RSS
Home
Running it into the ground: The Democratic Republic of Congo and corporate governance
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
More than a symbolic visit? U.S. President
Barack Obama and Ghana President
John Atta Mills in Accra. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
Global Witness, a human rights activist, has seen enough to recommend that sanctions be imposed on companies sourcing minerals from the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo. A report by Global Witness, as reviewed by the BBC, details how international companies such as UK-based Amalgamated Metal Corporation (AMC) are indirectly financing insurgencies by sourcing from the vast, eastern region of DR Congo, an area presided over by rebel groups and national troops of questionable allegiance. The rest of the country, governed by a coalition of former rebel leaders and children of ex-presidents, is itself weakly amalgamated and ill-equipped to reign in the renegades.
Global Witness, in the aforementioned publication, highlights a UN resolution which outlaws the support of Congolese insurgents through such trade in natural resources. Of particular note is the fact that the human rights activist has taken its complaint to the British government, requesting that it add AMC and its sourcing subsidiary to a list of companies the UN may sanction. By not instead demanding accountability from DR Congo’s largely ineffectual UN peacekeepers, it appears focused on curtailing abuse from the top down.
Weighing in on the problem, AllAfrica.com has posted a story by the Catholic Information Service for Africa that stresses an underlying reason for the fragility of the peace process: A number of rebel groups and government forces are competing for control of the mines, which hold not only gold, but coltan and cassiterite (tin ore), metals of comparable value to the lucrative mobile phone and electronics industries. The BBC says Global Witness has singled out companies like Thaisarco, AMC’s subsidiary, who neglect to check the origins of their metals before tossing them into smelters that churn out material for the electronics industry. AllAfrica.com adds that most of these companies don’t have any mechanisms in place to prevent “conflict minerals” from being funnelled into their supply chains. Patrick Alley, Director of Global Witness, is quoted as saying “All the warring parties in the DRC are systematically using forced labour and violent extortion in mining areas…It is not good enough for companies to say they buy only from licensed exporters, when they know full well that their middlemen buy from armed groups.”
Not only is Global Witness asking that companies implicated in the report “carry out thorough due diligence,” but it's also requesting that DR Congo’s leaders invest in effectively policing the country’s mines, keeping rebel armies away from the valuable minerals and international trade routes that fund violent insurrection. As reported by the BBC in another article titled “DR Congo outsources its military”, the central African nation has already arranged for troops from Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan to help with the escalating conflict. Several coordinated attacks, backed by the United States, have managed to disperse some of the rebel groups, and even to capture a few of their leaders. Other operations have been less successful, resulting in the needless killing of civilians. The BBC says that DR Congo is pressing for an end to this foreign-led offensive; Apparently, it’s an embarrassment to President Joseph Kabila that African countries who once invaded DR Congo are now parading their armies across its territory.
President Barack Obama may not have been talking about corporate governance when he said, on a recent trip to Ghana, that Africa’s biggest problem is its lack of good governance. But joint stakeholders in African progress, those who stand to benefit from its shared profits, might be hoping that President Kabila keeps running his country like a business. In addition to deferring responsibility to more efficient armies and tightly marshalled multinationals, it could be suggested, at the risk of embarrassing him further, that he also outsource the leadership function in a hopelessly mismanaged administration.
Mineral firms fuel Congo unrest
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
.jpg)
