BGR Support for Mineral Certification Seite 9

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7 Challenges The connection between minerals war and conflict in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa is well docu mented Reports from the UN Group of experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo DRC and repu table NGOs have demonstrated how rebel groups and renegade military units illegally tax the exploitation and trade of certain high value minerals among them gold cassiterite tin wolframite tungsten and coltan tan talum coining the term conflict minerals The profits from the illegal production and trade of con flict minerals contribute to keeping these groups armed and equipped thus giving them a reason to continue the conflict Actual fighting is currently limited largely to the Kivu regions in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo but the destabilizing effects spill out across the region Neighbouring nations including Rwanda and Uganda have been implicated in the undocumented export of minerals from the DRC resulting in a stigmatization of minerals produced in the whole region Therefore all countries in the region will be affected by the provisions of the US Dodd Frank Act see page 8 designed to keep consumer products conflict free as far as the conflict minerals mentioned above and their derivatives are concerned 1 Overview Across the region miners involved in artisanal and small scale mining ASM produce these minerals often at unregulated unsafe mine sites child labour is com mon remuneration often unfair environmental stan dards lax to non existent and mining has adverse im pacts on local communities The difficulty of regulating and controlling the informal low productivity ASM sector means governments fre quently lose out on their due share of taxation on these minerals On the other hand ASM provides a livelihood for a great number of people in rural areas of the region especially in eastern DRC where little employment alternatives exist The German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources BGR contributes to address these challenges through the development and support of ASM mineral certification on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Devel opment BMZ BGR supports local partners in Rwanda and DRC to im plement a mineral certification system and contributes to setting up a regional certification mechanism under the umbrella of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region ICGLR 6 2012 BGR Hannover 2012 BGR Hannover