{"id":37044,"date":"2024-09-16T12:12:09","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T10:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipisresearch.be\/?post_type=weekly-briefing&p=37044"},"modified":"2025-09-17T22:11:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T20:11:25","slug":"revisiting-responsible-sourcing-lessons-from-the-democratic-republic-of-congo","status":"publish","type":"weekly-briefing","link":"https:\/\/ipisresearch.be\/fr\/weekly-briefing\/revisiting-responsible-sourcing-lessons-from-the-democratic-republic-of-congo\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisiting responsible sourcing: Lessons from the Democratic Republic of Congo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Thirteen years ago, in May 2011, IPIS participated in the\u00a0very first meeting in Paris<\/a>\u00a0on implementing the newly adopted\u00a0OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas<\/a>. At this relatively small gathering \u2013 organized by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), the OECD and the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) \u2013 participants focused on how to integrate the guidance\u2019s recommendations to responsibly source 3TG (tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold) minerals from central Africa. Seventeen editions later, the\u00a0OECD Forum on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains<\/a>\u00a0has evolved into an established event attracting thousands of delegates from industry, governments, and civil society. Participants discuss a broad array of topics including illicit trade, conflict, human rights, social and environmental impact, women\u2019s rights, etc.; covering minerals from gold to lithium; and spanning regions from the Congolese rainforest to the Amazon, thereby expanding the focus to the energy transition and beyond conflict-affected areas. Thousands of professionals worldwide are now engaged in the responsible minerals ecosystem.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite this expansion, so far responsible sourcing efforts have only had\u00a0limited success<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0artisanal mining regions of eastern DRC<\/a>. It gives the impression that\u00a0the impact of responsible sourcing initiatives on conflict and well-being in places where the minerals are extracted is dismissed in current discussions<\/strong>. With the energy transition amplifying the set and scope of challenges, the responsible minerals community and their meetings are only set to grow. This presents an opportune moment to share some of the findings and lessons learned from the past decade, in order to properly inform this wider scope and their initiatives about challenges and risks with regard to the implementation of due diligence and responsible sourcing efforts more broadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Understanding the origins of responsible sourcing efforts<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The OECD guidance encourages companies to conduct mineral supply chain due diligence, to ensure they respect human rights, avoid contributing to conflict, and support peace and development. Over the past decade, this voluntary guidance has gained traction through industry efforts and government regulations.\u00a0\u00a0To understand its origins, we need to go back to the early 2000s, when minerals linked to tech products were perceived as sources of conflict in Africa, and especially in eastern DRC. Western policymakers, pressured by activist campaigns, began regulating companies within their jurisdictions to eliminate\u00a0so-called \u201cconflict minerals\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0from their supply chains, aiming to maintain consumer confidence. The\u00a0rationale<\/a>\u00a0was that minerals finance armed groups, which fuels and perpetuates conflicts.\u00a0\u00a0As a result, the DRC government made implementation of the guidance mandatory (2011); the US and EU enacted ‘conflict minerals’ laws: the Dodd-Frank Act, Section 1502 in the US (2010); the EU’s Conflict Minerals Regulation followed seven years later.\u00a0Driven by these campaigns, laws, and guidelines, eastern DRC became a testing ground for responsible sourcing efforts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past 15 years, governments, international organizations, civil society actors and industry have launched numerous initiatives aiming to improve mineral sourcing practices in eastern DRC. These include traceability mechanisms to define the origin of bags of minerals, due diligence initiatives that oblige companies to assess the risks (such as child labor and supporting armed groups) along their mineral supply chains, and certification mechanisms that certify that the exploitation of mineral exports have respected a set of minimum standards. Some of the main initiatives include: the International Tin Supply Chain Initiative (ITSCI), which has been established by the International Tin Association (ITA) and represents the largest traceability program for 3T mines; the ICGLR\u2019s Regional Certification Mechanism; and a range of other notable initiatives from the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), IMPACT, Tetra Tech, and the RCS Better Sourcing Program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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However, these efforts have had hardly any success in achieving sustainability and scalability<\/strong>. It is roughly estimated that about\u00a098% of artisanal gold<\/a>\u00a0– the most important mineral in eastern DRC with 85% of miners working in gold\u00a0extraction – is\u00a0smuggled out of eastern DRC, with much of it ending up in the\u00a0United Arab Emirates<\/a>, often via commercial flights from neighboring countries.\u00a0\u00a0The \u2018three Ts\u2019 (tin, tantalum and tungsten which are derivatives of cassiterite, coltan, and wolframite, respectively) have been the object of considerably more responsible sourcing efforts than gold. While some successes in 3T have been achieved,\u00a0\u00a0IPIS\u2019 field research<\/a>\u00a0in artisanal mining regions of eastern DRC has revealed numerous issues, such as inaccurate tagging practices, ‘contamination’ of supply chains that are supposed to be monitored with minerals from other mines, a lack of appropriation by DRC stakeholders, and\u00a0the impact on local sustainable development and conflict is limited<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Underlying challenges for responsible sourcing efforts\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The minimal success of these efforts cannot be attributed solely to implementation challenges of individual initiatives. A recurring issue is their failure to address the underlying conditions in the DRC, including widespread poverty, insecurity, working conditions, the informal economy and governance issues (e.g. corruption).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the Dodd-Frank Act was promulgated in 2010, many international traders\u00a0stopped sourcing minerals<\/strong>\u00a0directly from the DRC, affecting the livelihood of around 2 million people, including miners and their dependent communities. While the mineral trade did gradually revive, miners\u2019 revenue does not appear to have meaningfully increased, and\u00a0miners claim<\/a>\u00a0responsible sourcing efforts have not brought them additional revenues. An IPIS study found that mining, while a crucial income source, remains insufficient to\u00a0meet miner’s basic needs<\/a>. Another IPIS\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0concluded that child labor remains prevalent, similar to conditions in non-ITSCI mines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the contrary, increased regulation and responsible sourcing initiatives created\u00a0additional barriers to access resources<\/a>, risking nurturing\u00a0socio-economic inequality,\u00a0<\/strong>such as higher costs, more administrative requirements, limiting artisanal mining to designated zones, and top-down implementation of obligations to, for instance, work within cooperatives. In the case of ITSCI for example,\u00a0at least 80% of the program costs<\/a>\u00a0are passed down the supply chain to the artisanal miners, through export levies and fees.\u00a0As a result, miners often have little incentive to comply with formal sector regulations.\u00a0<\/strong>Moreover, mining reform and responsible sourcing have been particularly\u00a0instrumental to local elites<\/a>, further weakening ordinary artisanal miners\u2019 positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Canadian NGO IMPACT, which has run the Just Gold sourcing project for eight years in eastern DRC, considered that without\u00a0immediate rewards for artisanal miners<\/a>, the future of responsible gold is unpromising. Moreover, they claim that legal gold production and trade are not commercially viable under the current market conditions.\u00a0Legal traders struggle to compete with prices from the informal market, a problem exacerbated by the\u00a0ineffective taxation system<\/a>\u00a0within the gold sector.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This leads to the next issue: a broad range of\u00a0governance challenges<\/strong>\u00a0undermine the effectiveness of responsible sourcing efforts. The informal sector is omnipresent and highly organized in eastern DRC, supported by a vast network of actors and institutions that operate\u00a0between the legal and informal spheres<\/a>. In this context, the government struggles to implement the country\u2019s mining legislation, and to regulate the artisanal mining sector. Additionally, technical services of the ministry \u2013 on which traceability schemes rely – have limited capacity to exercise their mandate: they have limited means, their agents are often not regularly paid, and people often complain about the misbehavior of these agents.\u00a0Finally, there is widespread distrust among local mining communities of the state services, and the government more generally, due to the lack of support that these services provide. This reality has left thousands of artisanal mines in the DRC de facto illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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