You may not be wearing any blood diamonds, but there’s a
good chance that the minerals powering your cell phone –tungsten, tantalum, tin,
and gold – are every bit as bloody. That’s because most of these minerals are
mined in the Congo, by the hands of men, women, and children risking their
lives and their health for around one US dollar per day. All of the things our
country has done to protect our rights, such as child labor laws, workers’
compensation, and EPA regulations of poisonous heavy metals such as mercury
(used in mining gold), don’t exist over there. And that’s exactly where US and
other developed nations have gone to find the resources to build the gadgets
and games we hunger for.
The Congo is paradoxically one of the most mineral-rich
places on Earth, yet its people are some of the poorest. Over the course of 15
years, ethnic violence has amounted to over 5 million deaths, making it “the deadliest conflict zone since World
War II.” This violence - the gun money - is fueled by our pocketbooks. Warlords run mines and demand payment from their workers. In 2010, the US Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act,
which included in it a clause requiring companies to disclose (not to stop –
just to disclose) whether they were purchasing minerals from conflict-ridden
areas Congo and its neighbors.
Opinions about the success of the Dodd-Frank Act are mixed. Some say the result has devastated the Congo by causing companies to
pull out of the country entirely, leaving miners without a way to feed their
families while warlords simply move on to find their income elsewhere. Others,
however, point out that companies are
finding conflict-free Congolese sources, and that these jobs, which are
increasing, pay their workers higher, more fair wages. And all good things,
like national health care, require a difficult period of transition for a
positive outcome to result.
In the end, it is up to us, the consumers, to demand products
that are mined, assembled, and sold by workers who are treated with dignity.
Sources:
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