Help create conflict-free green technology.

Update: Judy Anderson is currently Executive Director at ACT for Congo.

The Second Congo War, also called Africa's World War, killed 5 million people between 1998 and 2003. It was the largest war in Africa's history; it involved eight African nations and more than twenty armed militias. Although there was an agreement between the warring parties in 2003, the conflict continues in the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It continues because of the metal mines that the armed groups fight to control.

There is an action item at the end of this diary that will certainly help save lives and impact suffering: The Senate Financial Overhaul Bill contains a provision that requires companies that use targeted metals to annually report where they buy them. The House Financial Services Committee is reviewing the Senate bill during the next two weeks.

We need to preserve that provision as a necessary first step in conflict relief. These metals are used in clean energy and green technology, as well as medicine and industry in the US across the board. Accountability is key to resolving this war.

The interview below is with Judy Anderson, Executive Director of HEAL Africa USA. HEAL Africa is an organization that helps victims of sexual violence in eastern DRC. Brutal militias use systematic rape and torture as weapons of war, and those who survive these attacks are usually left totally incontinent because they suffer from traumatic gynecologic fistula -- destruction of the tissue between the vagina, bladder, and bowels. These injuries are often the point of the attack. Militias commonly use weapons to rape, mutilate, and leave women for dead.

HEAL Africa has a state of the art hospital that specializes in treating these injuries, as well as other common wounds of this war. The UN reports tens of thousands of these rapes take place per year, and that is since the war officially ended in 2003.



Judy is talking about coltan, the ore that contains tantalum. "Congo is in your cellphone," is a meme. It's true, too. But tantalum is everywhere -- it isn't just in your computer and cellphone. From an engineering perspective, tantalum is a sweetheart metal. It has ideal mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties for applications throughout industry. It can be heated to very high temperatures, it is stable in corrosive environments, and it machines well. And it maintains these properties after heating; tungsten, for example, becomes extremely brittle and fragile once it's heated. This is not so with tantalum, which is easily re-machined after heating to high temperatures. Alloys of tantalum behave nicely, as well.

Camera lenses are made with tantalum oxide. Tantalum metal is ideal for making surgical implants and instruments -- it even bonds with hard tissue better than other metals. It is ductile and supple and it is the metal of choice for fine wires and long-lasting filaments. Its alloys are used in jet engines, missiles, and process equipment for engineering across the board. Our technology makes us dependent on coltan, and it comes from the mines that draw the militia groups to fight this war.

Ngalula was one of the first women treated at the HEAL Africa hospital. A militia destroyed her village, killed her family, kidnapped and kept her as a sex slave. She was only sixteen. After a year and a half in their grasp, she escaped and made her way for help. She was filled with fistulae but also pregnant, so she had to wait until after the baby's birth to have surgery.

In the DRC, abortion is illegal in every context. It is strenuously forbidden by law.



The Congolese people are of strong faith, so HEAL Africa works directly with the faith-based leaders. Catholic, Protestant, Kimbanguist, Muslum, and local tribal leaders help them to affect change. The Nehemiah Committees that are central to changing the face Congo are made up of these leaders.

Mama Muliri is at the heart of this work. She pioneered HEAL Africa's Heal My People program and is a founding member of their Women Stand Up Together program. She was one of the first to stand up to the men who hold power in the DRC and demand a better way for the women who suffer.

The first time Mama Muliri stood in front of the tribal leaders, they met her fully painted, brandishing spears and guns. She stood her ground and demanded change for the women who suffer. After four days of meetings, the political and tribal leaders understood the law and what HEAL Africa was trying to do, and they agreed to stand up with Muliri. Today these leaders give support to the rape victims from their villages.




This war will not end unless we address the corrupt mining operations in east Africa. The action we take must be on two fronts -- we need to stop using buying material that supports this conflict, and we need to be sure that civilians can keep life going when the mines get pinched.

Another important step is to learn about microcredit programs, and support them if you can; Half the Sky Movement has a primer that includes information about how to know that your aid gets properly used.

Your cellphone is killing people: Regulate conflict minerals in the DRC

In 1994, a Hutu paramilitary organization called the Interahamwe perpetrated a mass genocide in Rwanda against another ethnic group, the Tutsi. In response, the Rwandese Patriotic Front eventually drove the Interahamwe, their supporters, and the Hutu who feared retaliation from Rwanda into nearby countries: over two million people crossed the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Interahamwe remain in the Democratic Republic of Congo today. They now call themselves the Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda, or the FDLR. They compete with other groups to control the Coltan mines in the DRC, but they set the bloody standard for terrorism in the neighborhood.

The violence connected with these mines is absolutely monstrous. The militias use terrorism to intimidate the people, and the most brutal are the ones who gain control of the ore that comes from the mines. But the weapons of terror are not car bombs or explosive devices. They use public torture and rape to intimidate the Congolese people. Nicholas Kristof recently described the horrible conditions that result in his columns The World Capital of Killing, and From "Oprah" to Building Sisterhood in Congo.

More than two hundred thousand Congolese women and children have been raped and mutilated, often in front of their families or in front of the whole village -- and this has been going on for years. Among the stories that the UN reported in 2005, paramilitary men grilled villagers' bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive in front of their mother. More often they gang rape a woman, penetrating her with weapons and mutilating her. Sometimes they use machetes or guns, and they are reported to set her on fire, as well. Those who survive are often left entirely incontinent because they suffer from traumatic gynecologic fistula -- destruction of the tissue between the vagina, bladder, and bowels. The UN reports tens of thousands of these rapes per year. There is an increasing number of men who suffer this fate, as well.

Jeanette and her husband were farmers when the Interahamwe stormed into their village and burned it to the ground. They raped and tortured her, cut off both of her hands, and left her for dead. They raped another woman in the village who was pregnant, penetrated her with a rifle, and shot her.

The Interahamwe killed Generose's husband, hacked off her leg with a machete, and cooked it in front of her family on their kitchen fire. When her 12-year-old son refused to eat it, they killed him.

The violence continues, and stories like these play out daily in eastern DRC. The causes for the conflict in the DRC are complicated, but one thing is simple: the suffering continues because of the mines. Militias directly control the region's coltan and tin production. At the end of 2007, the International Rescue Committee estimated that nearly 5.5 million people had died, and that number continues to rise.





I want to draw your attention to coltan, which is the ore that contains tantalum. From an engineering perspective, tantalum is a sweetheart metal. It has ideal mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties. It can be heated to very high temperatures, it is stable in corrosive environments, and it machines well. It also maintains these properties after heating; tungsten, for example, becomes extremely brittle and fragile once it's heated, which is why incandescent light bulb filaments break so easily. This is not so with tantalum, which can be re-machined after heating to high temperatures. Alloys of tantalum behave nicely, as well.

The video refers to widespread use of tantalum capacitors, but because of its favorable properties tantalum is commonly used in industry. Camera lenses are made with tantalum oxide. Tantalum metal is ideal for making surgical implants and instruments -- it even bonds with hard tissue better than other metals. Its ductility and suppleness make it the metal of choice for fine wires and long-lasting filaments, and its alloys are used in jet engines, missiles, and process equipment for engineering across the board. Our technology makes us dependent on this precious metal.

** Jeanette and Generose's stories are told by Women for Women International, another organization that is doing fine work to support war survivors in the DRC. Read about Jeanette in The Other Side of War by Zainab Salbi; Nicholas Kristof tells Generose's story in the links provided.

Silence in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Update: Mama Muliri currently collaborates with HOLD-DRC. HOLD (Humanitarian Organization for Lasting Development) is a Congolese NGO. They are founding partners with US-based ACT for Congo.

Meet Jeanne Muliri Kabekatyo, known as "Mama Muliri" to her friends and colleagues. This brilliant woman pioneered the Heal My People program at HEAL Africa, a Congolese relief organization centered in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. She is visiting the United States and telling the story of how HEAL Africa is changing the face of the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is without a doubt one of the more inspiring people I know.

Mama Muliri directs HEAL Africa's program Gender and Justice, which is a strategic, long term response to gender-based violence. She is the ultimate community organizer, bringing together leaders from area villages, faith-based organizations, and relief workers, and the women of the DRC to affect positive change in a lasting way. They will create a new future.


HEAL Africa began as a small clinic, but it was destroyed when Mount Nyiragongo erupted in 2002. They've since rebuilt, and are now a teaching hospital with a state of the art surgical center, specializing in traumatic gynecologic fistulae.
These injuries commonly result from the brutal rapes that happen because of the war. Women are attacked and raped sometimes by groups of twenty or more men. These men penetrate them with weapons and sometimes shoot, burn, or mutilate and then leave them for dead. HEAL Africa's hospital was designed to treat their wounds.

But when the hospital opened, the doctors couldn't find many rape victims. Only women who were dying of infection or gravely injured would come. HEAL Africa had an empty treatment facility in the middle of what is arguably the worst systematic, gender-based violence on Earth today.

The Democratic Republic of Congo lives a culture of silence. By the old ways, a woman who is raped is shunned by her family and cast out of her community. She has no worth in the world, and is utterly destroyed by the crime. If it happens and she can keep it secret, she will suffer in silence. This is why HEAL Africa and Mama Muliri are so important. The women don't easily trust, because the risk to their future is so great. Why should a woman go to a hospital for treatment when it means that she must break her silence?

Mama Muliri knew that the hospital would not be a safe place for the women who needed treatment unless the culture of silence was broken. To accomplish this change, she had to engage the men -- so she and her colleagues went to the religious leaders and convinced them to teach their people about the culture of silence and why it was wrong.

Then she and her colleagues went to the leaders in the villages and taught them how their ways conflicted with the law, and convinced them that their traditions regarding rape had to change. This tactic was hugely successful, and the villages began to comply with the law. The villages started to support the rape victims, and HEAL Africa trained village women in crisis counseling to help rape victims get the care they need. From this work came the Nehemiah Committees made up of Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and indigenous church and village leaders:

These initiatives took the name of “Nehemiah Committees”. In 2004, the first three committees were established, today there are more than 65 throughout rural villages in the surrounding region of Goma.
...
The name for the program derives from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, where a community is mobilized to rebuild the walls of their destroyed city. Nehemiah Committees are locally selected by community members and represent all faiths and tribes in the community. The various faith communities...are at the heart of the work and the focus of the training.

The women in these villages now have a safe place to break their silence.

But what would become of the women after their treatment? If they went back to their villages as victims, the culture of silence would persist. Mama Muliri thought that calling them survivors wouldn't work, either, as it did nothing to remove the stigma of being raped, and it was not a lot different than saying the women were victims. She and HEAL Africa started a vocational training program to give the women skills that their village depended on -- and she called the graduates Strong Women in the Community.

It didn't make sense, though, to allow only rape victims to be the Strong Women. First, a women who had not suffered a rape needed vocational training, too -- and second, creating Strong Women in a way that was independent of their trauma history helped to remove the stigma attached to the rape. Their rape wouldn't define them in their community. HEAL Africa opened their training program to all women, and gave birth to their Women Stand Up Together program.

Women Stand Up Together has a network of safe houses where women receive support in crisis, training, and resources they need. The village counselors can go to the safe houses to learn new skills, and the women can network to build a sustainable future for the DRC.

The safe houses also provide a way to administer or acquire urgent and preventive care for rape victims:

Village counselors also know to refer to local medical clinics for infections, sexually transmitted diseases, or Post Exposure Prophyllaxis (PEP for HIV will dramatically reduce transmission of HIV if administered within 72 hours of a rape. Most villagers don’t know this, and it’s not available in many clinics out of the city.) HEAL Africa has been working with 67 rural clinics to provide training and medicine, and through the counselor networks to inform women and girls of the urgency of getting treatment quickly.

Women Stand Up Together started with 4 safe houses; they now have 28, and they are making an enormous impact on the quality of life and status for women they serve. HEAL Africa also has a fledgling microcredit program that is about six months old. They've already paid back their principle and interest, and are using the profit that microcredit brings to provide more loans to women who want to start businesses.

And this is what sets HEAL Africa apart from other relief organizations working in the DRC. HEAL Africa is founded and led by Congolese people, so it can build itself and grow through community organization. Foreign relief agencies are helping tremendously in the DRC, but they are centrally located and cannot reach the villages with community networks like HEAL Africa. And they cannot build a lasting peace -- only the people of the DRC can create a peaceful future for their country.

This is Marta, and she wants us to hear her story. She was badly injured when she was raped and burned, and she made her way to the HEAL Africa hospital through the community networks described here. She was a resident at HEAL Africa's Grounds For Hope shelter that houses women who need time to heal because of their extensive injuries. To date, she has had five reconstructive surgeries to help her close her eye lids and regain balanced use of her arms.

She told her story to Ben Affleck in 2008 when he traveled to the DRC for ABC's Nightline -- her interview starts about 2:50 in this excerpt:



Update: Since this writing, HEAL Africa has discontinued its Women Stand Up Together programs and Nehemiah Committees.