to the Certification Nationale aimed to establish certified, conflict-free mineral supply chains and is part of a regional initiative, namely the International Conference on the Great Lakes Regions Regional Certification Mechanism (ITU, 2012). A third relevant effort by the Congolese government is the STAREC program, which stands for Programme de Stabilisation et de Reconstruction des Zones sortant des conflits armés (Programme for the Stabilization and Reconstruction of Zones Coming Out of Armed Conflict), having a focus on re-establishing authority in the timber and mineral industry. With the mining ban started in September 2010, the scope was to put a stop on the illegal exploitation of natural resources in East Congo.

On the legislation side, the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) developed the Protocol on the Fight against illegal exploitation of natural resources that was signed by all states in December 2006. The German federal government had an initiative as well, through the involvement of the Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR), assisting in the execution of the legislative measures and addressing the issue by certifying artisanal mined minerals, known as Certified Trading Chains (CTC).

Another initiative came from Middle East with Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), which published in 2016 the due diligence guidelines for gold. DMCC regulates the gold refinement and gold trade of Dubai and is regulated itself by Dubai authorities. Before it produced its guidance, it was part of the OECD drafting committee to work on the gold supplement in the OECD guidance since March 2011. The participation resulted in an own version of the OECD guidelines, which was released in April 2012, becoming mandatory for members in June 2012, transforming the guidance into de facto mandatory rule-setting for member companies in the gold and precious metals industry.

Industry initiatives

Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is the companies’ reaction towards the first NGOs initiatives and its launch in 2002 aimed to increase transparency in the extractives industry and prove that mining companies were ready to deal with the conflict minerals issue. This initiative explains the high focus from the corporate side of showing their involvement towards this situation, even if it came after a few years of other stakeholders trying to increase the awareness of the conflict.

In 2008, The International Tin Research Institute (ITRI), a tin business association, formulated a policy on the artisanal and small-scale mining sectors, followed in 2009 by the introduction of a due diligence system: the ITRI Tin Supply-Chain initiative (iTSCi). The due diligence system for conflict minerals had three different strategies: demanding chain-of-custody tagging, which required tagging of the minerals for every stage in the supply chain and monitoring of the origin of minerals, involving independent third-party risk assessment of mine.

Later that year, the Conflict-Free Smelter (CFS) protocol was introduced as an initiative, being developed by the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) business associations. This protocol was the only conflict mineral initiative focusing on the smelter stage in the conflict mineral supply chain. The smelter stage focus is crucial because it forms a choke point in the supply chains of all conflict minerals, except for gold. With a small amount of companies controlling conflict mineral smelting, due diligence measures at this stage have a large impact especially because during the smelter stage, the extracted minerals are smelted to retrieve the respective metals for further processing. Smelting companies members of this protocol were supposed to demonstrate that all the minerals they processed originate from conflict-free sources and through the pilot project, this initiative helped to trace the minerals and bringing in December 2010 the completion of the first assessment of a tantalum smelter.

At the beginning, these initiatives were more focused towards a single or only a few stages in the conflict mineral supply chain. Even though the companies’ international focus was towards societal and economical aspects of the issue, they reacted on a voluntary manner, collaborating more with the other stakeholders, proving their understanding of their situation and their intention to restore it.

The adoption of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act marked the start of several conflict mineral initiatives from the industries and companies’ side, due to the high pressure put on them. In 2010, the World Gold Council started to develop its conflict-free gold standard, outlying a risk management strategy assisting gold operators in preventing to contribute to armed conflict, armed groups and human rights abuses.

Kemet, a capacitor producer for electronic products and mostly sourcing tantalum, developed the Partnership for Social and Economic Sustainability program, focusing on the needs of upstream actors in the tantalum supply chain. In 2011, the automotive industry set up a working group through its business association, the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), following legislative and industry developments with regards to conflict minerals and assessing their supply chains for conflict minerals. In the same period, the Conflict-Free Smelter program was extended with a Conflict-Free Smelter Early Adopters Fund (CFS EAF), encouraging more smelters to become early adopters of this program.

In reaction to section 1502, many public-private partnerships were launched to set up conflict-free supply chains in Congo. This is the case of Solution for Hope (SfH), initiated by communication electronic companies, such as Motorola and the AVX Corporation, to promote economic stability in the area of DRC. This initiative applied a closed-pipe supply line strategy, implying the control of the whole supply chain, but it’s been criticized that it doesn’t ensure that the minerals processed in each stage of the supply chain are conflict-free.

Another partnership launched at the end of 2011 is the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade (PPA), bringing together the US State Department, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), companies, and civil society with the goal to support pilot projects of conflict mineral initiatives and to provide a learning platform for government, market, and civil society actors. One of the implications of this initiative was funding for the Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) conflict-free gold project, which aims to develop a traceable conflict-free supply chain for artisanal gold from the Orientale province in East Congo. This year marked another initiative, Conflict-Free Tin Initiative (CFTI) from collaboration of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, industries and NGO actors to develop a closed-pipe tin supply chain and complying with the OECD guidelines and the provisions of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Company examples

Over a dozen years ago, Intel began work to responsibly source conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo and adjoining countries. Since then, they have expanded their efforts to also address cobalt as well broader human rights issues and geographies in their supply chain.

In 2011, Intel pledged to eliminate conflict minerals (tin, tungsten and tantalum sourced from the Congo) from its products. In 2014, it announced that all of its processors were finally conflict free.

Now the company says it’s completely conflict free — nothing the company shipped since 2016 was made with conflict minerals.

Updates 

On December 17, 2020, the European Commission published the Indicative, non-exhaustive list of Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas under Regulation (EU) 2017/821. It greatly expands the list of regions companies should prioritize for due diligence, due to known existing human rights issues. The list includes 208 regions from 27 countries. This ensures that companies view responsible minerals as a global issue, not only as an EU market access requirement. It also requires them to perform expanded due diligence for minerals produced from high-risk suppliers, including gold, tin, tungsten, and tantalum (3TGs).

Due diligence and transparency duties related to minerals and metals from conflict zones and child labor for Swiss companies. According to the new Articles 964j-964l CO and the ODiTr, companies whose registered office, central administration, or principal place of business is located in Switzerland must comply with due diligence duties in their supply chain when they (i) release in the Swiss market or process in Switzerland ores or metals containing tin, tantalum, tungsten or gold from conflict or high-risk areas or (ii) offer goods or services for which child labor is suspected.

Such companies will be required to set up a management system and supply chain policies on such issues and ensure traceability in their supply chain. Moreover, companies will be required to implement a supply chain risk management plan to identify, assess and minimize the risks of adverse effects in their supply chain. In particular, companies will need to communicate the implemented tools to address such potential risks (e.g., on-site controls, communications with authorities and civil society, or application of certification systems). 

The findings of this research show the complexity of operating in conflict countries and the balance act faced by public, private and non-profit actors in such settings. This report has aimed to provide details about emerging innovative approaches as input for further research, for management practice and policy-making, and for those involved in advocacy, and local community and capacity building.