The Belgium NGO ‘International Peace Information Service’ (IPIS) has been working with the mining cadastre of the DRC (CAMI) to set up a new mapping system to show whether there is any involvement of armed groups at sites in eastern DRC and the first version has now been published at this link. The map shows the location of around 800 mining sites and 85 trading centres, together with information about any armed groups presence and involvement. It is noticeable that gold mining is the largest subsector in the artisanal mining business with the numbers of miners active in gold up to 4 times higher than that for tin, tantalum and tungsten combined. The current scale of artisanal gold mining has important consequences on the issue of armed group financing, especially because the DRC’s gold production is exported almost entirely unrecorded. While the map is generally interesting, some information dates from 2012 and the planned updates will need to be completed in order to make the map useable for company mineral purchasing decisions.
Map Shows Gold is Top Conflict Mineral
Nov 25, 2013