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.
The fact that only a small percentage of the minerals used in cell phones actually come from the DRC, that the region is largely at peace now, and that the situation defies easy solutions, if mentioned at all, is typically buried in the group's more complex reports, or brushed aside.
