New rules to curb trade in smuggled precious minerals
Men work in a gold mine in Chudja, near Bunia, north eastern Congo. The conflict in the country has been linked to a struggle to control its rich mineral resources. AFP
East and Central African states have agreed to issue a regional export certificate to dealers in precious minerals by the end of the year to avert conflicts fuelled by illegal exploitation. The move is a follow-up on a joint protocol signed by seven regional heads of state including President Kibaki in Lusaka, Zambia, last December, which had sought to address regional conflicts fuelled by minerals.
The certificate would enable governments to track all minerals produced in their countries while streamlining the trade to ensure that proceeds are enjoyed by local communities.
Ambassadeur Liberata Mulamula, the executive secretary at the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region said that all minerals produced in the region will require certification before they are exported.
“We are working on a December deadline for certification on all minerals leaving the region showing proceeds have not been used to fuel conflicts in the region,” Ms Mulamula told a conference hosting regional delegates on illegal exploitation of natural resources.
She added that availability of precious minerals in the region including gold and diamond had propagated conflicts, and risked tearing the countries since they had been exchanged for arms, in what is widely referred to as mineral curses.
A mineral (resource) curse owing to illegal exploitation of gold and coltan is solely to blame for the 15 years that the Democratic Republic of Congo has been in a war, which has cost millions of lives, and exposed its citizens more to poverty and human rights abuses.
Rwanda and Burundi, on the other hand are just recovering from similar conflicts, while the breakaway Southern Sudan is yet to agree on the resource sharing from the oil-rich Abyei region with the Khartoum.
Ms Mulamula said that the international community including the US, China and Europe had made it a requirement that all firms dealing in precious minerals are able to trace the origin of their minerals beginning January 2012.
Already, the US has passed regulations called the Dodd Frank law which require companies that use any of these four minerals including gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten, to track the supply chain, to ensure they are conflict free.
Information PS Bitange Ndemo said that the move would also help the country to track its minerals, especially after years of illegal exportation of “tonnes of gold” from Transmara County while neither the government nor the community gained from its proceeds.
“It will enable Kenya to benefit from the billions of Shillings worth of gold being exploited illegally by unscrupulous dealers in the pretext of taking the samples for testing abroad,” said Dr Ndemo.
He added: “The government knows that we have enough deposits of precious minerals like gold and iron to support commercial exploitation.”
Dr Ndemo said the blood diamond scenario witnessed in Sierra Leone would easily be replicated in Kenya and the other regional countries should the governments not act to eliminate channels of illicit mineral trade.
Blood diamond is widely used to describe the decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone propagated by the illegal trade in the precious mineral.
Foreign assistant minister Richard Onyonka said that Kenya has been a transit point for the minerals, thus fuelling the conflicts. “The small arms entering the country are directly linked to the civil unrest in the neighbouring countries where only a few people are benefiting from the exploitation of natural resources,” said Mr Onyonka.
