The following are articles that I have compiled concerning Apple Inc., Coltan mining, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the relationship between all of the above.
To begin let us define and identify Apple Inc., Coltan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Apple Inc. according to Wikipedia is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers.
- Stock price: AAPL (NASDAQ) $628.65 -4.35 (-0.69%)
Jun 2, 4:00 PM EDT - Disclaimer - Founded: April 1, 1976, Cupertino, CA
Coltan is a metallic ore from which the very similar elements niobium, also known as columbium, and tantalum are extracted. Alloys made from these elements have a variety of uses, including communications technology, superconductors, and doping of steel. Due to niobium and tantalum’s versatility and the recent technology boom, the coltan industry has skyrocketed. Coltan has become a necessity for modern communications and therefore an indispensable and lucrative industry.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, sometimes referred to as DR Congo, DRC, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Zaire, DROC, or RDC, is a country located in the African Great Lakes region of Central Africa.
It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world. With a population of over 75 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the nineteenth most populous nation in the world, the fourth most populous nation in Africa, as well as the most populous officially Francophone country.
The Story of Apple’s Dark Side
September 16, 2011
By Jason Rowley
Let’s not make any bones about it: we all love Apple’s products. They’re sleek, impeccably designed, increasingly touch-enabled and run the most solid operating systems in the business. But there is a darker side to the company, which is enough to make dedicated Apple fanboys sick. Or at least this one.
The fact of the matter is, the manufacturing and eventual disposal of our beloved iDevices is an ugly process. I’ve read about “how the sausage is made,” so to speak, and it’s not pretty. A second aspect to Apple’s operations that goes unnoticed by consumers is the company’s strict approval process which developers must go through to get their apps onto the Mac and iOS app stores.
Despite Apple’s notorious secrecy surrounding its supply chain and its “draconian” approval process, it seems strange, then, that an app like Phone Story made it onto the iOS App Store earlier this week.
The app, which consists of four minigames, each representing a different step in an iPhone’s lifecycle, “is a game for smartphone devices that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform.” When you think about what the app is trying to do—getting buyers to think about the ramifications of their consumption habits—there really is no choice but to be a bit pomo and tongue-in-cheek. The game’s developers have made the content remarkably engaging, in that kind of heartbreaking, “Oh My God, what have I done?” sort of way.
The games take players through each step of the iPhone’s manufacture, sale, and eventual demise. Whether it’s taking the role of a coltan miner in the congo, a safety-net holder attempting to catch people jumping off of the Foxconn plant in Taiwan, an Apple store employee trying to block rabid fanboys from getting into the store before a device release, or an impoverished eWaste processor in Southeast Asia, the games make a powerful point: a lot of human suffering goes into the production of our beloved iDevices, and Apple does a good job of hiding this misery.
Let’s take a tour through Apple’s supply chain, shall we?
Colton is the industrial name for columbite-tantalite, a blackish metallic ore from which niobium and tantalum are extracted. Tantalum is used to manufacture capacitors and other elements of electronic circuitry. For some reason, Africa once again got the short end of the stick: the majority of the world’s coltan is sourced from war-torn countries like Rwanda, Uganda and the Congo. Demand for coltan and diamonds (and, to a lesser extent, other minerals) has funded these countries’ militaries, which are in seemingly continuous conflict with each other over the region’s rich mineral reserves. Since the central regulatory authorities in the Congo have largely collapsed, mineral plunder is rampant.
There is no system to trace, audit and certify where large electronics manufacturers like Apple get their materials, so it’s possible (and likely) that devices contain conflict materials.
The parts for Apple’s devices come from a wide range of suppliers, but final assembly operations are performed primarily by the Taiwanese company Foxconn. 136 employees at Wintek, a parts supplier, claims to have sustained serious neurological damage from exposure to chemicals, including n-hexane, used on the glass screens of iPhones and iPod Touch products. Wintek paid out $1.5 M in damages, according to an article in Foreign Policy.
In 2010, an estimated eighteen Foxconn employees attempted suicide by jumping off buildings. Fourteen were successful. The cause? According to a report produced by 20 Hong Kong universities, and another by students, Foxconn employees were made to work as long as 36 hours nonstop without overtime pay, faced systematic humiliation by management, and “poverty wages”. Whether these suicides were in protest or to escape appalling working conditions is unclear.
Apple’s marketing team is one of the best in the business. How the company compels users to continuously upgrade their otherwise perfectly good, if slightly old devices could be the topic of a multivolume book. Although this isn’t so morally reprehensible on Apple’s part, the culture of disposability it creates around its products contributes to one of our world’s fastest growing and most underreported environmental and social problems: the outsourced disposal of electronic waste.
There’s no way to be upbeat about eWaste. “Tragic” is an overused term, but that’s what the problem is: tragic. Between 50 and 80% of electronic waste collected in the US is exported to developing nations for processing and “recycling”. There are no federal laws to regulate eWaste.
Electronic devices contain a wide array of valuable metal components, from the gold contained in processors and other chips to the copper wiring connecting the circuits together.
I forgot where I heard this on NPR, but it sticks in my mind: There are whole towns in southeast Asia whose economies depend on eWaste recycling, which is a surprisingly low-tech process. The journalist who produced this radio piece reported seeing stacks of Apple laptops arriving in this village, watching whole families—young children included—literally breaking apart these laptops with hammers to get at their valuable guts, observing chip boards being dipped in caustic baths to dissolve the silicon substrate to more easily get at the gold-containing electronic components. She noted that instead of stripping copper wires of their PVC coatings, which would be prohibitively time consuming, wires are heaped like hay stacks, summarily doused with gasoline and burned, leaving the copper wire liberated from its plastic insulation while emitting clouds of noxious, dioxin-bearing smoke, which is heavy and settles like a fog around the village.
Guiyu, in China’s Guangdong Province is the largest eWaste site on earth. (For an idea of the scale, there’s an awesome Time photo slideshow on Guiyu) The water and soil in this region is so contaminated, it is unfit even for agricultural use. Using dust samples, scientists analyzed mean heavy metal concentrations in a Guiyu workshop and found that lead and copper were 371 and 115 times higher, respectively, than areas located 30 kilometers away. The nearby Lianjiang River has 300% of the allowable PCB contamination.
Guiyu is the world’s second-most contaminated location. 88% of workers suffer from neurological, digestive, respiratory and skin disease—most cases of which are unique to the region. The heartbreaking story of Guiyu is played out in hundreds of villages in Asia and Africa, where environmental regulations are either lax or nonexistent.
Apple has been “unusually” committed to the environment, but most groups contend that their efforts are insufficient. Whether it is making greater demands from its suppliers, setting up more recycling facilities in countries with better regulations, or perhaps even using its vaunted position in the consumer electronics market to lobby for increased oversight, Apple could be doing a lot more than it already is. It could reengineer products to be more easily repaired, establish trade-in programs with discounts as an incentive, or send outdated, fully-functional iDevices to the third world, where shoddily-built devices contribute to the eWaste stream. Does the company do these things? No. Will it? Unlikely.
Despite my quasi-obligation toward objectivity in journalistic venues, I’m just going to say that as a longtime buyer of Apple’s products, I sit behind my Apple Keyboard and my iMac literally feeling queasy. As an Apple shareholder for the past few years, I am truly disgusted by the realization that the share price’s meteoric rise is due in no small part to the company’s continued partnership with its overseas suppliers, the hype the company fuels, and its failure to expand its recycling program.
There are other things I didn’t mention, like how the unibody construction of nearly all the company’s products prevents the easy replacement or repair of broken components, forcing owners to relegate otherwise functional products to the scrap heap. Wouldn’t it be nice if users could upgrade their iPhone’s processors as easily as it once was to swap out SIM cards? But I won’t mention this.
Like a once-devout religious person being overcome by anger at the obsequious, unquestioning devotion of his or her faithful compatriots, I am most angry at Apple’s devoted fan-base. They have—no… We have become the creepy blue-grey masses from the 1984 Super Bowl commercial, and while I admit that Phone Story was a valiant if wildly insufficient attempt to break us out of our iTrances, it’s going to take a lot more than that. Personally, I’m a nihilist on these matters; I don’t think Apple will change. I don’t think Tim Cook is the hammer-carrying runner in the bright orange shorts.
I don’t think Apple is going to use its position as the world’s largest electronics manufacturer to affect any change to this unspeakably complex and ultimately broken system. I believe that because it is difficult from a consumer’s perspective to admit to being complicit in systematic environmental and human rights abuses, to in turn demand change, consumers will tend toward willful ignorance, the status quo. We aren’t brave enough to bite the hands that feed us.
The fact of the matter is, every single iDevice owner needs to don those shorts. God forbid, we might even start acting like Microsoft customers and—gasp!—complain. We need to Think Different, as it were.
Apple pulled the “anti-iPhone” game from the App Store just hours after its release. The proceeds from the app went to not-for-profits and community organizers. It is available on the Android app marketplace.
If you are interested in learning more about the issues discussed in this article, please go to the app’s web site.
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| Apple and the Democratic Republic of the Congo |
The Process: From the Mines to Your Pockets
First in the chain of coltan distribution is the physical extraction of the mineral from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The majority of the coltan comes from its eastern mines, which often are fought over and can have questionable ownership. For more about working conditions in the mines, visit theHuman Rights tab.
Next comes the purchase of the coltan from the mines by various different distributors, who then sell the raw mineral to different distributors, who purify it into tantalum and manufacture the capacitors. The coltan may change ownership many times during this step, which typically drives up its price.
Then the pre-made capacitors are purchased by Apple, who then assemble their products, such as the iPhone, using the tantalum capacitors.
Lastly, the finalized iPhone is sold by Apple to consumers, who then keep their phone for an average of about 16 months before replacing it with a new one.
Importance of Coltan Mines
Sources of coltan extracted from the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The mines are the single most reliable way of getting columbite-tantalite from the earth. This is why there is so much conflict over them in the eastern DRC; they are the centerpieces of coltan extraction and therefore are enormously profitable. The local economy practically revolves around them, awarding the mines all the attention and ignoring other prospective industries.
Short and Long-Term Strategies: Pros and Cons
Without implementing any major changes in the chain of colton distribution, there are multiple possible approaches that Apple can take to achieve both short and long-term goals.
In the best short term interests of Apple would simply be to purchase as much tantalum is necessary from the cheapest source to meet production quotas without vetting the sources from which such tantalum is bought. This would likely lower the price per tantalum capacitor as bought by Apple, as the least expensive source would likely be run by an illegitimate source using forced labor and such to cut production costs. This would improve Apple's profits, but would likely hurt both the public image of the company and further the human rights, environmental, and political problems present in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Alternately, it would be in the company's long term interest to invest solely in distributors who purchase coltan from legitimate mines operated by nonviolent owners who abide by labor laws and use their proceeds to help the DRC, not to fight against it. While the price of coltan purchased from such mines would be higher than the illegitimate mines, it would erode funding for the rebel groups that contribute largely to the longstanding political instability. Therefore, the Congolese government could eventually regain their advantage over the dissidents and restore some semblance of stability, which would result in safer, more easily accessible mines. This strategy is very long-term and there is no guarantee that stability will last or even come about; however, this option improves Apple's image in the public eye, as they are no longer viewed as a heartless corporation looking only for profits but as a socially conscious business working to improve the lives of those suffering in the DRC. However, the process of closely vetting each distributor's legitimacy is time-consuming, expensive, and difficult, and therefore may not be entirely practical.
Currently, Apple is operating on a variation of this long-term plan; it has implemented a strict code of conduct for all its suppliers to follow, but does not investigate each of its 174 suppliers overly closely, which likely results in some "blood minerals" filtering in through the cracks. While it does strive to make conflict-free phones, there could be much more emphasis put on this.
Who Benefits?
As the system stands now, nearly everybody but the workers involved profit from the buying and selling of coltan. Distributors and mine owners get their profits from the raw material, Apple gets the capacitors it needs to work its electronics, consumers get the final product. The workers in the DRC mines are exploited and lead horrible, deprived lives. The Congolese government also takes some damage as well, as "blood minerals" exported from the Congo are used to further fund the ongoing coups and civil wars that seem never to end.
How important is this to Apple?
The importance of capacitors in electronics cannot be stressed enough. Simply put, without capacitors, there are no consumer electronics. No iPhones, no MacBooks, no Apple TVs; all of these products require capacitors. Without it, Apple's profits would look not like this....
...but like this.
As such, Apple must do all in its power to protect and maximize this important resource. The iPhone alone consistently brings in over $4 billion in revenue to Apple per quarter. There is no way to work around it; without capacitors, there are no consumer electronics. There can be no iPhone without the tantalum capacitor.
Except for that there can be. There is another option, an alternative kind of capacitor that can replace tantalum entirely. To learn about this possibly revolutionary technology, click here or go to the Solution tab.
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Coltan is a metallic ore from which the very similar elements niobium, also known as columbium, and tantalum are extracted. Alloys made from these elements have a variety of uses, including communications technology, superconductors, and doping of steel. Due to niobium and tantalum’s versatility and the recent technology boom, the coltan industry has skyrocketed. Coltan has become a necessity for modern communications and therefore an indispensable and lucrative industry. This has led to a number of human rights violations regarding its production.
The coltan industry is worth billions of dollars per year. Prices for coltan range between $50 and $200 per pound- and has undergone a series of radical location shifts since its inception. In 2006, Australia, Brazil, and Canada produced 80% of the world’s coltan, but as mining trends and costs change, so too does the industry’s centers. Currently, coltan’s main producers are Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mozambique, and RD of Congo via Rwanda, countries that produce about 66% of the world’s coltan. Additional coltan reserves have been found all over the world on every continent except Antarctica. It is believed that sufficient reserves exist in developed countries, but for a variety of reasons, the burden of the world’s coltan needs is falling on undeveloped countries and conflict regions. Currently, coltan products are sold in private, unregulated markets, unlike metals such as gold, copper, zinc, and tin. This means that there are no standards for mining operations and any safety procedures must come from the mine owners or their home countries.
The United Nations has taken an active role in assessing the state of the world’s coltan industry and has cited numerous countries with ethical violations in relationship to coltan mining. Due to the nature of the mining and the number of ore deposits in conflict zones and third-world countries, coltan mining is a highly ethically contentious field.
Human rights
While the situation in each coltan-producing country is different, there are some notable similarities in the countries whose practices come under fire. The first is the systematic exploitation of workers, particularly child workers. While coltan miners are often paid comparatively well, they do not earn a living wage and their working conditions are dangerous. According to the UN, the right to choice of employment and favorable working conditions is a basic human right. However, because of the violence in many of the world’s conflict-producing regions, there is little choice in who becomes a coltan miner. In Africa, mines are typically connected in some way to militia groups, while in South America, the coltan mining industry is operated by militia groups or by Colombian and Mexican drug cartels. Due to these mines’ presence in national reserves, indigenous people are often forcibly involved with the mining operations- in Colombia, the Puinawai natives say that the coltan operations are “guns, pointed at the earth beneath their sacred mountain.” Children are regularly forcibly recruited to work in the coltan mines and are guarded at gunpoint by the militia groups that have forced them into mining. Ultimately, the coltan industry is not particularly amenable to fair working conditions for its laborers; instead, its largely illicit and unregulated nature provide ample opportunity for exploitation. The UN also holds the developed countries that support these markets in violation of human rights for allowing these violations to continue and for not fulfilling and promoting the human rights set forth in the 1948 Declaration.
Mining and economic development
Many of the burgeoning coltan producers are resource-rich developing countries with economies that are currently largely dependent on mining non-renewable resources. This indicates a danger attached to even clean coltan operations in developing countries. Groups that study developing nations such as Oxfam caution against a developing country putting much of its capital into mining operations, especially single mineral developments. While countries like the United States, Canada, and Australia were able to turn their mining operations into profitable industries, these experiences are not practical models that would support today’s developing countries’ reliance on mining operations for further economic development. These countries’ dependence on mining creates tension due to the relatively small size of the developing countries and their exploitation of nonrenewable resources at the expense of their other natural resources. This land tension typically leads to poor economic performance and political instability, which in turn creates the conflicts that make coltan an ethically-charged commodity.
Environmental concerns
In addition to the human rights issues attached to the coltan industry, the mining process itself is environmentally hazardous. Coltan, like any metal, is a toxic contaminant. Since it is usually pan-mined, the mining process and slurry from this process contaminates the water supply and is harmful to the entire ecosystem. Furthermore, the mining process poses a direct threat to the environment via the destruction of stream beds and the surrounding forest. There is nothing sustainable about this kind of mining practice, but since the industry is unregulated, nothing is being done to stop it in the developing countries. Illicit mining frequently occurs in national parks and land reserves, such as the Kahuzi-Biéga National Park in the DRC and the Puinawai National Reserve in Colombia, due to the deep forest cover these places provide. Coltan is mined using techniques developed for gold mining in the 1800s. The work is hard and dangerous, with workers panning for gold in large craters in stream beds, with the average worker producing less than one kilogram of coltan a day. All told, this provides massive environmental detriments for relatively little return.
Even in the legal markets, coltan mining is environmentally dangerous. Developing nations often go through with mining operations because they need the capital these operations bring without thinking of the environmental impacts. Given that mining is an expensive venture to undertake, the returns are relatively low. Experts who study developing nations, such as those at Oxfam, have stated that the cost of mining on the environment can cause nearly permanent environmental damage, which can leave a developing nation permanently poorer, and that support for mining should only be offered in countries that have a clearly defined plan for using the revenue gained from mining for the promotion of public health and infrastructure investments that will eventually allow them to become less resource-dependent.
Specific ethical issues
A piece of Coltan
Africa
During 2009 and 2010, Africa has been producing more coltan than any other region, with Mozambique and Rwanda alone having produced 29% of the world’s coltan in 2010. (this was due to the closing of the Wodinga and Greenbushes operations by Global Advanced Metals; these have been reopened in 2011) During the period 2001–2007 the contribution of African countries to coltan production has been hovering around 20%.
Africa has numerous rich coltan deposits and a history of structural and political violence and exploitation. This combination has led to a storied past of human rights violations in the mining industry. In particular, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the world’s largest producer of “blood coltan,” coltan sourced in a conflict zone. Not all African coltan is from conflict zones, however; coltan exists in Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Namibia, Ghana, and Mozambique, as well as in the DRC. Certain countries have a more flagrant pattern of human rights violations than others, particularly the DRC.
The Democratic Republic of Congo
See: Ethics of Coltan Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo
The coltan mining operation of the Democratic Republic of Congo is the best-known human rights violator of all the global coltan industries. The main conflict is associated with the decisions made my technological companies using coltan and their impacts to human rights. Impacts to human rights from coltan extraction and production have dictated the health, economy, and social structure of the DRC. Conflict coltan mining got its start here and has garnered much international attention in recent years. Other African countries are involved in the DRC’s coltan crisis. In particular, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda have been accused of smuggling coltan over the borders to process in China or claiming DRC-sourced coltan as a product of their own companies by the UN; these claims were of course denied. Furthermore, child labor is a common phenomenon in the DRC, with tens of thousands of children employed as miners, and the coltan mines is not an exception with children officially as young as twelve being accepted as workers in some mines.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) suggests mineral activity should cease in the highly protected areas of UNESCO world heritage sites, the proposed protected areas within conservation sites, areas with last remaining examples of unique ecosystems, and places where mining threatens the well-being of local communities and indigenous peoples. Coltan mining sites operate under boom-bust economies, not only stripping the mineral from the land, but also leading to environmental degradation in myriad ways. When mining towns depend on wealth from finding coltan, less people cultivate the land for agriculture purposes. Numerous instances of famine related to the mining operations contribute to increasingly unsustainable routes for land use. Besides the food use of Eastern Congo, coltan mining leads to less profit from the wildlife and forests via income from ecotourism, game ranching, or medicinal research. Moreover, mining threatens the national parks across the Congo.
Rwanda
According to the United States Geographic Survey, Rwanda produced more than 25% of the world’s coltan in 2011, more than what their coltan deposits should be able to provide. Rwandan coltan mining relies on mines in the DRC, some of which are in conflict areas and some of which are not. Of the ten large Rwandan mining companies, only four have taken any measures to verify that their product is not conflict-sourced. Rwanda has also been implicated multiple times in Congolese coltan smuggling by the UN, along with Burundi and Uganda. However, Uganda and Burundi do not report having a coltan industry, so those claims are even more difficult for the UN to verify. It is believed that about half of all Rwandan coltan comes from conflict regions in the DRC.
Asia
Three countries in Asia are involved with coltan mining: China, Thailand, and Malaysia. The Thai and Malaysian coltan industries are based on tin mining, of which coltan is a byproduct. While these countries do have coltan reserves, they remain essentially untapped.
China
China is Asia’s largest coltan producer and the world’s largest coltan refiner, with at least a third of the world’s coltan being processed there.[28] Many countries export their raw coltan to China for further processing. The UN reports that many tons of coltan from the DRC are processed through China and are often mixed with samples from conflict-free regions to produce tainted coltan that is more difficult to source. This practice undermines the efforts made by countries with legislation restricting conflict materials, such as the United States and Canada. As Western markets have been reducing their demand for conflict coltan, the Chinese market has embraced it with open arms as Chinese firms have begun to carve footholds in the global minerals industry. As a result, the Chinese coltan refining industry has contributed to the perpetuation of human rights violations and environmental destruction in many of the world’s developing regions.
North America
Coltan mining is no longer a major industry in North America. Neither the United States nor Mexico has any coltan mining operations at all, and Canada’s coltan mining industry has been on the decline for years. Many Canadian mining companies are turning to Africa and focusing their operations there. Roughly 60% of the coltan mines in Africa, including in the DRC, have some percentage of Canadian backing but are not subject to Canada’s laws about environmental hazards and human rights violations. Both Canada and the United States have passed acts that attempt to curtail the purchase of conflict-sourced materials, including coltan, but these acts have been difficult to enforce.
Canada
The only North American country with a coltan mining industry is Canada. Canadian coltan mining has been a large operation in the past, in recent years, the Canadian coltan operations have been greatly reduced in scale; in 2009, Canada produced less than 4% of the world’s coltan supply. This is an economic issue, as Canadian regulations make coltan mining more expensive than it is in less stringent countries; this, coupled with the difficulty of the mining process makes Canadian coltan more expensive and lessens the demand for it. In recent years, Canada has become involved in the DRC’s coltan mining operation, with more than three hundred billion dollars’ worth of mining assets in the country in 2008.
South and Central America
Currently, few South and Latin American countries have coltan mining operations. Those that do are relatively small and largely unregulated operations. The main exception is Brazil, one of the world’s largest coltan producers and home to a large refining industry as well. Though combined Africa produces more, Brazil alone is the world’s largest single coltan producer, having produced 23% of the world’s coltan in 2011.
Colombia
Colombia’s coltan mining industry is compounded by its involvement in numerous internal conflicts. The coltan industry in Colombia is currently illegal, which has not stopped guerilla forces and militia groups from mining the ore and selling it on the black market or shipping it through China. The Colombian government has done little in any attempt to regulate the industry. In 2010, plans were announced to auction off the rights to mine coltan in certain areas, but those plans were never completed and were dropped by the current administration. Most of the coltan activity takes place in the deep jungle along the southeastern borders of Venezuela or Brazil, causing severe environmental repercussions. Colombia’s coltan mines are often located in its national parks and on indigenous territory, which forces the native population into the mining industry. Colombian coltan is tied to violence at every step of the process. The mines are typically owned by paramilitary groups or drug cartels such as the Sinloa cartel and the Cifuentes Villa family who use the same smugglers to move both drugs and coltan. Colombian authorities have little control over the coltan mining region due to its size and density, and coltan is easily moved along the same routes as cocaine and emeralds, two of Colombia’s most heavily trafficked illegal goods.
However, there are also examples of indigenoous communities that obtain coltan through traditional methods which have no environmental impact, such as the Cubeos form the Colombian Vaupes. This has given them strength in their autonomy and resources to live sustainably in their lands, for they have invested in sustainable food security, renewable energy sources as well as other socially and evironmentally healthy projects.
Venezuela
Although Venezuela is home to several large coltan deposits, coltan mining is illegal there. This has not stopped an illegal mining industry from developing along the Colombian border. Conflict areas have begun to develop due to the illegal coltan market, with the Venezuelan government having sent military patrols into the Venezuelan jungle to root out the miners and the Colombian cartel leaders who fund the operations. The Venezuelan government’s attitude towards the future development of the country’s coltan industry has also been a cause for concern, as coltan is used in so-called “smart bombs” and the Venezuelan government has been in discussions with Iranian, Chinese, and Russian firms to further develop the country’s various minerals industries. As in Colombia, Venezuelan natives in the Paraguaza region have been imposed upon by the mining industry, and women and children have suffered from paramilitary violence from the coltan mine’s military supervisors.
Potential solutions
Ensuring clean coltan
It is difficult for manufacturers to ensure that the coltan they use in their products is not from a conflict zone or otherwise unethically produced. Currently there is one process for verifying the origin of a coltan sample. This process, developed in Germany, involves creating an elemental ‘fingerprint’ via WD-X-ray fluorescence analysis and X-ray diffraction analysis to determine the composition and amounts of trace elements presence in the sample. These results are then compared to the results of samples of known provenance, much like the Kimberly process for diamonds. This technique works for samples of mixed sources as well as pure coltan; however, it requires the sample fingerprints of all original sources on file. Using this technique, it is possible to identify the source of most coltan samples; as of 2010, almost 75% of the world’s coltan mines have samples on file. However, this process is expensive and lengthy and while it has worked in Rwanda, adapting these methods to the industry in the DRC and convincing countries such as China to adopt these fingerprinting practices has proved difficult. Both the United States and Canada have passed legislation that provides incentive for purchasing certified coltan and makes conflict material extralegal; however, because most coltan is processed in China and because China does not follow the certification processes, ensuring the purchase of clean coltan is very difficult. RESOLVE has been facilitating the development of efficient certification processes.
Most of this change has been consumer-driven. As recently as 2004, the TIC had little interest in regulating conflict materials, citing that the impact of the conflict coltan industry on the world’s coltan supply was not significant enough to be of concern. Awareness campaigns in Western countries have been pushing manufacturers such as Apple and Intel to rely on more than just their suppliers’ word that the coltan in their products is coltan-free. This consumer interest has pushed the TIC to create a working group in 2009 to promote better standards for coltan mining. This group works in conjunction with the UN and other NGOs to suggest ways to reduce the number of conflict mines and to promote transparency in the supply chain. The TIC has attempted to create a process to deliver conflict-free coltan from Africa to refinery sites by using independent third-party companies to assess the mine sites and determine whether or not they are in violation of human rights. Ultimately, however, the burden falls upon the companies directly involved in the supply chain to ensure that the danger of coltan mining practices is reduced.
