The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been ongoing since 1998, has resulted in over 5 million deaths as a direct and indirect result of the conflict and the rape of over 400,000 women, girls and occasionally men.
The conflict has been perpetuated by a large number of actors based on a variety of motivations including politics, ethnicity and inequality. However, a great deal of the conflict has also been fueled by access to resources. The DRC has one of the largest mineral deposits in the world including rubber, gold, diamonds and coltan, a mineral compound found in most cell phones. Rebel and foreign armies have continually sold minerals acquired through illegal mines to fund their involvement in the conflict contributing to the humanitarian disaster described above.
Conflict Minerals are purchased for further processing, smelting, refinement and are used in our cell phones, laptops, televisions and other electronics. Canadian companies contribute to the trade of conflict minerals through the purchase of raw materials from the DRC at all stages of the refinement process. As consumers we treat our electronics like their disposable and toss them aside so that we can have the newest technology while people in the DRC pay with their lives.
On March 26, 2013 MP Paul Dewar introduced the Conflict Minerals Act, Bill C-486 to Parliament. The Act, if passed, would require Canadian mining companies to show due diligence when purchasing minerals from the Great Lakes Region of Africa (including the DRC) and to report the source of their minerals annually. This would allow consumers to make informed choices about the products they buy and hold mining companies accountable for their actions overseas. (It's worth noting the United States has already passed similar legislation under the Dodd Franks Act.).
The next week my roommate Brockenshire looked at me and asked "are we going to do something about this?" and all I could do was smile and say yes.
Soon I was in touch with Paul Dewar's office learning about the grass roots base for the campaign and how they wanted average people to support the Act. So Brockenshire and I got to work recruiting team members.
In mid-April we formed the KW Just Minerals Campaign. As a group we are committed to creating awareness and gaining support for the Conflict Minerals Act and creating awareness about conflict minerals and the conflict in the DRC.
Soon we had a group of 8 who worked together to hold the KW Just Mineral Campaign's first event, a screening of the film "Blood in the Mobile." The film documents the narrator's journey into the Eastern DRC to discover the source of the minerals in his cell phone. In the film he comes face to face the corruption which is rife among Congolese officials, he meets a former child labourer who takes him to the Walike mine where he had worked where they mine coltan which is used in capacitors for cell phones. The film actually shows the inside of one of the mines and the deplorable conditions that artisinal miners work in and makes the link that profits from the mines are used to supply weapons to armed groups clear.
The film does miss a couple of points as well. It doesn't do the complexity of the conflict in the DRC justice nor does it give any credence to the possibility of a Congolese sponsored solution to the ongoing violence.
The film screening included a call to action from the Kitchener Center NDP Federal Candidate Peter Thurley, an introduction to the history of the conflict presented by myself and a follow-up discussion presented by two of our other members Cassandra and Nadine.
We had about 30 people attend the screening, which I'm told is a great turn out for an event of it's nature. Of those thirty attendees 4 signed up to become members of our organizing committee. The event even gained media attention from the Rogers' Cable show News Talk Local as well as from the Kitchener Waterloo CBC Radio Morning.
We didn't stop there. We've been attending community events including Open Streets Uptown Waterloo and the KW Non-Violence Festival. We have received more than 100 signatures for the Official Parliamentary Petition in support of the conflict Minerals Act.
In the last week I had the opportunity to do an extensive interview for the Waterloo Record about our campaign and today I gave a presentation to the Engineers Without Borders Toronto Professional Chapter against mineral exploitation and the conflict in the DRC.
I'm sad that I'm leaving this all behind to move back to Ottawa but I can't wait to see where my friends and co-conspirators take the campaign.
Want to read Bill C-486?
http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&DocId=6062040
Want to sign the official parliamentary petition?
http://petition.ndp.ca/conflictfree
