The war and genocide in Sudan continues to unfold in devastating ways. The occupation of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo by Rwanda-backed M23 rebels persists, even with initial signs of detente. Past crises in South Sudan, Ethiopia, and parts of West Africa appear to be re-emerging, and the role of cartels across Latin America continues to both expand and take center stage in the U.S. policy world. And there is one common theme across all these dynamics: the minerals trade. It is the engine of growth and the near-obsession of the Trump administration, as exemplified by the recent DRC-Rwanda deal and the U.S.-Ukraine minerals accord, both within a week. And the minerals trade continues to provide funding and fuel for these conflicts, in one form or another.
Sadly, many of today’s leaders in government and industry continue to resist full transparency and accountability. After more than two decades of using sanctions and anti-money laundering tools, and 15 years of the that was set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the world still has not made sufficient progress in protecting these supply chains from illicit channels and benefiting the people in the countries where they come out of the ground. A remarkable new investigation from the Global Investigative Journalism Network is just the latest example showing how the illegal trade works from South America and the relatively easy way that due diligence and other mechanisms can be circumvented, including from heavily-sanctioned countries like Venezuela, just as SwissAid documented at a broader level related to sub-Saharan Africa in 2024.
And the world will never accomplish that goal of ensuring resources benefit communities all along the supply chain as long as the tools that government and industry use remain essentially separate and distinct, even in the light of reporting such as those above from civil society and the media. Having wrestled with these issues in and out of government over two decades, I have to conclude that:
(a) governments usually don’t know who enough of the bad actors are, and industry is not encouraged to share that information, and
(b) industry often would like to engage more deeply and report more openly on these issues but does not have specific direction or safe harbor from government (or civil society) to do so.
As a result, governments take sporadic actions and some in industry do what they can, but most actors across the board simply look the other way when confronted with hard questions because of the emphasis on process and auditing over decision-making and change. All the while, supply chains carry on, decisions are made daily to keep purchasing minerals and refined products in the face of what should be significant flags, and while many people in producing and refining countries do earn livings and some of the countries develop, far too many individuals and economies continue to suffer.
The Successes
Certainly the effort to promote the concept of due diligence and transparency in the minerals supply chain has been a success. Twenty years ago, very few such systems were in place. Multi-stakeholder initiatives like the Kimberley Process, Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and Voluntary Principles had all just come online, but each was focused on a specific subset of issues — rebel movements, security forces, payments, etc. — rather than taking a holistic approach to supply chains.
With the adoption of Dodd-Frank Section 1502 by the United States in July 2010 in response to the conflicts in the DRC at the time, the effort by the OECD to develop an approach to minerals supply chains was pushed into overdrive. And it succeeded when in 2011 the OECD adopted its Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains for Minerals from Conflict Affected and High Risk Areas (OECD Guidance). Over time, the OECD Guidance succeeded in becoming a baseline for what companies and industry sectors should do and what they should consider in terms of establishing due diligence systems for evaluating and organizing their supply chains.
The OECD has maintained its status as the center of the due diligence world, with an annual forum held every spring — the next one is set to begin on Monday, May 5 — that now brings upwards of 1,000 attendees from across the globe and all sectors to discuss the key challenges and issues. The OECD has also pushed to ensure the forum and its work includes the voices of producers from Africa and Latin America, refineries/smelters in China and the United Arab Emirates, and other non-OECD countries that are essential to the functioning of minerals supply chains.
The Key Questions
In recent years, though, the key questions on the minds of many in the policy world and in industry has been why has there not been more progress? Why are so many supply chains still connected to conflict and other abuses? What comes next? Especially after the Government Accountability Office in the United States declared in 2024 that Dodd Frank 1502 did not succeed in breaking the link between minerals and conflict in Eastern DRC (and may have even exacerbated it, to a degree), companies across all sectors are asking why not and what more can they do.
And in a world where the future of concepts such as environmental, social, and governance principles (ESG), “responsible” business, and related standards is at best uncertain, many companies are asking themselves why they are spending money and risking their reputations on these efforts? Why should they care more than governments appear to care about the role that gold or cobalt or tantalum plays in one conflict or another?
The Tools Needed to Reach the Goal
This is where government must step in with clear guidance and openness to intelligence-sharing, and companies must reciprocate with more transparency in processes and audits and with due diligence that takes into account the results of supply chain decisions actually taken in high-risk areas — rather than focusing mostly on processes and procedures.
Much ink has been spilled in recent years for policy recommendations on how to ensure a “just transition” to clean energy and that various critical minerals needed for that transition can be managed through responsible supply chains. And that follows a similarly endless discussion related to the side effects of the gold trade over the last two decades.
Most of those ideas and recommendations are fine and good, as far as they go. But to say that implementation of those recommendations and ideas is lacking would be an understatement, especially with the Trump administration’s focus on making deals as quickly as possible, including with players who may or may not be focused first and foremost on “responsibility.”
The core missing piece has been how to get rid of the malevolent actors who continue to profit from these materials, whether in the mining, transport, or processing. When those ideas do come up, they usually generate little more than a passing nod to sanctions.
To be sure, sanctions should continue to be used and can be effective, at least in providing short-term disruptions. The problem is governments rarely know who to target, and even when they do, legitimate companies traditionally just go as far as ensuring they do not do business with the sanctioned individual or entity rather than understanding the broader network and typology being used. As such, companies are then able to integrate their sanctions due diligence into their broader OECD due diligence and feel that they have done their best.
But all the while, parts of those simply chains continue to support bad actors. Sudan’s ongoing genocide and atrocities, for example, would almost certainly not have been able to continue without the funding provided by gold, with Sudan being a large producer and the UAE, in particular, willing to import gold form the country, according to multiple in-depth media and NGO reports. But although there have been a few Sudanese actors sanctioned for their role in the gold trade and the United States declared all Sudanese gold to be considered conflict-affected and high risk in June 2023, neither the gold sector nor governments have been able to target sufficiently the actors profiting the most from Sudan’s suffering, nor has it become a major issue within the industry.
The time has come for more joint action and accountability rather than working in parallel, whether to deal with specific cases like Sudan, or more generally. This should include the following:
- Because gold is regulated under anti-money laundering provisions, the U.S. and U.K. governments can begin by using the convening power of the USA PATRIOT Act Section 314(b) and “FinCEN Exchange” (or, in the U.K., the Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce), respectively, to bring the gold sector (both larger initiatives like the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) and the World Gold Council (WGC) and their member refiners and miners, but smaller entities along the supply chain as well), financial institutions, and governments together to share intelligence and information on bad actors. This should start most urgently by focusing on Sudan, the DRC, certain refineries and traders in the UAE and Hong Kong, and other well-documented countries of concern. From these ongoing exchanges, specific interdisciplinary investigations can be launched and more impactful actions taken.
- Although critical minerals such as cobalt, copper, and nickel are not regulated by anti-money-laundering laws and thus intelligence-sharing mechanisms do not readily exist, the United States and other governments should identify mechanisms through which this can be developed. For example, the U.S. could consider how to empower companies that are members of the Public-Private Alliance for Responsible Minerals Trade, which offers vetting and an established relationship, to receive and integrate specific intelligence on negative actors. Over time, this could be extended to entities undertaking minerals-focused investigations on due diligence as well.
- Having opened their own files, governments can then come from a stronger position to encourage — if not require — more thorough and transparent due diligence conduct and reporting that looks not simply at processes but also decision-making and results. This, in turn, requires much more focused and concentrated auditing in response to business risk advisories and other guidance issued by governments about specific issues and areas of concern. Governments should continue to find ways to encourage more transparency with respect to due diligence reporting and auditing, such as resurrecting a version of the Responsible Investing Reporting Requirements and adapting it to minerals supply chains.
- Certification systems must use these advisories as a form of due diligence directives and adapt them to provide specific guidance to members on where their supply chain due diligence must focus to address the most critical risks and also what kinds of actions they should be taking in response to those risks. Auditors must call companies to task and be willing to fail more companies when their processes do not yield clear and demonstrable results against these specifically identified risks, and the auditors themselves should be called to account when they do insufficient work.
To be sure, this focus on rooting out bad actors and eliminating sourcing that exacerbates conflict must also be coupled with greater and more committed upstream development programming and funding. Put another way, for as much as industry and governments need to collaborate in new ways to root out bad actors, they must also innovate and maintain commitments to build up responsible actors, especially in countries and communities where negative actors have been involved. Development-focused organizations have been doing this work for decades and continue to innovate in new directions to achieve those ends, whether on formalization, financing, environmental remediation, or gender security and equity, and beyond. Although individual companies and entities like the LBMA and WGC have undertaken some efforts to engage in these areas, much more is needed.
The Trump administration’s destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development and shifting of aid budgets in other countries unquestionably complicates this need. The private sector must step into this breach, again helped by intelligence-sharing from governments, whether because of the responsibility companies have to the communities from where their raw materials emanate, or because of the need to ensure consistent supply chains, or because, over time, consumers continue to demand that level of information.
Enter … Moses?
At the end of the Book of Exodus, none other than Moses is exposed to the need for transparency in minerals supply chains and maintaining trust with the community. In Chapter 38, there is a “tally of the metals,” in which the various materials used to construct the Tabernacle were recorded in careful detail. Coming after some of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible documenting the Exodus, this is a fairly mundane recitation of how many shekels and talents (another currency of the time) of gold, silver, and copper were being used and how many remained in inventory.
The sourcing of the gold was, itself, somewhat dubious, as much of it was likely stolen and plundered from Egypt as the people left, with the rest likely purchased en route. But then there is the question of why the Bible goes through this detailed accounting. In one popular Jewish volume of the Torah, the authors interrogate this:
Why did Moses feel obliged to give this detailed account? Some Israelites knew that they would have taken advantage of handling all that gold and silver for their own enrichment. They suspected Moses of being no better than they were.
The Israelites were able to navigate the desert and experienced their share of conflict, but this principle of transparency and accountability for leadership bears returning to as the international community continues to grapple with the connection of the minerals trade — be it gold, cobalt, nickel, or diamonds — to conflict and endemic corruption across the world.
So perhaps in considering future interventions, it might be helpful to ask: What would Moses do?
