In 2001, the World Bank committed itself to reforming Gécamines, the decrepit Congolese state-owned mining company. Workers laid off because of the privatization of Gécamines were supposed to receive training as a part of this reform. The Bank’s second important goal was drawing up a plan that would rebuild the mines to benefit the Congolese state. Instead, the transitional government sold off most of Gécamines and its plants to private interests, despite recommendations by the consultants the World Bank had hired.21 The World Bank, which was supposed to be scrutinizing the mining sector and rebuilding Gécamines, thus allowed foreign interests to strip Congo of what was once its most important source of revenue.22
The UN Panel of Experts and the OECD Guidelines
Altho the misery that engulfed Congo from 1996 to 2004 caused little outcry among Western nations, the UN Security Council, beginning in 2000, sought to address the underlying causes for the violence. It set up a Panel of Experts that issued a series of reports over the next three years describing how networks of high-level politicians, military officers, and businesspeople from Congo and surrounding countries collaborated with armed groups to gain control over Congo’s resources. The panel noted that the militias and warlord armies then used these resources to buy weapons that fueled the war.
As their reference point, the Panel of Experts used the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) “Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.” Established in 1976, these guidelines were intended to facilitate trade and define what constitutes responsible corporate behavior.23 Governments adhering to the guidelines set up “National Contact Points” (NCPs) whom they charged with promoting the guidelines and solving problems that might arise when corporations did not adhere to them.
Based on the Panel of Experts’ October 2002 report, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) put out its own report in 2004, noting the violations of the OECD guidelines committed by corporations in Congo that are shown in Table 1. (Not reproduced herein, see Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), Unanswered Questions: Companies, Conflict and the Democratic Republic of Congo: Executive Summary, report, April 2004, p.2, www.raid-uk.org/docs/UN_Panel_DRC/Unanswered_Questions_Full.pdf)
The Panel’s 2002 report listed 85 multinational companies that, it charged, had profited from the war in Congo, including six US companies. With the exception of the Belgian Senate, governments in the countries where these corporations were based made little attempt to hold the corporations accountable for the contributions they had allegedly made to the violence in Congo. Indeed, in most cases, it appears the reports caused he opposite to happen. Some of the companies lobbied their governments and the Security Council to have their names removed from the Panel’s list of culprits.24
The process thru which companies interacted with their governments to get their names off the Panel’s list lacked transparency. One member of the panel noted that he had no direct knowledge of which of the 85 companies listed had insisted that their governments intervene on their behalf. However, of five Canadian companies that appeared on the list and then were removed, he said, “It seem only to be expected that one or more of them contacted Foreign Affairs, Marc Brault in particular, who was Canada’s envoy to the Great Lakes Region at the time.25 First Quantum Minerals, a Canadian company, told various news outlets that it was pushing for a “full retraction.”26
Appendices to documents from the 2005 annual meeting of the National Contact Points provide an insight into the responses of two UK companies to the UN Panel of Experts’ report and the UK NCP’s intervention. The diamond company, DeBeers claimed that the Panel offered no details to back up its allegations, despite requests for this information from the company in 2002 and 2003. The UK NCP wrote, “In the circumstances and on the basis of the information provided, the UK NCP concludes that the allegations made by the UN Expert Panel against De Beers are unsubstantiated.” The NCP also ended up sharing the view of the Avient Corporation that its aviation business operations in Congo had been legitimate.27
In the face of protests by the corporatocracy, the UN Security Council recommended a six-month renewal of the Panel’s mandate in its Resolution 1457 of January 23, 2003. The resolution stipulated that the extension was intended to “verify, reinforce and, where necessary, update the Panel’s finding and/or clear parties named in the Panel’s previous reports with a view to adjusting accordingly the lists attached to these reports.”28
The Panel of Experts’ fourth and final report in October 2003 concluded that no further investigation was required into the activities of most of the corporations it had cited in the previous reports. Many of the corporations that had protested their appearance on the list were moved into an ambiguous “resolved” category. According to the Panel, “resolved” indicated that the company had acknowledged inappropriate behavior and had proposed or taken remedial action; or had ceased trading with unethical Congolese partners; or had initially shown lack of transparency, which led the Panel to find its ethical conduct suspect, but had later shown that it had not participated in unethical ventures; or had been working in Congo many years before 1998; or had done nothing unethical even tho it had been working in conflict zones; or had only a tangential connection to the pillage.
The 2003 report did not explain precisely into which “resolved” category each company fell. Thus, theoretically, a company that had knowingly bought coltan mined from Rwandan military-controlled slave labor and then stopped had the same culpability as a company that had behaved more or less ethically but had not initially provided records to prove that its conduct was above-board… Altho the 2003 report clearly stated that resolution should not be interpreted as absolution, most corporations on the list and their governments claimed that it had absolved them.29
After the UN Panel of Experts charged in 2002 that Western corporations were complicit in pillaging Congo’s resources, US Ambassador Richard S. Williamson (Alternative Representative for Special Political Affairs to the UN) told the UN Security Council that the “United States Government will look into the allegations against these [American] companies and take appropriate measurers.” However, Friends of the Earth (FoE), which had been following up on the Panel’s allegations against American companies, noted in October 2003 that “to date, the Bush administration has placed a greater emphasis on exonerating US companies than on undertaking a meaningful examination into how US companies might have contributed to the conflict in [Congo] via supply chains.30
Because the American government did not take appropriate action regarding the behavior of US corporations listed in the Panel of Experts’ report, Friends of the Earth and the UK-based group Rights and Accountability in Development filed a complaint with the State Department on August 4, 2004, against Cabot Corporation, Eagle Wings Resources International (EWRI), and OM Group, Inc.
Boston-based Cabot allegedly purchased coltan mined in Congo during the war. Cabot denied these allegations, but a report by the Belgian Senate confirmed that EWRI (a subsidiary of Trinitech Holdings) had a long-term contract to supply Cabot with coltan. The Panel asserted that EWRI received privileged access to coltan sites and captive labor because of its close ties to the Rwandan military. Ohio-based OM Group’s joint relationship with a Belgian national, George Forrest, made its activities suspect. The Panel had specifically designated Forrest in its 2001 report as having profited from the violence in eastern Congo. The Panel accused his company, Groupement pour le Traitement des Scories due Terril due Lubumbashi, Ltd. (GTL) of deliberately ignoring technical agreements that provided for the construction of two electric-powered refineries and a converter for germanium processing in Congo, to be built next to existing stockpiles of cobalt and copper. Instead, semi-processed ore from the mine was shipped to OM Group’s processing facility in Finland, thereby depriving the state mining company, Gécamines, of revenue.31
Wesley S. Scholz, the National Contact Point for the United States, declined to investigate the companies further, citing the Panel’s conclusion in its October 2003 report that the issues involving the US companies were resolved. However, in January 2005, he notified the three companies that FoE and RAID still had issues they wished to discuss, and he offered to facilitate an informal dialogue between the two organizations and the corporations. His official position, however, was that “the real focus of the Guidelines is not to focus on past behaviors, but to try and improve future behavior. We do not sit in judgment and conclude whether companies met their obligations under the Guidelines. Making judgments is about past behavior and saying you did something wrong.” When RAID contacted Scholz in September 2005 to follow up, he said that the companies had confirmed they received his letter but had not responded.32
The US was not alone it its laissez-faire attitude to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. Instead of addressing the substance of the Panel’s allegations, several governments questioned whether a UN-appointed panel could even allege violations of the OECD Guidelines and whether the guidelines applied to companies’ suppliers.
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