Hi again.  Here is the post from this weekend. I see a big connection with fair trade here and the complexity in creating monitored supply chains.

As a side note, if you were part of the voluntourism discussion (or not) you would likely be interested in this cool website about the orphanage industry that Anna Hopkins sent us.

“Blood Minerals”

Background

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a country that has had military conflict since the late 90′s when wars spilled over from neighboring nations Uganda and Rwanda.  The country also has a very large low-tech mining industry. Approximately 10 million citizens are economically dependent on the mineral industry.

If one remembers a few years back, the movie Blood Diamond was about how military groups steal diamonds from mines and sell them to fund the wars.  Awareness of this issue resulted in the Kimberly Process for diamond certification.

The same thing happens with minerals such as tin, tungsten, gold and tantalum.  They are either stolen or illegally taxed. These minerals are used in the manufacture of many consumer goods, especially electronics, so the question was raised “Are your cellphones funding a war?”

In the eastern DRC where most of the military groups and mining takes place, it is estimated about half the mines are controlled by such groups. In 2008 it was estimated they extorted $140-225 million.

Where it gets interesting

Many human rights groups started to raise awareness that consumer electronics could contain materials that directly fund war.  The campaign has been so effective in North America that a new regulation is proposed in the states that will require companies to indicate whether materials are conflict-free.

Because of this pressure and the impending regulation, almost all companies have pulled out of the DRC and started looking elsewhere (except chinese companies according to Globe). This means a huge drop in demand and lower incomes for many miners.  Many exporters and businesses like smelters have left the country.

There is currently no method for certifying minerals as conflict free.  Canadian orginization PAC (http://www.partnershipafricacanada.org/about/index.html) is working to develop a system but complexities are everywhere.

Further, its likely that minerals stolen will make it to markets outside the Congo and into your products.  They could be sold to scrap dealers for example.

Some criticise the regulation and human rights work because it has had a negative impact on many Congolese who mine in areas not effected by war.

The certification group says it needs trade to test its methods but with the current situation, there are no companies trading, so they have no way to test it.

Resources

Report by a business group containing many useful statistics.

Globe and Mail article. 

Wiki about the wars in the DRC. 

Some brief stats about the war.

So there was some mess-ups with my.ewb the last two weeks, and I lost both articles.  I rewrote both of them so today is a double-digest (just like archie comics)!  Here is the one from two weekends ago.

Occupy Wallstreet

Occupy Wallstreet (OWS) is a protest movement that started mid-September and continues in downtown New York, as well as many international cities.

The movement started because many people in the US are dissatisfied with bank bail-outs, low wages, low taxes for the extremely rich 1%, and the power that lobbyists have in American politics.

The movement was first suggested in the Canadian magazine Adbusters, however it has no formal leadership. This is good in that decisions are made completely democratically and locally on site, but bad because a lack of organization and clear goals at the outset was a major source of criticism.

It is characterized by being a movement that encompasses people from almost every demographic. It has also introduced a lot of people who are new to protesting.

The Occupy movement has had many noteworthy moments, including:

• Police officers luring protestors onto a bridge, then arresting them for blocking the road.
• Protestors filling a bank to cancel accounts, and protesting, resulting in their arrest.
• Violent protests in Rome.  Financial situations in Europe, especially Italy and Greece are very bad for low income families.
• The NYPD refusing an order from Mayor Bloomber to arrest the protesters en masse, citing that the protests currently cause no threat and performing the arrests would be impossible given the number of people.

Apart from a couple incidences however, the protests in North America and internationally have been non-violent.

Last weekend the Occupy Regina Movement started.  The tents were still there last I checked. You can check out their facebook page.

Acumen Fund is an organization that works to eliminate poverty and shares a lot of values with EWB.

10 Things We’ve Learned to be True is a great article about the approaches to development that Acumen Fund has found leads to success.  I really recommend you take a couple minutes to read it, the pictures are great too.

The link is short since you can skim through each page but I have copy and pasted the full article below for those of you that like reading.

For a great contrast, watch the World Bank’s 2009 Development report. You can see how differently they view and even define ‘development’. Can you spot some ways that their thinking and approaches differ from EWB and the article I linked?

Cheers,

Jeremy Lane

Foreword

Hey everyone.  Like we discussed in our first meeting, this year I plan to start a series of weekly emails, with the goal of learning about development related issues external to EWB.

The emails will typically be short summaries of a topic, with links to further resources at the bottom.

I encourage everyone to take 10 minutes and actually READ these emails.

If you have a suggestion for future topics or want to write one yourself, let me know.

Finally, discussion on this thread is encouraged!

A Brief Explanation of the Famine in Somalia

Here is a map detailing the situation in Somalia using the IPC scale.  The dark area is places where >20% of households completely lack food and death rates exceed 2/10k people per day (this was based on projections made back in July).

Death rates are esitmated to be over 7.4/10k now.

• The region has not had proper rainy seasons in the past two years. This means terrible crops, increased food prices, and dying cattle.  The UN declared it a famine in July.
• An Islamic militant group called Al-Shabaab, which started attempting to overthrow the Somalian government in 2009, currently controls the dark red region in the above map.  Because of this, the UN food aide pulled out in 2010. The militants control airfields in the region, preventing delivery of aid.
• Al-Shabaab wont allow foreign aid from the UN and other groups because they accuse them of being politically motivated, spies, or using food as an excuse to teach Christianity.

• Almost 1 million refugees have fled to camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. Camps are severly overcrowded and the two countries are already suffering famine themselves. Many refugees die of hunger on their way to Kenya. The trip is 10-20 days on foot.

• The Kenyan famine is so bad already that schools have shut down because the children are starving.

• US has pledged $5Mil to direct aid, compared to IKEA (yes, the furniture company) and Saudi Arabia which have both contributed ~$60Mil and the African Union which has devoted $300Mil.

Because many refugees are women and children, rates of abuse and rape are high in the outlying area of camps like Dadaab which currently has >400k people (hard to police).  This leads to AIDS infections etc.

Obviously, Al-Shabaab is the main reason that this situation is so complicated. Countries are hesitant to send aid that will likely be used/stolen by the militants.

Further Reading

Wikipedia article

Back To Dabaab (Al-jazeera article)