If you're watching this video, you probably have an electronic device, but you may not
have heard of the Kivu Conflict.
The Kivu Conflict is an ongoing crisis that is part of a 20-year period of wars and violence
involving several nations and dozens of rebel groups.
It has claimed millions of lives.
The Kivu region of the Congo is where important raw materials in our electronics come from.
This past summer, I spent two weeks in Rwanda and one in Uganda studying this conflict.
To understand it though, we can look at it through two lenses.
One is the history and consequences of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The second is the conflict mineral trade that links the violence to the developed world.
I'll start with an overview of the genocide and then move on to its legacy.
So what is the 1994 Rwandan genocide and what were its immediate consequences?
While in basic terms, it was perpetrated by an extremist government against a minority
socioeconomic upper class over a period of 100 days.
It was misreported in Western news media as tribal violence.
All in all, 1.2 million die in Rwanda and 2 million are displaced into the neighboring
Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC.
The big picture of political context surrounding the genocide is regime change in the region.
Uganda undergoes regime change before the genocide.
Rwanda undergoes regime change during the genocide with a new government ending it.
After the genocide, the DRC undergoes regime change twice during the great African wars,
which claim over 5 million lives.
The region is now dominated by regimes that are in large part supported by the US and
Western governments.
One might ask, where's the UN during and after the genocide?
The UN did not interfere in the genocide, and as a result is not favorably viewed in
the region.
It was deployed to deal with the refugee crisis in the DRC following the genocide, but in
doing so indirectly protected the genocidal ex-Rwandan government forces that were part
of the refugee population.
Its mandate did not allow for military engagement until last year.
So who are the rebel groups, and how do they come about?
One group you may have heard of is the Lord's Resistance Army, the LRA.
Led by Joseph Coney, it is just one of many rebel groups in the region, and quite frankly
it is a distraction by comparison to the more powerful ones.
I'm going to tell you about two.
One is the genocidal Rwandan government in exile, which became the FDLR, the Democratic
forces for the liberation of Rwanda.
They start killing ethnic Rwandans in the DRC and attack Congolese for their resources,
killing and raping along the way.
The second is the M23.
This was formed in response to the FDLR threat and the lack of Congolese army intervention
on behalf of civilians.
They are suspected to be covertly supported by the Rwandan government.
They are very strong and captured the city of Goma from the UN.
They were pushed out last year when the UN changed their mandate.
So you have all this violence, but violence does not simply self-repetuate.
So what fuels this conflict?
That's the conflict mineral trade.
But first let's ask ourselves, why are the US and the West interested in supporting the
Rwandan government?
Rwanda has no natural mineral resources to speak of.
An altruistic explanation is that there is a feeling of guilt for not intervening in
1994.
Scholars and voices in Africa see this as an excuse for supporting a regime that operates
in the DRC covertly.
What is a conflict mineral?
Conflict mineral is a mineral sold or exchanged for the purchase of weapons, such as diamonds
in Sierra Leone.
In the Kivu provinces of the DRC, it's Coltan.
Coltan is essential in the manufacture of electronics, and an estimated 64 to 80% of
the world's Coltan deposits are in the DRC.
The only other large Coltan deposits are in China.
Congolese Coltan is cheap, because there's no government, and there's lots of it.
From a business point of view, this is fantastic.
No government means no taxes, no regulation.
Nobody cares if there's child labor in the mines or a war going on because of it.
So what are our options?
As consumers, we can demand conflict-free minerals from our electronics manufacturers.
There are several provisions in the Dodd-Frank bill that require companies to label their
products if they contain conflict minerals.
However, questions remain.
Who is going to label their products as containing conflict minerals?
What oversight is there in the DRC to ensure that minerals are conflict-free?
There isn't any.
We can also pressure our diplomats to uphold the UN Peace Framework established last year
for the region.
However, this is difficult because of the link between the US and other Western governments
and Rwanda, and then Rwanda and the M23.
The outcome is still uncertain, as the current pause in violence is very tenuous.
So at the end of the day, there's a huge underreported conflict, and millions of people
have died.
To understand it, we need to look at the legacy of the Rwandan genocide and how the conflict
mineral trade fuels this conflict.
People dying in the Congo, though, isn't the fault of us purchasing iPhones, but rather,
the globalization of markets has made us complicit in these processes.
The least we can do is to understand our place in the world as consumers, which is the first
step to demanding accountability.
