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This new report assesses efforts within the private and non‐profit sectors to help ensure minerals from Eastern Democratic Republic ofthe Congo (DRC) benefit the populationrather than fund armed groups; it furthers the policy debate on how to promote legal mineral trade in Eastern DRC (EDRC) through professionalisation, formalisation and increased transparency. The authors suggest policies aimed to increase the implementability and effectiveness of existing and proposed efforts to better understand the origin of minerals, reducecorruption and increase fiscal benefit to the DRC. By examining the Congolese Government’s and internationally driven approaches to regulating the trade, the authors assess likely outcomes in the challenging implementation environment in EDRC and argue that sustainable implementation requires larger economic and security sector reform efforts and must be compatible with the prevalent political and economic incentive structures of the mineral trade’s stakeholders. Looking to the short and medium term, the authors provide a set of policy proposals to realign these incentive structures to support a more developmentally effective trade that benefits the Congolese people. The report reveals the necessity of leadership from the Congolese Government as well as the need for co‐ordination and consolidation of different conceptual approaches as well as political and financial support from the international community. In particular the authors argue for the implementation of a transparency process at the export stage, where the Congolese Government already taxes a significant proportion of the mineral trade.

A report released September 7th by the multi-donor Communities and Small Scale Mining initiative, the Crisis States Research Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE), and the Crisis Research Group at Ghent University, challenges recent suggestions that mineral trading in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the main cause of the ongoing conflict. Rather, the primary reason for insecurity in the Eastern DRC is the inability of the Congolese state to control the monopoly of violence and protect its citizens. The widely reported military predation on the minerals trade is another symptom of insecurity and thus intervening in the trade is not enough to solve the crisis.

Banning or disrupting the regional trade in minerals from Eastern DR Congo will put up to one million livelihoods at risk and perpetuate insecurity. Current calls for a ban or disruption of trade in cassiterite, coltan, and wolframite from the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), arguing that such measures have the potential to wreck the livelihoods of up to one million people regionally and would perpetuate insecurity in Eastern DR Congo. The report, based on research funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, The London School of Economics and Political Science’s Crisis States Research Centre and the Conflict Research Group at Ghent University, urges policy makers, the private sector and other stakeholders to commit to reforming the existing trade in minerals from DR Congo instead of banning or disrupting it. The report, researched and written by Nicholas Garrett and Harrison Mitchell of Resource Consulting Services, suggests that military gain from the trade in Eastern DR Congo’s minerals, which generated at least 4m US$ to the Congolese state in tax revenue in 2008, is not the primary cause of insecurity and violence in North Kivu. Though the report acknowledges deep-seated problems with the trade, it goes further and suggests that, in contrast to current policy approaches, security and trade issues should be addressed separately as trade-based solutions to security issues, such as sanctions, are likely to have little effect on the perpetuation of the conflict.

Transfair USA, with funding from the Tiffany Foundation, commissioned the present study to assess the feasibility and desirability of developing a Fair Trade Standard and Certification system for diamonds. This is born of momentum in the diamond industry to address not just the issue of conflict diamonds, but development issues too. The goal of Fair Trade is to ‘empower farmers and workers to lift themselves out of poverty by investing in their farms and communities, protecting the environment, and developing the business skills necessary to compete in the global marketplace’. Fair Trade Principles include a fair price, fair labour conditions, direct trade, democratic and transparent organisations, community development and environmental sustainability. The report’s aim is to assess whether and how Fair Trade certification could deliver on this goal and these principles within the diamond industry. (See also www.transfairusa.org)

This research report explores synergies and scope for collaboration between the Federal Government of Germany's "Certified Trading Chains in Mineral Production" (CTC) project and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (the EITI). The report highlights where the these two initiatives - started with the aim to increase transparency in the extractive industries - overlap. It maps out how both initiatives could materialize effectiveness and efficiency increases, if they took advantage of these synergies. The report was written by Nicholas Garrett and commissioned by the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources.

Nicholas Garrett has written this report commissioned by the multi-donor Communities and Small-scale Mining Secretariat based at the World Bank. The report details the production and trade in cassiterite (tin ore) in conflict torn Eastern Democratic Republic ofthe Congo and their implications for poverty reduction and security in the region. The study finds that armed groups continue to be directly involved in tin mining in North Kivu, but warns that the emphasis on the military dimension of the mining sector diverts attention away from the other underlying opportunities and pathologies in the regional minerals sector, which have to be addressed for buoyant tin prices to help lift the population of North Kivu out of poverty, and for the tin trade to become a driver of peace.

This 2007 study includes a preliminary facts only case study written by Nicholas Garrett for DFID's 'Trading for Peace' research project on the political economy of cassiterite exploitation and trade flows in North Kivu. Commissioned by UNECA/INICA and published on the DFID website.

This 2007 preliminary research report written by Nicholas Garrett explores the politico-economic challenges and opportunities for the EITI to contribute to transparent revenue flows in the DRC’s artisanal and small scale mining sector. The report is published on the EITI website.