Aaron Hall's blog

The Enough Project along with a coalition of human rights advocates and conflict analysis NGOs—including Eastern Congo Initiative, Humanity United, International Crisis Group, Open Society Foundations, Eastern Congo Initiative Fellow Anthony W. Gambino, Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, and Congo analyst and author Jason Stearns—released a statement yesterday expressing concern over the lack of response from the U.S. government and other donor nations in dealing with the growing crisis of legitimacy in the Congo over recent elections.  Read More »

By Aaron Hall and Bahati Jacques

This post originally appeared on African Arguments:

In recent weeks a debate has emerged over the merits of the conflict minerals provision in the Dodd-Frank Act. Critics of the legislation assert that the provision and those groups supporting it are responsible for causing damage to the people and communities of eastern Congo.  Specifically, David Aronson's New York Times op-ed ‘How congress devastated Congo’ – which argues that the US law is responsible for the suffering of eastern Congolese mining communities – is irresponsibly oversimplified.  Read More »

This post originally appeared on Global Post:

What do corrupted Congolese warlords and Washington lobbyists have in common? They’ve joined forces to become the biggest obstacle to development and stability in eastern Congo.  Read More »

A sharp divide over the resumption of diamond sales from Zimbabwe has left members of the Kimberley Process struggling to keep the process intact. Last Thursday following a week-long meeting, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, (the rotating chair of the Kimberley Process) announced that diamond exports from Zimbabwe would resume, leaving members grappling with fundamental questions about legitimacy, corruption, and credibility. At the heart of the issue is the debate over how, in the face of egregious humans rights abuses perpetrated by the Zimbabwean security apparatus, exports from the controversial Marange fields of Zimbabwe can resume, and how those exports would be monitored and overseen to ensure that human rights abuses do not continue. The Marange fields are considered one of Africa’s richest existing diamond deposits and for years have caused controversy because of reported abuses of Marange’s mining communities by Zimbabwean state authorities.  Read More »

The European Union, or E.U., is finally starting to address the link between human rights violations and the conflict mineral trade in the Congo.  While a handful of policymakers within the E.U. have voiced concern over the issue in the past year, meaningful action has yet to take place following on the efforts of the U.S. government and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.   Read More »

The primary takeaway from Rwanda’s recent announcement that it would ban the sale of Congo conflict minerals is that since the international push for mineral certification has picked up momentum, Rwanda has been angling to paint itself as the source for conflict-free minerals in the region despite its unwillingness or inability to stop the flow of Congolese minerals across its borders.   Read More »

On a recent trip to the North and South Kivu provinces of Congo, I went to great lengths to go beyond the subject material I was there to research. I wanted to ask people—both Congolese and foreign—about their lives and experiences, and about their interpretation of the past and future for the families and communities of the people of eastern Congo. For a couple of weeks I bounced around in trucks and boats between Goma and Bukavu, and the myriad of different stories and historical interpretations became overwhelming. Just when I thought I understood “the real story,” someone would come along and offer a new perspective that caused me to re-evaluate my fundamental perceptions of the region’s history.  Read More »

President Kabila ordered the lift of a six-month ban on mining in the three eastern provinces of Maniema, North Kivu, and South Kivu, effective March 10, a week from today. But the haphazard approach to addressing the conflict minerals trade has created more problems than it has solved.  Read More »

Cornell is on the verge of becoming the third university in the nation to pass a resolution aimed at making their campus conflict-free.  Read More »

This year, for the first time Apple tackled the issue of conflict minerals in its supply chain and released information regarding the presence of these minerals that goes beyond what any major electronics industry player has released thus far.  Read More »