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Global Witness Responds to Tim Worstall Post

This article is more than 10 years old.

Tim Worstall, a Forbes contributor, recently published a post on conflict minerals and Global Witness. Global Witness took issue with the piece (you can read it here) and requested space to respond. We agreed. You can read the response below.

Tim Worstall's claims are, to use his own words 'absurd allegations', and underpinned by a range of basic factual inaccuracies.

Mr Worstall's 'bad but small problem' is in fact a conflict that has led to millions of deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and is rather more than 'a few militias mining a few minor metals'.  A decade's worth of UN Security Council resolutions and reports, not to mention the reporting of NGOs and journalists who take the trouble to spend time in the region, show that the minerals trade is a hugely significant means and motivation in the conflict.

The 'small problem' is not just a few militias but also highly abusive units of the Congolese national army - many of them former rebels - who constitute, in the words of the President of DRC, 'mafia groups' and prey upon the minerals trade and the local population.

No one claims that cleaning up the mining sector is going to end the conflict on its own. However, tackling the problem from a supply chain angle represents one of the best means of cutting off a very substantial source of income (tens of millions of dollars per year according to our estimates) from abusive armed groups.  This has been obvious for many years. As the Governor of North Kivu province put it to us: "the war has been going on since 1996, why didn't the US government pass this [Dodd Frank] law ten years ago?"

Mr Worstall's article is particularly preoccupied by the financial costs to companies involved in addressing the role of minerals in the violence in eastern Congo.  Is he implying, as it appears, that there is a cost barrier beyond which it ceases to be worthwhile for companies to make sure they are not funding rape and war through their purchases?  What is the maximum a company should spend on its supply chain controls to avoid sponsoring a mass-rapist or murderer?  How about putting some dollar signs against the suffering of victims of the armed groups that finance themselves through the global minerals trade?  Or maybe these fuzzy human impact costs don't count?

When doing the sums, Mr Worstall might want to factor in the cost to taxpayers of those free-riding companies that are failing to discharge their basic responsibilities.  US taxpayers alone currently spend $500-600 million per year on aid and peacekeeping operations aimed at making Congo a more stable place. One of the main reasons the cost is so high is because companies have failed to put controls on their minerals supply chains, thereby channelling financing to armed groups that continue to fight and rape and kill.

The de facto embargo Mr Worstall talks about was imposed by the Congolese President last September - in the form of an ill-advised six month mining ban - and, since then, through the purchasing decisions of companies that would rather abandon the region rather than do the right thing. The situation has been exacerbated by the depletion of accessible reserves in some major mines and a significant drop in the global prices for tin and tantalum.  Delays in the SEC's announcement of the regulations to accompany Dodd Frank - which are largely due to the pressure of industry lobby groups - have made life even worse.  The lack of clarity that has resulted, which Mr Worstall rightly deplores, is holding up the responsible investment in eastern DRC's mining sector that everyone wants to see.

The slump in the trade in the provinces of North and South Kivus which all this has induced has indeed hurt people who are offered little back-up from the Congolese state.  But not all miners are unemployed, as Mr Worstall claims.  Data gathered in recent weeks by the UN Group of Experts shows that many have moved to work in mines in neighbouring provinces.  Moreover, while recent official exports of minerals from the Kivus have been at around 30% of 2009-2010 rates, mining officials told us that the real figure was in fact substantially higher because of increased smuggling.  High levels of smuggling are bad news for a range of reasons, but reflect the reality that mining is continuing, albeit at lower levels than before.

Mr Worstall's piece ends with a muddled invocation of the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises that does, perhaps inadvertently, raise a very important question:  Are companies who have been bankrolling the conflict for the past decade and a half through their mineral purchases going to compensate those who have lost lives and loved ones in eastern DRC?  This is something that people in the Kivus sometimes ask us, and it is a valid point for debate. At this stage, however, the most important thing is for companies to stop feeling sorry for themselves, get a grip on their supply chains, and make sure they are not doing harm.

Mike Davis
Campaign Leader, Conflict Resources
Global Witness