Come Clean 4 Congo: Your Next Mobile Phone Could Change the World (For Good or Bad)

Published May 19, 2009 @ 08:52AM PT

Yesterday, a number of Change.org bloggers wrote about how donating your old cell phone to the new Hope Phones campaign could change the world by helping families in rural areas around the world achieve better access to localized health care.

Today, Humanitarian Relief blogger Michael has pointed out an important campaign designed us to remind us of the dark side of mobile phones and other electronic devices; their reliance on low cost minerals like tin, coltan (tantalum), tungsten and gold that often come directly from places like the Congo. Control over the mines for these lucrative and essential materials is one of the driving economic forces behind the continued violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

[Enough Project's] paper, "Can You Hear Congo Now? Cell Phones, Conflict Minerals, and the Worst Sexual Violence in the World," details how "conflict minerals" that are mined in the war-torn DRC are sold by rebel groups to purchase arms, and serve as a direct cause of widespread sexual violence in the war-torn country.

"The conflict in eastern DRC - the deadliest since World War II - is fuelled in significant part by a multi-million-dollar trade in minerals," the report states. "Armed groups generate an estimated 144 million dollars each year by trading four main minerals: the ores that produce the metals tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold."

Now, Enough Project and YouTube have teamed up to launch the Come Clean 4 Congo project to inspire YouTube users to create videos highlighting the link between phones and violence in Eastern Congo. The campaign is designed to inspire advocacy and activism to get electronics manufacturers to improve the transparency and responsibility with which they source materials.

Find out more about the Come Clean 4 Congo Campaign or about the Enough Project more broadly. Watch the video below for more information:

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Author

Nathaniel is the founding Director of the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern University, which works annually with hundreds of students in dozens of countries around the world through curricular programs and student project incubation.