The Illegal Exploitation of Coltan in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Africa, grade: 2,0, University of Frankfurt (Main), language: English, abstract: "No blood on my mobile phone" - This slogan published by a Belgian human rights organization as part of a famous campaign gives a glimpse on what disadvantages the increasing digitalization and globalization has on our society.1 It refers to a material which is used in almost any device of our daily life. We are talking about coltan, one of the rarest and most sought commodities in the world. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) owes hereby one of the largest mineral deposits, but due to the illegal exploitation of natural resources it is at the same time one of the most affected countries.1 The DRC is rich in various minerals, but because of years of dictatorships and wars that lasted in Congo since the beginning of the so-called First Congo War in 1996, there was not only the death of up to an estimated 5.4 million people, but also the dissolving of ordered structures and the economic system.2 In the context of rival rebel groups, government militias as well as occupying forces from neighbouring countries like Rwanda and Uganda one can also find a number of foreign companies that take advantage from the lack of structure and use it for tracking economic interests. Over the last decades a web of corruption, exploitation and trafficking developed, through which it was possible for the beneficiaries of the conflict to achieve their profit.