A new iPhone costs $749. What isn’t included in that cost is the violence, rape, and instability that comes with the extraction of key materials needed to make it run. All of our technology contains minerals. Whether it is one of the three T’s—tin, tungsten, tantalum—or gold, there is at least one mineral encased in all of our devices.
They are found in the Great Lakes region of Africa and are specifically concentrated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where the process of extracting, processing, purchasing, and trading these minerals has perpetuated a conflict that has claimed the lives of more than five million people and earns rebel groups $180 million, according to the Canadian Fair Trade Network.
These minerals make our lives easier, but fuel human rights violations which include rape, human trafficking, forced labour, and levels of brutality which cause widespread suffering and instability.
In 2010, a UN team of experts reported “almost every mineral deposit” in the area was controlled by military groups. The profits from the sale of conflict minerals often go back into purchasing weaponry or ammunition that prolongs a civil conflict in the DRC which we as product consumers are directly fuelling.
High-tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and Hewlett-Packard are among many who don’t have definitive policy that ensures the minerals used in their products are handled responsibly.
Every time you rush out to buy that new smartphone or purchase a new laptop, you are enabling these large corporations to continue purchasing minerals which enable widespread devastation, deaths, and civil war. Think of it this way: from mine to mobile, bloody hands to your cell phone.
What can you do to wash your hands of the blood?
First, educate yourself. We’ve all heard of blood diamonds, if only for the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio was in a movie about it, but becoming aware of all the other types of minerals that violate human rights is a good first step.
Secondly, advocating for the implementation of a due diligence policy which would hold companies responsible for making sure their products are free of conflict minerals is a great next step.
When the United Nations instituted the global Kimberly Process Certification System in 2003 to stop the trade of conflict diamonds, the illegal extraction and importation of conflict diamonds fell below one per cent. Today more than 99 per cent of diamonds are now free from conflict, according to the World Diamond Council.
We know change is possible, but it’s up to us as consumers of these products to call for action.
In September 2014, Paul Dewar, the NDP foreign affairs critic, proposed a bill that would have required Canadian corporations to report their use of potential-conflict minerals and what they were doing to ensure their money was not financing conflict in the DRC.
Sadly, his bill was defeated—meaning the death toll in the DRC will continue to rise for now. But the iPad wasn’t created in a day, nor will the process for ending the atrocities which the iPad enables end in a day.
The five million deaths cannot solely be blamed on private corporations or on governments. It’s a complex process that even involves us. That being said, it is us who have to take action by committing to being conflict-free which will escalate to the higher levels taking action to combat this war on a more global level. In order to hold others accountable we must first hold ourselves accountable.
