When women are systematically raped as a weapon of war in the Congo, what does it have to do with you? When an estimated 45,000 people die each month in the Congo from famine, preventable disease, displacement, killings and sexual violence, what does it have to do with you?
If you own a cell phone, a laptop or an MP3 player, then it actually has quite a lot to do with you. By purchasing products such as these, which contain conflict minerals, you are funding these mass atrocities.
Here's some background. Five million people are purported to have died during the seven years of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) between 1998 and 2003, making it the deadliest war since World War II. Despite several peace agreements since then, the violence is far from over. In eastern Congo, which includes the provinces of North and South Kivu, the prevalence of rape and sexual violence has been described as the worst in the world. According to the aid organization Oxfam International, there are as many as 200,000 rape survivors living in the Congo today. Additionally, the Genocide Intervention Network estimates that there are 2.1 million people displaced within the DRC. Since January 2009, at least 900,000 thousand people have had to flee their homes and 1,433 civilians have been killed in the provinces of North and South Kivu.
What funds this deadly conflict? Conflict minerals.
Conflict minerals are the "three T's" — tin, tungsten, tantalum — and gold. By trading in these minerals, armed groups in the Congo earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year, which they use to fuel a campaign of violence against civilians and to purchase weapons. Virtually all the consumer electronics we buy are made using these "conflict minerals."
We are all complicit.
However, I am not advocating that we abandon our electronics altogether. Instead, I want us to channel our complicity into action as consumers. By putting pressure on corporations and our government, we can help to eliminate conflict minerals from the market and stem the tide of violence in the Congo by cutting off a major source of financing for armed groups.
Actions such as these are not unprecedented. Just a decade ago, wars in Sierra Leone, Angola and Liberia were being fueled by the illegal trade in blood diamonds. After an outcry from the international community, a comprehensive certification system known as the Kimberley Process was implemented. This significantly reduced the blood diamond trade, and today, those countries are considerably more stable.
Recent U.S. legislation makes enacting similar policy toward conflict minerals in the DRC possible. A new provision in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act requires companies that report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and manufacture products that contain the "three T's" and gold to trace and disclose the origin of these minerals. If a company finds that the minerals used in its products come from the Congo or one of its neighboring countries, it must report on how it has exercised due diligence to ensure that its supply chain does not fund armed groups controlling mines in eastern Congo, either directly or indirectly.
Though a step in the right direction, this is still not a comprehensive solution. Currently, the legislation only requires companies to trace and audit their supply chains, without establishing either a certification requirement or penalties for those companies who do source from conflict areas. However, the information from these audits will be valuable. As individual consumers, we can pledge to only buy conflict-free products once they are available and to pressure corporations to manufacture more of these products.
Also, we can think bigger.
STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition and the Enough Project are working on conflict-free campus initiatives across the country. Tufts, with its self-proclaimed global awareness, can become "conflict-free." The most powerful collective step we can take is to get the Tufts administration to change its policy when it comes to buying computers and electronics. As a university, Tufts is a major purchaser of these kinds of products. On the Medford campus alone, there are five different computer labs, in addition to computers in many classrooms and offices. If all the new products bought for these spaces were conflict-free, it would send a significant message.
Tufts needs to be a leader in this movement. The university should state its intent to purchase conflict-free electronics and to prioritize the companies that make the most effort to track their supply chains. This policy would be a real, direct and feasible way to enact change in the Congo.
If you are interested in helping with the planning stages of our conflict-free campus initiative or simply learning more about this and other human-rights issues, the Tufts STAND chapter meets Monday nights at 9:30 p.m. in room 206 in Eaton Hall.
Remember this: Doing nothing is doing something. To enact change and help bring a measure of peace and stability to the Congo, we must take a stand. Working together, let's make the Tufts campus conflict-free.
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Audrey G. Miller is a junior majoring in English. She is a member of Tufts STAND.
