“They took all of our belongings – our tin, our clothes, our solar panels, food. We had to carry the pillaged goods to a place in the forest. We walked for a whole day,” he said. “I worked for two months and now my family will have nothing.”

The attack last year was amid a conflict between two armed groups linked to the heritage of the local throne, he said. Just one of many cases, documented by the London-based NGO Global Witness, where armed groups around the world have financed their operations from the trade in so-called ‘conflict minerals’.

Since 2014 the European Union, which Global Witness calls a “major player” in the trade, has been working on a law aimed at getting manufacturers to stop buying those minerals that wind up in electronic devices such as mobile phones or laptops or other products such as engines or jewellery. The latter, dubbed “blood diamonds” inspired an eponymous Hollywood film.

Now locked in so-called “trilogue” talks between the European Parliament, the European Council and the European Commission, the main sticking point is whether it should be binding, as the Parliament wants, or left to industries to self-regulate, as supported by the Council and Commission. Proponents say the clock is ticking: they say when the Dutch rotating EU presidency runs out at the end of June, the legislation risks being quietly shelved.

Self-regulation, or ‘self-certification’, requires EU importers of these metals and their ores to exercise ‘due diligence’. That involves monitoring and administering their purchases and sales in line with the five steps of ‘Due Diligence Guidance’ by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

“One problem is that the Commission decided to make the regulation completely voluntary,” says Michael Gibb, conflict resource team leader for Global Witness. “The second is that the Commission’s proposal only applies to a small number of companies whereas the OECD looks at the whole supply chain.”

“The regulation would thereby ignore downstream companies importing the minerals in electronic devices, such as laptops, as well as numerous other products,” Gibb tells Equal Times.

By comparison with the original proposed regulation, Global Witness is therefore calling for more mandatory elements and for it to cover the whole supply chain.

“Covering the whole supply chain will be a more effective use of the EU’s commercial leverage as this is more likely to lead to a change in behaviour of the big refining companies, making them more responsible,” he says.

 
Responsible sourcing and legitimate trading

The main thrust of the new law is to make it easier for companies to source four particular minerals (tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold) responsibly and to encourage legitimate trading channels, especially via Africa and Latin America.

Something similar has already been done by the US through its Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. That Act introduces supply chain transparency by requiring companies listed on US stock exchanges using ‘conflict minerals’ in their production processes to declare the origin of such minerals and perform appropriate supply chain due diligence.

For example, due diligence is about buyer companies doing basic research and asking questions about the source of the minerals they buy. By way of example, they might be offered 1,000 kilos of gold from Togo. Quick research would show that Togo does not export gold on that scale. The company should then investigate further by asking the supplier more questions.

The drive for legislation followed repeated atrocities resulting from conflict minerals. Among the most notorious cases, former Liberian President Charles Taylor became the first former head of state convicted in 2012 by an international war crimes court for aiding rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone in exchange for blood diamonds during that country’s 1991-2002 civil war.

An appeals chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, based in the Netherlands, upheld his conviction the following year on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including terrorism, murder, rape and using child soldiers.

In its official position on the proposed law, the European Parliament has called for mandatory regulation that covers all companies that place the relevant minerals on the EU market for the first time. MEPs also want downstream companies – i.e. around 880,000 potentially affected EU firms that use tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold in manufacturing consumer products – to be obliged to provide information on the steps they take to identify and address risks in their supply chains for the minerals and metals concerned.

The European Council (comprising the EU’s 28 member-state governments) has also come up with its official position. Gibbs says it’s “weaker than the original Commission text in some respects” because it introduces “new and lower standards for some companies, which are below OECD due diligence standards the EU has previously pledged to uphold”.

“This could be damaging as it risks locking in a standard well below the OECD standard,” he argues.

There have so far been meetings between the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission on the Conflict Minerals Regulation in February and April. The main issues discussed included the mandatory/voluntary application of the law, company scope and OECD principles.

Other issues also covered included workability, implementation, small and medium-size enterprises or SMEs, recognition of industry schemes and the identification of conflict regions.

The latest from an EU source speaking on condition of anonymity is that “some EU member states are open to mandatory elements of the scheme,” though not a mandatory system as a whole.

“Some member states are concerned about the administrative burden on companies and that there is debate among member states about considering to make a distinction between SMEs and larger companies for the self-certification,” the source tells Equal Times.

“Things are in limbo for now. It sounds like negotiations are difficult but alive.”