Coltan Mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Human Rights Issues, Environmental Degradation, and NGO Intervention
Many people in the Western world today have never heard of a mineral called coltan. Most of us don’t know that this mineral is a crucial one in the production of electronics we commonly have in our houses, such as telephones and televisions. Moreover, many of us don’t know about the grave human rights and environmental abuses that occur in order for us to have these electronics, particularly those that occur in the Democratic Republic of Congo. When demand for this mineral grew with the technological boom of the late 1990s, the Democratic Republic of Congo –which, though approximations vary, contains anywhere from ten percent (Furniss, 2004) to more than eighty percent (Sharife, 2008) of the world’s coltan supply- became a major exporter of the mineral. While in theory this should have been extremely beneficial for the country’s economy, the preexisting political instability in the country has led to a far more bleak reality. On the human right side, militia gangs and rebel groups often take over coltan mines and kill, rape, and intimidate local communities in order to cash in on the massive profits to be made from coltan mining, and environmentally, natural landscapes and habitats for many animals are being eroded. To put it succintly, “[d]espite the country’s wealth of natural resources…the DRC now ranks 176th on the UNDP Human Development Index of 182 countries.” (Grespin, 2010) Since the early 2000’s, a wide variety of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have been recognizing and working on the problems plaguing the DRC which are brought on by the coltan issue; they have been doing so through on-the-ground work, reports and information gathering, and consumer awareness movements. Though political and social challenges, as well as problems with worldwide certification of ‘conflict-free’ coltan, make this a very complex and difficult problem to address, some initiatives such as the Durban Process, taxation of coltan transactions, and NGO-led multi-actor programs have been suggested to counteract this problem.
Coltan, which is the local name for tantalum, is so important in today’s technologically-charged world because it has an ability to hold high levels of electrical charge; this is a vital part of the capacitors of electrical appliances. (Furniss, 2004) Due to the huge demand for electrical appliances in today’s world, coltan mining is thus an important and lucrative industry. The commodity chain of coltan is not direct or easily traceable, and “extends from the eastern Congo, through Rwanda and other East African countries, and eventually out of the continent, through diverse intermediaries and processing facilities…until the product (tantalum sheet) reaches cell phones, laptops, and other digital services.” (Smith, 2011) Nokia is one major cell phone company whose production the 2008 documentary “Blood Coltan” traces back to conflict coltan mines in the DRC. Nokia states that they are “appalled by the reports from the conflict areas and strictly condemn all activities that fuel conflict or benefit militant groups, [and that they] require high ethical standards in [their] own operations and [their] supply chain and take continuous action to ensure that metals from the conflict areas do not enter [their] supply chain.” (Nokia website) However, they also say that there are typically “4-8 layers of suppliers between consumer electronics companies and any mining activity” (Nokia website) and that “[d]ue to the number of companies involved, the complexity in the way metals are produced and sold, and that ores from many different sources can be combined, …no company can give the exact origin of e.g. all the tin used in a particular product or its component[.]” (Nokia website)
