Confronting the ‘Blood Money’ of Conflict Minerals

If you’ve texted, chatted, computed, flown, opened a fridge or put on jewelry today, chances are good you’ve come in contact with one of the “conflict minerals”—tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold—used to fund the bloody 18-year-old war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The war has killed an estimated 5 million people since the turn of the century and is characterized by the worst kinds of human rights abuses, rape as a weapon and the recruitment of child soldiers.