Deep in the mountains that separate the Democratic Republic of the Congo from Rwanda, largely hidden from public view, a war has been raging for the past 14 years. In this gruesome conflict, rape is frequently the weapon of choice, and a wide array of armed groups with many different patrons fight mercilessly for control of mineral riches.
There is no easy solution to ending the war in Congo, which has claimed more than five million lives, making it the most lethal conflict since World War II. But the Wall Street reform legislation signed into law by President Obama includes a far-reaching provision designed to reduce the horrific violence. Building on the work of a coalition of a dozen major humanitarian organizations and industry pioneers, the bill establishes a new mechanism that will limit the ability of armed groups to profit from the illicit mining and sale of cassiterite, coltan, and wolframite and other "conflict minerals."
My colleagues and I have been working for months to pass this provision, and by partnering with the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Barney Frank, and several other key allies in the House and Senate, including Rep. McDermott and Senators Brownback, Dodd, Durbin, and Feingold, we were able to secure broad, bipartisan support for a requirement that companies doing business in the Congo and adjoining countries disclose both the provenance of the minerals they use and the efforts they have taken to ensure that their dollars do not directly or indirectly support armed groups that employ rape as a tool of war and otherwise perpetuate the conflict.
Let there be no mistake: this is only one critical step of many that must be taken to stop one of the world's longest running wars. But it is a major step.
To be effective, this action must be paired with other efforts. By companies, who will need to build on the work of peers who have already started to develop conflict-free supply chains for the minerals they use. By consumers, who will need to make conscientious choices about the products they buy. By regulators, who will need to ensure that the disclosure process is taken seriously, and that loopholes are not reopened. And by Congress, which will need to carefully monitor the effectiveness of the new mechanism, and take other steps to enhance the ability of the United States to work for peace in places like Congo.
Several of those efforts are currently under consideration in the Foreign Affairs Committee. One that is a particularly high priority for me would overhaul U.S. foreign assistance programs for the first time since 1961, thus enabling our nation to more effectively and efficiently target and deliver our aid dollars.
In these difficult economic times, it is sometimes hard to understand why we should care about what happens in faraway and largely forgotten places like the Congo. But in our increasingly globalized world, conflicts in even distant corners of the world can create ripple effects -- from mass migrations and the spread of infectious disease, to deforestation and the depletion of other key natural resources -- that impact the current and future well-being of Americans.
Despite the difficult challenges we face here at home, Americans are a generous and compassionate people. Our values compel us to fight injustice wherever it occurs, and to reduce the suffering of innocents. The men, women, and children of the Congo have endured unimaginable hardships for more than a dozen years, and it is time for us to act. The conflict minerals provision in the just-passed Wall Street reform bill is an important first step in changing the situation in that beleaguered country.
The author is the Democratic Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He represents the 28th District of California.
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As or more importantl
Is that in the best strategic and geopolitic
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You rightly compared the Congo to WWII.
In the wake of WWII, someone brave might have written an article in the German newspaper titled, "Why We Should Care About the Jews." And I am sorry to observe that those who posted below, "No, Congressma
People need jobs today. And some find humanitari
We must care, not because globalizat
Ethical arguments like mine are never popular at the time -- but we use them in retrospect
- Davita
Los Angeles
Thank you, Congressma
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You need to get out more.
We should not care about the Congo. The days of America as an imperial power are over.
We should care about two endless wars that have no definition of winning because they exist for Cheney/Bus
We should care about the federal government sticking a gun in our ear forcing us to buy health insurance from crooked health insurance companies because of a bill written by them that you haven't read.
We should care about trillions of dollars in debt with all of our names on it going down a secret rat-canyon in the Federal Reserve which Obama's top economic advisors are scared to death to make un-secret.
We should care about the massively corrupt Minerals Management office that will end up destroying millions of lives on the Gulf.
We should care about a financial reform bill that your banking friends wrote that guarantees the survival of too-big-to
We should care about thieving congressme
I propose the following:
YOU pay for the Congo out of your bloated salary, your bloated health benefits, your massively bloated pension, and the next time you go on a junket we stick you in coach and you pay for your check-on.
The wealth of the rich countries depends on the resources of the less fortunate, and "taking care of our own" is precisely what the West tends to do when it goes out into the world and helps to set up and keep in place systems that guard its access to resources and thereby its own wealth.
If the USA and its corporatio
I suppose the lack of news about the world and how all the parts fit together help perpetuate this kind of thinking..
And doing something about conflict minerals is hardly a case of charity or generosity
EMPIRE,,,,
In this still young millennium American soldiers have also deployed in the hundreds of thousands to new bases and conflict and post-confl
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You are right: America is not Lord of the World. It is time we took care of our own.
Out of sight, out of mind.