DR-CONGO: Firms Fuelling ;Conflict Minerals; Violence, Report Says

By Marina Litvinsky

WASHINGTON, Jul 21 (IPS) - Several international companies are named as helping to prolong the more than 12-year conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in a new report by the British-based group Global Witness, released Tuesday.

Titled "Faced with a gun, what can you do?", it details how many mining areas in eastern DRC are controlled by rebels and the national army, who violently exploit civilians to retain access to valuable minerals. It names international companies which buy from suppliers who trade in minerals from the warring parties.

European and Asian companies, including Bangkok-based THAISARCO, Britain-based Afrimex, and Belgium-based Trademet, have been buying minerals from the DRC that are funding armed groups and fuelling conflict, said Global Witness.

Informed by on-the-ground investigations and interviews in North and South Kivu, the report reveals that despite being on opposing sides, the national Congolese army, the Forces Arm?es de la R?publique D?mocratique du Congo (FARDC) and rebel groups, in particular the Forces Democratique de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), regularly cooperate with each other, carving up territory and occasionally sharing the spoils of illegal mining.

The FDLR use roads controlled by the FARDC, and vice versa, without difficulty. Minerals produced by the FDLR are sent out through local airports controlled by the FARDC in South Kivu.

"(The FARDC and the FDLR) don't attack each other. Where both are present, they share the spoils and both extort from the population," a human rights activist told Global Witness last year.

The unregulated nature of the mining sector in eastern DRC, combined with the breakdown of law and order and the devastation caused by the war, has meant that these groups have had unrestricted access to these minerals and have been able to establish lucrative trading networks.

"(The report) shows the extent to which the Congolese government is incapable not only of controlling the mineral-rich areas, but also of controlling its own army that is profiting from the mineral trade at expense of the state," David Sullivan, a research associate at the Enough Project, told IPS.

Paul Williams, associate professor of internaional affairs at George Washington University, agreed. "The FARDC is so poor that it cannot work as an effective military instrument," he told IPS. "Elites general condone the exploitation of the mine workers as long as they see some kickback along the route (from mines to Europe)."

Sullivan added that mine inspectors often cannot do their job because they have not been paid their salaries, or "do not have the resources to travel to mines". Once they do arrive, they are prevented from inspecting the mines with threats of violence.

"The Congolese government needs more assistance in order to be able to oversee the trade, but it is not the only actor," said Sullivan, adding that companies that continue to profit from the trade must be held accountable.

"As long as we don't change the way we go about purchasing these things economic incentives will override" the need for greater transparency, he added.

The profits armed groups make from their illegal control of the mines allow them to survive, as they pay for arms. To sustain this control, the main warring parties have carried out horrific human rights abuses, including widespread killings of unarmed civilians, rape, torture and looting, recruitment of child soldiers to fight in their ranks, and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, the report said.

"All the warring parties in the DRC are systematically using forced labour and violent extortion in mining areas," said Patrick Alley, director of Global Witness. "Despite recent political and military developments, including the apparent rapprochement between the DRC and Rwanda, violence against unarmed civilians is continuing and countless lives are lost each day."

Years of unrest have plagued the DRC. Following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of Hutus fled across the border into the DRC, as the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front conquered the country. The conflict has resulted in an estimated 5.4 million deaths over the past decade.

This link between armed groups and the illicit mineral trade was also documented by a United Nations panel of experts in December 2008.

The "conflict minerals" at the centre of the violence include cassiterite, coltan and wolframite, which are moved from the DRC, usually through Rwanda or Burundi, to East Asia where they are processed into valuable metals, like tin and tungsten, needed for electronics products.

One of the companies featured in the report is THAISARCO, the world's fifth-largest tin-producing company, owned by British metals giant, Amalgamated Metal Corporation (AMC). THAISARCO's main supplier, Congo-based Panju, sells cassiterite and coltan from mines controlled by the FDLR.

Another company is the British-based Afrimex, already found by the British government in 2008 to be in breach of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises for buying from suppliers who made payments to a rebel group. The British government has yet to take any concrete action on this information.

Global Witness wrote to 200 companies and found that most had no controls in place to stop conflict minerals entering their supply chain.

AMC denied any wrongdoing, saying that it operated under U.N. guidelines.

"Both AMC and Thaisarco have always sought to comply with the requirements and recommendations of the U.N. in respect of minerals originating in the DRC," the company said in a statement. "In accordance with this, Thaisarco purchases DRC minerals subject to a recently enhanced, formal and detailed due diligence programme which ultimately is aimed at providing transparency throughout the supply chain."

In a letter to Global Witness in January, F. Muylaert of the Belgian company Trademet said, "Your hypothesis according to which we should verify the exact origin of every kilo of exported material is inappropriate in the current context in Congo."

The report points out that comptoirs - trading houses based in Goma and Bukavu - which buy, sell and export minerals produced by or benefiting the warring parties are officially licensed and registred with the Congolese government. Foreign companies use the "legal" status of their suppliers as justification for continuing to trade with them, without verifying the exact origin of the minerals or the identity of intermediaries.

"It is not good enough for companies to say they buy only from licensed exporters, when they know full well that their middlemen buy from armed groups," argued Alley

The report said that foreign governments, including Britain and Belgium, are undermining their own development assistance and diplomatic efforts to end the 12-year conflict by failing to crack down on companies based within their borders.

Global Witness contends that the governments of Rwanda and Burundi have failed to acknowledge that these minerals are fueling conflict and have not held to account companies in their country which engage in this trade.

"The failure of governments to hold companies to account, of Burundi and Rwanda to restrict the trade across their borders, and of donors and diplomats to address explicitly the role of the mineral trade, have all contributed to the continuation of a conflict that has killed millions and displaced many more," said Alley.

SA improves border controls for World Cup

Written by defenceWeb Wednesday, 22 July 2009

South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is implementing what is being promoted as the most advanced border management solution available today, the Advance Passenger Processing (APP) system, in partnership with aviation IT specialist, SITA, as part of a final preparation for next year’s FIFA Soccer World Cup.

The value of the deal was not disclosed. A similar deployment in Kuwait in 2006 cost $37 million.

The APP system will integrate into the DHA’s R4 billion “Who am I” identity management project currently underway under the leadership of Gijima AST and will facilitate the arrival and departure of up to 500 000 football fans next year while enhancing security and reducing both administration and turnaround costs for airlines.

SITA Middle East and Africa Vice President Khodr Akil says the APP border management solution has been tried and tested in other parts of the world as well as during major global events, notably the 2000 Olympic Games.

South Africa Economy to Shrink 1.5%, World Bank Says

By Nasreen Seria

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- South Africa’s economy will probably contract 1.5 percent this year, the first drop in output in 17 years, as commodity prices plunge and exports decline, the World Bank said.

Economic growth will probably rebound to 2.6 percent in 2010, the Washington-based World Bank said in its Global Development Finance report. In March, the lender forecast 1 percent growth this year and 3.1 percent in 2010.

Recessions in the U.S., Europe and Japan have slashed demand for commodities, undermining growth in countries such as South Africa, the world’s largest producer of platinum, and Zambia, the continent’s biggest copper producer. The World Bank also cut its 2009 growth forecast for sub-Saharan Africa to 1 percent from a previous estimate of 2.4 percent.

“Output and incomes in the region have been negatively affected by falling commodity prices, falling volume demand for metal and mineral exports, and declining remittances and tourism,” the World Bank said. “The risks for the sub-Saharan Africa region are heavily tilted to the downside.”

The World Bank’s forecasts are lower than those of the International Monetary Fund, which said on April 22 that South Africa’s economy will probably contract 0.3 percent this year, while economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa will slow to 1.7 percent.

UNHCR annual report shows 42 million people uprooted worldwide

The number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide stood at 42 million at the end of last year amid a sharp slowdown in repatriation and more prolonged conflicts resulting in protracted displacement. The total includes 16 million refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people uprooted within their own countries, according to UNHCR's annual "Global Trends" report released today.

The new report says 80 percent of the world's refugees are in developing nations, as are the vast majority of internally displaced people – a population with whom the UN refugee agency is increasingly involved. Many have been uprooted for years with no end in sight.

Although the overall total of 42 million uprooted people at year's end represents a drop of about 700,000 over the previous year, new displacement in 2009 – not reflected in the annual report – has already more than offset the decline.

"In 2009, we have already seen substantial new displacements, namely in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Somalia," UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said. "While some displacements may be short-lived, others can take years and even decades to resolve. We continue to face several longer-term internal displacement situations in places like Colombia, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. Each of these conflicts has also generated refugees who flee beyond their own borders."

The report counts 29 different groups of 25,000 or more refugees in 22 nations who have been in exile for five years or longer and for whom there are no immediate solutions in sight. This means at least 5.7 million refugees are living in limbo.

France, UN warn against Madagascar military option

France and the United Nations both warned on Tuesday against military intervention to resolve Madagascar's political crisis, a day after African economic bloc the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) said such a move should not be discounted.

The international community is urging the Indian Ocean island's feuding political parties to forge a negotiated settlement following the military-backed ouster of former leader Marc Ravalomanana in March.

Political turmoil has gripped the country since the beginning of the year, hurting economic growth and prompting several donors, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States, to freeze non-emergency aid.

UN envoy Tiebile Drame said Comesa, a 19-member group of Eastern and Southern African nations, should focus its efforts on supporting the political process.

On Monday, the economic bloc called for a return to democracy in Madagascar and said military intervention to restore constitutional order could be an option.

Russia ventures back to Africa

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev embarks on a four-nation tour of Africa this week in a drive to reassert Moscow's clout in a former Soviet sphere of influence.

After a two-day visit to Egypt starting on Tuesday, Medvedev will make an ambitious foray into Nigeria, Namibia and Angola on Wednesday until Friday for talks to expand the country's economic footprint in Africa.

Medvedev's visit follows a 2006 trip to South Africa and Morocco by his mentor and predecessor Vladimir Putin, who became the first Kremlin chief to visit sub-Saharan Africa.

ZIMBABWE: EC funds bring welcome relief

JOHANNESBURG, 3 June 2009 (IRIN) - The European Commission (EC) has allocated US$11.3 million in humanitarian aid to help people in Zimbabwe affected by the breakdown of essential health and water services.

"The new unity government has to address numerous challenges to place Zimbabwe on the path to recovery. The country ... is facing an enduring humanitarian crisis, compounded by the collapse of basic social services," Olli Rehn, the EC's Acting Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said in a statement on 2 June.

The funds have been earmarked for medicines and medical supplies, water treatment equipment, and spare parts to upgrade water infrastructure; projects are to be implemented by non-governmental relief organizations, UN agencies and the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement.

Health system in crisis

As a result of Zimbabwe's protracted socioeconomic crisis, access to health services and safe water has sharply deteriorated, "as demonstrated by the largest cholera epidemic ever recorded in Africa," the statement noted.

Life expectancy has been dropping, maternal mortality has dramatically increased and high rates of HIV infection prevail. "It is our duty to bring timely and consistent support to assist ... at this critical juncture," Rehn said. The EU is the biggest donor to Zimbabwe's public health sector, providing at least 60 percent of essential drugs available.