Kiki mentions needing sanctions for corruption in minerals trafficking - an article in the Africa Report on 4 July shows that a bill for sanctions against corruption in minerals trafficking has been introduced:
Swiss cobalt mining giant Glencore has launched an in-house US lobbying operation amid intensifying scrutiny from Washington
www.theafricareport.com
From the article:
Pressure’s on
Meanwhile, Congress and the Joe Biden administration have been putting pressure on DRC mining operators to change their ways.
For several years, the US government has pushed the government of President
Felix Tshisekedi to revise deals with Chinese companies signed under his predecessor. And during December’s US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington, the US signed a
memorandum of understanding with the DRC and Zambia to encourage the two countries to jointly develop a supply chain for electric vehicle batteries.
US lawmakers are also getting in on the act.
Speaking at a 22 June hearing on the pending Africa budget requests from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), House Foreign Affairs Africa panel chairman John James announced that he was working on legislation pertaining to minerals in the DRC. The Michigan Republican added that he would soon be leading a congressional delegation to the DRC, Tanzania and Nigeria.
“I’m currently working on legislation relating to the DRC critical minerals sector,” James said, “specifically in creating a strategy to balance our
national security responsibilityto ensure continued access to key mineral commodities such as cobalt and lithium, with the appalling working conditions present in the DRC mining sector, and extremely opaque business and climate that exists throughout the country.”
A week later, Congressman Smith introduced his “
Countering China’s Exploitation of Strategic Metals and Minerals and Child and Forced Labour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Act.” Smith’s office said the congressman had been working on his bill since last year and held a hearing on the topic in the previous Congress.
While the bill raises concerns with China’s
reported control of 15 of the DRC’s 19 large cobalt mines, much of the attention is on child and forced labour in the country’s thousands of unregulated small and small-scale mines. Here too, China is
accused of having played a nefarious role in recent years by either importing or having Chinese firms process the bulk of artisanal production inside the DRC, according to a
20 June study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
To counter such abuses, Smith’s bill calls for sanctions – including asset blocks and visa restrictions – on foreign persons found to have facilitated child labour or forced labour in the DRC mining industry, “including any official of the government of the DRC.”
Also of interest is that a US Congress delegation will be in Kinshasa early next week