If you are reading this on a smartphone, then you are probably
holding in your palm the conflict minerals that have sent the biggest
manufacturing trade group in the U.S. into a court battle with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. At stake in this battle between the
National Association of Manufacturers and the government is whether
consumers will know the potentially blood-soaked origins of the products
they use every day and who gets to craft rules for multinational
corporations—Congress or the business itself.
The Dodd-Frank Act,
passed in 2010, is primarily known as the law that tries to tighten
regulation of the financial services industry and improve aspects of
corporate governance. It also requires companies to track and report the
conflict minerals used in their products. These minerals are tantalum
(used in cellphones, DVD players, laptops, hard drives, and gaming
devices), tungsten, tin, and gold, if they are mined in the Democratic
Republic of Congo and surrounding countries including Rwanda, where the mineral trade has fueled bloody conflicts.
The rule requiring disclosure of conflict minerals will go into
effect in 2014. Congress included it in Dodd-Frank out of concern for
what is known as the “resource curse”—the phenomenon wherein poor
counties with the greatest natural resources end up with the most
corrupt and repressive governments. The money earned from selling the
natural resources props up these harsh regimes and funds violence
against their citizens and neighbors. According to the New York Times,
Rep. Jim McDermott, who supported the requirement to disclose conflict
minerals, visited a group of rape victims in Congo and traced much of
the suffering in the country “to rebel soldiers who sold tantalum and other minerals to finance their war.” As the Dodd-Frank legislation puts it,
“the exploitation and trade of conflict minerals originating in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo is helping to finance conflict
characterized by extreme levels of violence in the eastern Democratic
Republic of the Congo, particularly sexual- and gender-based violence,
and contributing to an emergency humanitarian situation therein.”
