Cleaning Up the Bloody Guts of our Modern Machine in Congo

While the war and subsequent disease, famine, and lawlessness in the Congo remains off the radar of most Americans, a group of students at Stanford is trying to use the influence of their university as a major financial institution to take on the problem of conflict minerals.

If war once had the power to move our nation, today it is ever more an abstraction. Commercial media's dependence on advertising for revenue has pushed the brutal and violent horrors of our world further and further out of view, and in the process, we've lost track of our own complicity in conflict. This is particularly true of the sustained violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a conflict which is impacted by almost every modern American, even when we don't realize it.

In 1996, the violence that had engulfed Rwanda and Burundi had spilled over and reached a head in the Congo, igniting a war that has claimed literally millions (some estimates put it as high as over 5 million) of lives in both violence and related disease and famine. Although peace accords were signed in 2002 and elections took place in 2006, the country -- particularly the volatile eastern region -- is still ravaged by horror. Tens of thousands of people still die needlessly every month and a report released by Oxfam earlier this year found that rape has increased 17-fold in the past few years. That is beyond comprehension.

Congo is part of the tragic story of how the immense value of African resources creates the conditions for exploitation and inequality. First looted in the 1890s by the Belgian monarch Leopold for its riches in the form of rubber, today Congo is one of the world's premier spots for minerals such as coltan, wolframite and cassiterite that are essential ingredients in modern electronic devices like computers and iPods. Watch the video from the Enough Project at the bottom of this post to learn more.

Unfortunately, the Congo is so low profile -- only appearing once on the CBS evening news in the last five years, for example -- that there hasn't ever been a mass consumer movement to get electronics manufacturers to commit to purchasing conflict-free minerals. This is a major opportunity for leadership from a company like Apple, but it is easier to talk about than to enact a new company policy, and as of now, there just has been enough major demand for this sort of action.

The Stand chapter -- part of the Genocide Intervention Network -- at Stanford is trying to change that. Last Thursday, the trustees of the university considered a resolution that would compel Stanford to support shareholder advocacy about conflict minerals towards the companies that it has investments in through its endowment.

Shareholder advocacy refers to the practice of investors in a publicly traded company introducing resolutions to change company behavior at annual shareholder meetings. Its rare that small groups of shareholders can directly force the hands of company policy, but advocacy can serve as a barometer of demand from within shareholder ranks for more engagement with social justice issues.

If the Stanford trustees adopted the measure, it would be a major boon for the burgeoning movement to focus attention on conflict minerals. Not only is it one of the most well-endowed universities in the country, it is in the heart of Silicon Valley and one of the great feeders of new entrepreneurial energy and human resources to the world's most important technology companies.

Some problems can be solved by reinventing business in a new way, but many problems demand that we shift the behavior of the current crop of companies we have. I think that conflict minerals clearly falls into the latter category, and I'm glad to see more engagement around this issue.

To learn more about this issue, check out the Enough Project, or sign the petition below.

Photo credit: babasteve