The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“H. CON. RES. 410” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the Extensions of Remarks section on pages E908-E910 on May 24, 2002.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
H. CON. RES. 410
______
HON. TONY P. HALL
of ohio
in the house of representatives
Thursday, May 23, 2002
Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join Congressmen Ed Royce, Amo Houghton, Frank Wolf, and Don Payne in introducing a resolution supporting peace and democracy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and an end to the plunder of its natural resources. H. Con. Res. 410 calls on President Bush to press for a United Nations embargo of Congolese diamonds, which are helping to fund a war that has engulfed the heart of Africa since it began in 1998, and plunged its people into a darkness where disease and misery flourish. As the Washington Post reported a few months ago:
Since a rebellion erupted in 1998, Congo, which is roughly the size of Western Europe, has been effectively partitioned into several autonomous regions, each under the control of a foreign army that systematically loots its area of control. As a result, Congo's plentiful resources enrich the leaders of surrounding countries while providing no benefit to the vast majority of Congolese. . . .
Diamonds are not the cause of what has come to be known as Africa's First World War, but they play a crucial role in sustaining it. The most concentrated form of wealth ever known to mankind, diamonds are one of Africa's most liquid resources, the world's easiest commodity to smuggle, and readily available to anyone with power. From individual soldiers; to military commanders who have reoriented their troops toward full-time pillaging; to regimes that depend on standing armies and the chaos of war to stay in power; to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and other radical groups that have used this resource to inflict terror beyond Africa's shores--all have exploited the Congo's diamonds. They have turned a symbol that Americans treasure into a means for torturing countless thousands of people in Africa. They have put an industry that is important to American and African communities alike under a cloud, and they must be stopped.
Effect of Resolution
Under the terms of the Kimberley Process, the international system that aims to block conflict diamonds from the legitimate trade, conflict diamonds are defined as those embargoed by the United Nations. This means that, until the UN imposes sanctions on diamonds originating in a war zone, trade in the diamonds that fuel conflict there is not checked. The fact that diamonds currently mined in the Congo are not, technically, conflict diamonds creates a huge credibility gap for US and international efforts alike. The international system of controls aims to close that gap, but it would be foolish for the UN Security Council to postpone sanctions in reliance on a global system that is just now being devised.
Instead, the United Nations should impose an embargo similar to those on Sierra Leone and Angola's diamonds immediately. That would contribute needed pressure to regularize the trade in Congolese diamonds, combatting the criminal activities that usually accompany smuggling and compelling other countries to stop abetting this illegal trade. Some 85 percent of Congolese diamonds, worth $854 million a year, are smuggled away; if its government collected taxes on them, some $40 million could be added to this beleaguered country's coffers and used to respond to its people's desperate needs.
Another benefit of an embargo on Congolese diamonds would be to close the enormous loophole that the DRC has become for sanctions-busters. Currently, diamonds mined by Sierra Leonean and Angolan rebels, or trafficked by Liberia, can easily be passed off as Congolese diamonds. To leave so vast a country, which produces significant quantities of diamonds, outside scrutiny dooms international efforts to address the problem of conflict diamonds elsewhere.
Beyond these practical benefits, there is a moral reason to act. Curbing the smuggling of Congolese diamonds and other resources is essential to securing a lasting peace. A cease- fire has held since April 2001; a small contingent of UN troops is on the ground; there are persistent efforts to settle combatants' differences through peace talks. But this is not enough. The fighting has created huge, no-go areas where disease, starvation and malnutrition prey, and combatants I desire for plunder means the stalemate and periodic violence is likely to continue. Putting diamonds beyond their reach would contribute to work trying to end the Congo's occupation and return its people's lives to normalcy and the possibility of improvement.
Other War Resources
The war in the DRC is complex: seven nations and several rebel groups are fighting for political reasons and over at least nine natural resources (coltan, gold, diamonds, copper, cobalt, timber, water, tin, and cassiter-ite). That makes it likely that no one approach will be sufficient. Unlike the trade in other war resources, though, conflict diamonds are the focus of on-going international efforts. While far from complete, these may well be a model for work on other resources.
I sometimes have disagreed with the diamond industry's leaders, but I know them to be honorable people. Ending the exploitation of this industry's product by those whose crimes mock all it represents is as important for Africa and it is for the diamond industry, but it will be the industry's continued vigilance that determines whether this effort succeeds or collapses. I must reserve my own evaluation of the industry's promises until they are tested by practice; however, I hope that history will judge kindly its response to this scourge. I hope it will prove to be a model worthy for other industries to use and expand upon. And I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the diamond industry for its commitment to finishing this work.
In addition to the industry's constructive work on conflict diamonds, here is another reason we can be hopeful embodied in organizations like Global Witness, which first exposed the trade in conflict diamonds in 1998. Its recent report on a $300 million conflict timber deal that is currently allowing Zimbabwe's military and political elites to log an area nearly the size of Montana is compelling. It finds that Zimbabwe entered into this deal explicitly to sustain its involvement in the DRC's war, which assures it can continue its exploitation of Congolese diamonds. In addition to tightening its ruler's grip on power, the report found,
. . . any natural resource exploitation by waning factions, especially foreign-backed ones, will seriously delay if not completely derail the potential for lasting peace and stability in DRC.--From Global Witness's February 2002 report, ``Branching Out: Zimbabwe's Resource Colonialism in the DRC.''
Ignoring timber's role in sustaining the wars over diamonds undercuts global efforts to end them. In February President Bush committed our country to tackling the problem of illegal logging around the world; and a few weeks ago, the State Department convened a round-table discussion to focus on this problem.
Logging and mining are activities that go hand-in-hand. The roads built for one are used to open access to the other; the security and labor needs of both commercial activities are well-suited to soldiers' capabilities. Zimbabwe's operations in the DRC confirm this approach to plunder is a way to maximize profits. Likewise, Liberia has diversified its war commerce in a way that exploits both conflict timber and conflict diamonds, using exemption of its timber from comprehensive UN sanctions to sabotage them.
A provision in this resolution urges the United Nations to put its consideration of sanctions against conflict timber on a fast track. I hope the progress made on each of these resources will lead to the comprehensive approach to resource exploitation that is essential to restoring a lasting peace in the Congo.
Humanitarian Dimension
Sanctions--whether on diamonds or other resources--are an imperfect tool, but they have proven helpful in Sierra Leone and Angola and they are well worth trying in the DRC, if for no other reason than the magnitude of the Congolese people's suffering. Because large swaths of the Congo have been too dangerous for journalists, aid workers, and others to visit, there has been too little reporting on this battle for the valuable resources of one of the world's poorest countries. But the exposes that have been done are superb.
One of the best examples is ABC's Nightline, which did an extraordinary, week-long series on the Congo's misery early this year. One segment focused on the battle between two allies that demolished the Congo's diamond-mining capital:
Kisingani was, until not very long ago, a city of 600,000.
. . . It was a center of trade. . . . [Now,] this is a city surviving on life support, suffocated by a war. . . . What was it then that set the armies of Rwanda and Uganda against one another, grinding the people of Kisangani between them? Diamonds. ----From ABC Nightline's Heart of Darkness,'' Jan. 23, 2002.
Dr. Bob Amot of NBC's Dateline has also done heroic reporting from the Congo, bringing home to those of us who must watch from afar the tragedy of its forgotten people. The Washington Post also has devoted attention to the Congo, including front-page coverage of a study done by the respected International Rescue Committee. It found that 3 million people have died there, but few due to the fighting. As Karl Vick reported:
The vast majority of deaths have resulted from starvation, disease and deprivation on a scale emerging only as aid workers reach areas that have been cut off by fighting and lack of roads. ... Villagers in the [Kasai] region--long renowned for its diamonds mines, but now ravaged by hunger--refer to two kinds of gems: white ones and red ones. The red ones are peanuts.
What makes the Congo surveys exceptional is ... how long the conditions they document have been allowed to persist
[Vick reported, quoting a Western epidemiologist, who noted that] mortality rates this high are common in humanitarian emergencies ... but they only last a couple of months ... because there is some sort of intervention. [But in this vast, war-torn country with few roads,] the hugely elevated mortality rates [have been] steadily racking up deaths by the hundreds of thousands. ----From the Washington Post, April 2001.
The sad truth is the Congolese now rank among the most miserable--and most endangered people--in the world. In all, at least 2.5 million people have died, another 2 million have been driven from their homes; and one in three is in critical need of food. Among children, the problems are staggering: 75 percent of children born since the war began dying before their second birthday; 66 percent of school-aged children are not being educated; and large numbers of children are forced to serve as soldiers or prostitutes.
Diseases also stalk the populace, whose chaotic lives make precautions against HIV/AIDS and other deadly illnesses virtually impossible. As Mr. Vick described,
... horror stories continue to emerge from a country no longer defined only by war, but also by pestilence. Untreated malaria remains the main killer, accounting for half of reported deaths. But health workers have also documented outbreaks of polio, whooping cough and even bubonic plague, near the center of Congo's rich diamond-mining area, one child out of 25 suffers from cretinism, an iodine deficiency that leaves the child half the normal size and severely retarded. ----From the Washington Post, August 2001.
Other independent observers have reached similar conclusions:
The belligerents have no interest to see an end to the current situation in eastern Congo. There is a level of violence they can tolerate because the violence is targeting civilians. ... The end result is that the Congolese will continue to die as [leaders] line their pockets with gold and diamonds. The Congolese are not only facing material losses, they are being crushed in the exploitation of natural resources.--From an interview with a Human Rights Watch expert, November 2001
A Oxfam's primary concern is the humanitarian impact of the war, which has caused the largest number of conflict-related deaths anywhere in Africa in the last four years. While different actors have justified their involvement in the war on the basis of security, it is clear that one of the driving forces behind the conflict is a desire by the warring parties to have access to, and control over, the DRC's vast natural resources. This wealth is not being used to reduce poverty, either in the DRC or in other countries involved in the war. In fact, wealth from natural resources is sustaining the war and bad governance. Such military activity has been described as military commercialism. Natural resource exploitation has become a key factor in determining military deployment, perpetuating the cycle of violence. --From Oxfam's report,
``Poverty in the Midst of Wealth,'' January 2002
The choices facing children in the eastern Congo today are to join the military, become a street child, or die. _ The war-affected children of the eastern Congo have no opportunity for education and eat one meal per day, if they are lucky. Many are homeless, forced to flee because of acute poverty. Some have witnessed horrible atrocities committed against their families or their neighbors. Unaccompanied and traumatized, they roam into the big towns or cities.
The brutal war in the Eastern Congo, which has contributed to millions of deaths, driven thousands of people from their homes and helped impoverish a resource-rich country, will not end until the fighting factions learn that they have more to win from peace than they do from war. _ The most vulnerable in this situation are the children, and they are exploited both as child soldiers and prostitutes.--From the report of Refugees International, ``Eastern Congo--A Slow Motion Holocaust,'' and a discussion of it.
The United States Should Continue to Lead
Mr. Speaker, this Congress has been at the forefront of efforts to end the trade in conflict diamonds. Two years ago--before American human rights activists began their campaign against conflict diamonds, and even before the diamond industry moved to protect its self-interest--Mr. Royce and Mr. Payne began taking a hard look at this problem.
Then, six months ago, this House passed compromise legislation designed to begin severing the link between diamonds and war. During negotiation of that bill, H.R. 2722, the President's trade and diplomatic representatives assured us that, if Congress would use the Kimberley Process's definition of conflict diamonds, which are those sanctioned by the United Nations, the Administration would press the UN Security Council to extend its embargo to diamonds mined in other conflict zones, like the Congo.
Today, I urge our colleagues to call that commitment due. Please join me in pressing our government to continue to lead this work--by insisting that the United Nations act against a blood trade that is helping to fuel the world's most deadly war. Please support H. Con. Res. 410.
____________________
