Skip to main content

Home/ Congo Mining and Human Rights Abuses/ Group items tagged jobs

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Arabica Robusta

Should you support the "conflict minerals" movement? - Chris Blattman - 0 views

chrisblattman.com/...the-conflict-minerals-movement

rights intervention industry human extractive enough corporate congo coltan cellphones

shared by Arabica Robusta on 14 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Sometimes the correct message is complicated, and doesn’t sell well in the New York Times or Congress. Fair enough. People at Enough know a lot more about marketing than me. I think they’d argue that it’s more important to get attention than to get the message exactly right. Let’s say they’re right (a point I don’t necessarily concede). Here’s my advice: If you’re going to run a vulgar campaign, have the nuanced message in your back pocket for the people in the field who actually have to take action.
  • As I have previously said to Chris, it deeply saddens me to have read his post today and now your comment, Laura. You deride the Enough Project without understanding the complexity and depth of their work and the very committed and wonderful John Prendergast without ever having met him. How can you possibly find that fair. How do you see that helping the people of Congo. For two professors to behave in such a cruel and immature fashion is distressing and hurtful. I realize that you are not cognizant of this, but you are truly hurting yourselves in the process
  • Ultimately, I don’t envy the Enough Project’s position. It’s very hard to push policy on one side, while fending off allies who want you to do more on the other. I’d be willing to bet they do have that “nuanced message in the back pocket” that Chris wants, but their job isn’t to spread the nuanced message. That’s the job of academics and implementers. The Enough Project’s job is to make policy change happen. All that said, please keep criticizing them and pushing them to do better. But in the end, if you disagree with their strategic choices, you should leave academia and launch your own advocacy campaign: pick up the phone, raise the money, knock on the doors, and prove to them that a nuanced narrative can sell.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The industry has another, entirely different, choke point. The processors. There’s a very small number of companies that have the ability to take coltan and produce tantalum from it. No more than a handful globally. Cabot in the US, Fluminense in Brazil, Starck in Germany, a couple in China, Ulba in Kazakhstan. Perhaps a couple more.
  • The way to effect real change in this situation is to follow the flow of money. It is as simple as that. While I agree with Tim Worstall that the processors of tantalum are the ones who really would make the decision to stop purchasing conflict minerals, they would no longer have incentive to buy if the electronics industry didn’t keep BUYING. That is why IMHO emphasis has been put on the electronics brands. GlobalWitness recently released a report which many of you may find of interest. Here is the link: http://www.globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/1019/en/do_no_harm_a_gu
  • Arabica Robusta on 14 Aug 10
     
    Sometimes the correct message is complicated, and doesn't sell well in the New York Times or Congress. Fair enough. People at Enough know a lot more about marketing than me. I think they'd argue that it's more important to get attention than to get the message exactly right. Let's say they're right (a point I don't necessarily concede). Here's my advice: If you're going to run a vulgar campaign, have the nuanced message in your back pocket for the people in the field who actually have to take action.
Arabica Robusta

Just in case you haven't had Enough of the conflict minerals debate… - Chris ... - 0 views

chrisblattman.com/...flict-minerals-debate%E2%80%A6

rights intervention industry human extractive enough corporate congo coltan cellphones

shared by Arabica Robusta on 14 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Their central point, I believe, boils down to this: conflict minerals might not be the most effective policy change, but it’s the policy we can change most effectively.
  • This is a simple quantity argument. It may or may not be true. But estimating demand shocks is one of the oldest and simplest tools in the economic toolbox. Has anyone done this calculation? A good econ grad student could pump it out. In the absence of evidence, signs point to a small potential impact. (There is hope, though. A commenter argues that manufacturers are the wrong ones to target, but that the market has a real choke point: processors. If true, these are the details we want to be sure the legislation gets right.)
  • Second, even if the potential impact is modest, there’s a good argument for the legislation if they have a high probability of success. Here there is another clear argument from Enough: There are numerous other pressure points that the international community should help address… But the conflict minerals issue resonates with a potent group of actors in the United States, namely, advocates and concerned consumers who do not want their purchases to fund armed groups in Congo, a handful of dedicated members of Congress and leaders in the Obama administration who see a lasting solution to the Congo conflict as part of their personal priorities and legacies, and increasingly, leaders in the electronics industry itself, which is responding to the moral and consumer pressure to take on this issue. For a small advocacy organization, we would stop here. For one of the largest and most influential human rights campaigners in the country, I hope for more. This is Enough, after all, not Good Enough. Let’s campaign for policies that are powerful, not just popular. Enough has mentioned peacekeeping support among a host of tougher, more effective-seeming solutions. Are these so unattainable?
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • What I’m really trying to get to is that monitoring, the law and audits, along with public shaming, have almost certainly got as far as they’re capable of getting in hte supply chain and I cannot see Enough as doing anything other than creating lots of jobs for people authorised by Enough to work as supply chain auditors…to no effect other than a paycheque.
  • China is the world’s largest consumer of tin, and most of the smelting happens in southeast Asia. However, most of the trading companies that purchase Congolese tin ore are based in Europe – Amalgamated Metal Corp (AMC) used to buy around half of the Kivu’s tin production, and Belgium-based Traxys and Trademet buy a fair chunk of the rest. Pressure them last year had a significant impact: they suspended all exports from the Kivus after allegations that they were indirectly financing rebel groups. While they may very well try to hide behind front companies in BRIC countries, that might eventually be more of a nuisance than just complying with basic due diligence.
  • due diligence and sanctions for non-compliant companies could provide the necessary incentive structures for companies and the Congolese state to strengthen their regulatory agencies, clear the soldiers out of the mines and render the trade more accountable and transparent. That could then finally prompt companies to invest in industrial tin mining in the Kivus – the Bisie polygon in particular – which would in turn cut out a lot of the crooked middlemen and militias that currently benefit from the trade and who parasitize the Congolese state.
  • The important fact is not the size of the Congolese market to the global market. The important fact is the size of the companies affected by the legislation to the producers (exporters/processors).
  • On the second point, I think you missed a key component. There is a background constraint to the equations you did, which is what can be done by the US. ENOUGH worked on a policy that resonated with US constituencies AND was directly material to the US Congress AND could be implemented through US legislation. So they can’t just advocate for any policy at all, but policies that are relevant in the US. Importantly, you ignore that ENOUGH does campaign on all sorts of other issues, including support for peacekeepers. This is not absent from their campaign materials. It was absent from the legislation, because that clearly would not be material to a financial reform bill. This is also a matter of facts. We can see ENOUGH’s support for peacekeepers, and we will see that in the future. On point three, it is not a question of facts. It is clearly stated as a counterfactual. “What if Congress doesn’t pay attention to other important issues?” I’m not sure what facts one can appeal to. I also find it highly unlikely that this legislation will distract Congressional attention from other DRC issues in the future. I suspect it is much more likely that it will RAISE the profile of the DRC in foreign affairs issues for Congress as a result of extensive lobbying. The “advocacy space” is not fixed. In fact, it might be expanded by the result of lobbying. But regardless, there is no “fact” to appeal to resolve this argument. Finally, Jason is right that the legislation creates an incentive structure for responsible supply chains, which in the long run will likely be a good thing.
  • An unintended consequence of this legislation will be the increased cost of doing business and possible end of doing business with 9 other African countries who may transship some Congolese material but also produce their own. If economies in the 9 other African countries listed in this law are injured as a consequence and livelihoods reduced then instability and poverty are the results of this well intentioned and poorly crafted legislation. Instability and poverty that could well lead to increased civil conflict in those countries.
  • Arabica Robusta on 14 Aug 10
     
    Their central point, I believe, boils down to this: conflict minerals might not be the most effective policy change, but it's the policy we can change most effectively.
Arabica Robusta

Conflict Minerals on the Blogs: Correcting Misperceptions | Enough - 0 views

www.enoughproject.org/...logs-correcting-misperceptions

mining news mine gold miner africa rights intervention industry human extractive enough corporate congo coltan cellphones

shared by Arabica Robusta on 14 Aug 10 - No Cached
  • In the two weeks since President Obama signed the conflict minerals bill – a landmark moment after two years of advocacy to press the U.S. government to address the issue – one corner of the blogosphere has been subsumed with posts pointing out the merits and the perceived flaws of the new law. 
  • Some criticisms of this campaign have implied that this issue is at odds with the views of Congolese people and civil society organizations. Again, this is simply false. We tend to be skeptical of anyone who tries to speak on behalf of “the Congolese people” because Congo’s population is far too vast, diverse, and opinionated to be reduced to a talking point
  • There are numerous other pressure points that the international community should help address, from security sector reform to justice and accountability, from ensuring a more transparent process for returning refugees, to devising a more effective strategy to dismantle the FDLR and to demobilize Congo’s many militia groups. But the conflict minerals issue resonates with a potent group of actors in the United States, namely, advocates and concerned consumers who do not want their purchases to fund armed groups in Congo, a handful of dedicated members of Congress and leaders in the Obama administration who see a lasting solution to the Congo conflict as part of their personal priorities and legacies, and increasingly, leaders in the electronics industry itself, which is responding to the moral and consumer pressure to take on this issue.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Of course, in the short-term, some companies will choose to pull their business out of Congo altogether. This is not our objective, but it is a serious issue. Miners will lose jobs, and the main risk is that ex-combatants will rejoin militias. Here’s where we get back to the point that addressing conflict minerals trade has to be part of a much broader strategy, one that will span many years and focus on spurring broad economic recovery, promoting good governance and cracking down on corruption, and revitalizing peacebuilding efforts. In particular, companies that have long benefited from Congo’s cheap mineral trade should work with donors to create a fund dedicated to supporting alternative livelihoods for miners
  • The Security and Exchange Commission is just beginning to work out the details of how the conflict minerals law will be implemented, and industry groups are lobbying hard to see that the SEC regulations carry as little weight as possible, by narrowly defining, for instance, which companies have to report on their activities in eastern Congo.
  • Addressing the minerals trade is particularly important because until recently it was neglected, disregarded by diplomats and policymakers in negotiations and peace talks. Also, international advocacy on conflict minerals can be more effective than on other issues in the conflict, because of the international dimension of the trade.
1 - 4 of 4
Showing 20▼ items per page