Blood Diamond Is In Your Cell Phone | Coltan Mineral

There's a new blood diamond in Africa. But this one's not rare and you don't show it off to your friends on your finger. Instead, it's a mineral that's used in tiny little electronic cicuits that's used in many of today's electronic devices, especially cell phones. The mineral is called coltan, and it's not found in many places in abundance, except for in Eastern Congo. And coltan is being used in electronic devices, everyday ones, that may be in your house. Coltan is also commonly used in cell phones, and it's likely that it's in yours'.

Eastern Congo is currenly involved in some of the bloodiest and horrific civil conflicts in the history of the world.  It's for some reason being overshadowed by the genocide in Darfur, even though more people have died in the Eastern Congo conflicts and I'm sure more women have been raped.  So far around 2.7 million people have died and currently 45,000 die every month from this conflict.  In addition, countless women and girls are being raped.

And just like the old blood diamond era in Sierra Leone's conflict, coltan and other minerals have become the new blood diamond.  These minerals are in abundance in Eastern Congo and is being sold to the international market by rebel factions and armies and fueling this conflict.  All sides are involved, all sides have mines, and all sides are buying arms with the proceeds to further the conflict.  But unlike the old blood diamond problem, this new blood diamond problem is far more complex.

They main solution that is being proposed is to pressure the international electronics manufacturers to ban buying and using minerals that come from conflict mines.  This solution has it's roots in the old blood diamond problem where all diamonds from Sierra Leone were banned and all diamonds had to be certified from a different source country.  There are many problems with this solution.

First of all, the blood diamond certification program for Sierra Leone didn't work all that well.  Blood diamonds were still smuggled out of the country, mostly through neighboring Liberia where the then President Charles Taylor was supporting the rebel amry RUF who owned these blood diamond mines.  In addition, banning blood diamonds from Sierra Leone is not what ended the conflicts there, and it's arguable that it did very little from allowing blood diamonds to continue to fuel the conflict.

Secondly, unlike Sierra Leone, it's very difficult to draw geographic lines for banning minerals out of Eastern Congo.  The lines of the ban were already drawn on the map for Sierra Leone.  In Eastern Congo, it's not that simple because there are many legitimate mineral mines in Eastern Congo that is not fueling the conflict.  So how to do filter out the good and the bad.  And if the entire region is sectioned off to be banned, then it will devastate the economies of the legitimate mining communities.

Thirdly, unlike diamonds, minerals are a lot more plentiful in volume.  If you're wealthy enough, you may have one, two, maybe three diamonds in your household.  But think about how much electronic equipment and cell phones just one household has.  In addition, you don't have to be even middle class to get a cell phone.  There are people on this planet that make less than $2 a day who own a cell phone.  There would be a lot more of the new blood diamonds to track than the old blood diamonds.

To read more about the new blood diamond problem and what people proposed to do about it, check out to The Reality Check.

The only solution that has ever worked in conflict areas in Africa is bringing in a United Nations peacekeeping force.  The blood diamond certification program didn't really work in Sierra Leone, and it's not really going to work in Eastern Congo.  The United Nations need to go ahead and figure out a way to enter the conflict zone with United Nations peacekeepers and stop the fighting by force.  In an ideal world the United Nations shouldn't have to police the world, but tens of thousands of people are dying every month, and many more are being raped.  It needs to stop.  The government of Congo obviously does not have the resources or the man power capable of stopping the violence.  Just like in Sierra Leone and Liberia and other conflict zones, the United Nations peacekeepers need to be put in, and it needs to be done soon.

I commend the efforts of organizations like the Enough Project.  Although it won't keep electronics manufacturers from using Congolese minerals, it might bring about enough international publicity and pressure to cause the United Nations Security Council to act, and to act soon.  However, there needs to be more people explicitly pressuring the United Nations to do something about the Eastern Congo crisis, besides just resolutions.  Resolutions won't save any lives, at least for the time being.  Groups like the Enough Project need to lobby the United Nations to act, and they can use their millions of petitions to back them up.