Advocacy group Global Witness urges mobile phone manufacturers to audit supply chains for "blood minerals" fuelling conflict in DRCongo.

In an announcement timed to coincide with the opening of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, corruption and conflict watchdog Global Witness has drawn attention again to the role played by metals used in electronics to fund violence against civilians in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The armed groups fighting in the east of the country finance themselves by trading high-value minerals that are then processed to obtain metals - including tin, tantalum, cassiterite and coltan - used in mobile phones, laptops and other electronics. The embedded video from 2006 by the Pulitzer Center, "Congo's Bloody Coltan", is a quick glimpse at coltan's role in Congo's civil war.

According to the December 2008 report prepared by the UN Group of Experts assigned to monitor the UN arms embargo on DRC, Thailand Smelting and Refining Co (Thaisarco) - the world’s fifth largest tin-processing company - buys ore from an exporter supplied by mines controlled by the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR). The FDLR is a militia known to commit grave human rights violations against civilians.

Thaisarco is owned by British metals giant Amalgamated Metal Corporation (AMC) Group.

The link between mobile phones and civil war finance has been known for years. Mobile phone manufacturers used to respond that there was nothing they could do except take what their suppliers told them as true.

Now Global Witness is clearly adopting the same strategy they used to create the business and political will to do something about the so-called "blood diamonds" also involved in financing violence and human rights abuses in the DRC.

By creating broad awareness among consumers of the murder, torture and rape associated with the DRC-sourced materials in mobile phones, consumer electronic and computer manufacturers are likely to heed the call, repeated today by Annie Dunnebacke of Global Witness, “to undertake checks all the way up their supply chains to make sure they are not buying from mines controlled by militias and military units.”

While some mobile phone manufacturers have already responded to Global Witness' call to act by pledging to tighten supply chain audit, the mobile phone industry as a whole so far lacks the kind of coordinated assurance measures that can guarantee "conflict-free" phones.

In the diamond sector, concerns led to the establishment of the Kimberley Process certification scheme.

Global Witness clearly hopes that manufacturers at the Mobile World Congress will get together and announce something similarly robust.

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