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Document Type

Note

Publication Date

Winter 2015

Publication Citation

22 Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 121 (2015)

Abstract

Eastern Africa has been plagued for generations with what Richard Auty considers 'The Resource Curse." This curse, translated into modern economic tragedies, is the exploitive extraction and use of precious minerals from Eastern Africa, specifically the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). As a result of attempts to combat the international market that perpetuates this curse, Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, largely in response to human rights activism, passed into law a provision requiring companies to account to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for their use of certain listed foreign minerals. Although such regulation is economically stifling for companies, it is appropriately outweighed by an international human rights interest. Currently, this legislative and regulatory measure is insufficient because it feebly regulates manufacturers in an afterextraction market without an extraction-level regulation in Eastern Africa. Therefore, to legitimize Section 1502 and to appropriately aid U.S. companies in their compliance with Section 1502, the African Union, or a coalition of governments and organizations, must establish a certification process by which minerals are lawfully extracted and formally sold in the international market. This would establish both an extraction-level and post-extraction-level regulation that work in tandem. Implementing one without the other will not begin to resolve this international crisis.

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