But the exploitation of those minerals drives much of the violence that plagues the African nation.

In Eastern Congo, the ongoing conflict has included widespread sexual violence.

The details of the attacks are often gruesome: women being brutally raped, beaten and sometimes killed in front of their own children.

We know these horrific details because of people like Chouchou Namegabe.

Namegabe is a Congolese journalist who started a radio talk show in 2001 to air the testimonies of rape survivors

She is also the founder and director of the South Kivu Association of Women Journalists. The group trains Congolese women to report on connection between mass rape and resource extraction.

Now, the issue of mineral extraction and mass rape has reached American College campuses and students want to know what they can do to help the crisis in Congo.

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with Namegabe, who is in the US to deliver keynote address at a conference on the subject at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.

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LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins, and this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. The Democratic Republic of Congo is blessed with mineral riches. But the exploitation of those minerals drives a lot of the violence that plagues the African nation. In Eastern Congo, the ongoing conflict has included widespread sexual violence. Details of the attacks are often gruesome. Women are brutally raped, beaten, and sometimes killed in front of their children. We know these horrific details because of people like Chouchou Namegabe. She’s a Congolese journalist, who in 2001, started a radio talk show to air the testimony of rape survivors. Namegabe is the founder and director of the South Kivu Association of Women Journalists. The group trains Congolese women to report on the connection between mass rape and resource extraction. Namegabe is in the US now to deliver the keynote address on the subject at a conference on the subject at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts. She says the situation for women in Eastern Congo is not improving.

CHOUCHOU NAMEGABE: Every day there are attacks of militias in rural areas. Even now, civilians are copying.

MULLINS: The civilians are copying the militias who are raping.

NAMEGABE: Yes, they are copying.

MULLINS: Why?

NAMEGABE: Because there is impunity. They are not punished.

MULLINS: Now tell us the link between the extraction of minerals in this part of Congo and mass rape, what is the connection?

NAMEGABE: Where there is the mines, there are communities which live there. But it’s not easy for them to exploit it with the presence of the communities. That’s why they use their weapons and sexual violences to intimidate the population to move from places where there are mines. Because they know that the woman is the heart of the community, so they fight on her body, by using rape.

MULLINS: The women, as you say, are the heart of the community. And so when something happens to them, the community disassembles, and people move out?

NAMEGABE: Yes.

MULLINS: Now, you are going to be speaking this weekend. This is the reason that you’re in Massachusetts now, at the Clark University Conference, about the link, even from Eastern Congo and what you’re talking about, to what all of us basically use on a daily basis, and that is a cell phone, a laptop computer. Anything that happens to use some of these minerals in order to function. Why is it so hard for countries, for instance the United States, to get to the heart of this, and make sure that we know exactly where these minerals are coming from? Why is it hard?

NAMEGABE: It’s hard because the mineral resources which are exploited in the eastern part of Congo, they go out through neighbors’ countries. It means that they are not declared that they are coming from the eastern part of Congo. They are going through Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda.

MULLINS: I see, so it looks like the minerals are coming from there, from Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, instead of from Congo.

NAMEGABE: Yeah, instead of Congo. That is why it is difficult.

MULLINS: And then that leaves in the mining areas, it still leaves the militias. Chouchou, you have put the voices of some of these rape victims on the air on your radio program. Let me just ask you why this entire issue, not just the rape of women, but the whole issue around conflict minerals, and the consequences of that, is so much a part of you and what you do. How come?

NAMEGABE: The issue is important for me because it’s touching the right of men, the right of women. And I feel concerned because I’m a woman too. And also I’m a journalist. I saw that I couldn’t do anything. I don’t have guns to fight against it, but I’ve got my microphone, to use it, to fight against the rape and sexual violence. That’s why we give the microphone to victims, to tell their stories. Because somewhere it’s the first way to heal their internal wound, to talk about it, to make it known, to call for actions, because we want it to end. It’s really a big crime.

MULLINS: These things are very difficult to hear, but tell us what your listeners in Congo have heard, some of these testimonies.

NAMEGABE: There is another woman who were kidnapped with her five children. She was brought in the forest, and every day, she was raped in front of her children. And when she was hungry, they killed her child, and they forced her to eat the flesh of her child. Every day, which practices they killed one of her children. And she was forced to eat the flesh of her children. She was asking to be killed, but they refused. They say we can’t give you such a good death.

MULLINS: Can you comprehend why, when these things are done, they are done with the amount of intentional brutality like that, why?

NAMAGABE: We understood that it’s a plan, it’s a tactic. For them it’s a message that they send to the community.

MULLINS: Chouchou Namegabe is a Congolese journalist. She’s been reporting on mass rape in Eastern Congo for more than a decade. She’s going to be speaking this weekend at Clark University, at a conference on gender violence and the extraction of minerals in Eastern Congo. Clark is in Worcester, Massachusetts. Chouchou, thank you.

NAMEGABE: Thank you.

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• BBC coverage
• New York Times story
• NY Times graphic: Afghanistan’s mineral deposits

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  What if one of the world’s poorest countries suddenly came upon a windfall?  That may have happened to Afghanistan.  The New York Times reported today that the United States has discovered nearly one trillion dollars in mineral reserves in that country.  But as The World’s Laura Lynch reports, those reserves could turn out to be more of a curse than a blessing.

LAURA LYNCH:  Underneath Afghanistan’s battle scarred earth lies riches; gold, copper, iron and lithium, increasingly important for electric car and laptop batteries.  For Saleem Ali it’s cause to cheer.  The professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont is from Pakistan, so he knows how much bad news there’s been from his homeland’s next door neighbor.

SALEEM ALI:  I think it is indeed good news because there is an opportunity now for the country to develop outside of a dominantly drug dependent economy and if properly managed, the minerals could provide a catalyst for all kinds of other activities as well.

LYNCH: But drug dependency, Ali means farmers’ overwhelming reliance on growing poppies for opium that’s then sold around the world as heroine.  The only other steady stream of revenue these days is foreign aid.  But for all those who trumpet Afghanistan’s new found mineral wealth there are others, like Blake Hounshell, Managing Editor of Foreign Policy magazine who say not so fast.

BLAKE HOUNSHELL:  Everything we know about Afghanistan tells us its one of the most corrupt countries on the planet.  The Wall Street Journal reported in January that the Mining Ministry, which would be in charge of these resources, is among the most corrupt departments in a very corrupt government.  So I think we already have plenty of evidence that suggests that these resources won’t be properly handled and that’s troubling.

LYNCH: It’s also troubling to those who have worked and lived in other nations where sudden discoveries of oil and minerals didn’t translate into sudden wealth.  Keith Slack is a Senior Policy Advisor with Oxfam.

KEITH SLACK:  In a lot of situations mineral wealth like this contributes to violent conflict, corruption, it can contribute to human rights violations, displacement of local populations.  It can end up actually worsening poverty in some situations.

LYNCH: Slack has seen it up close in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the richest countries in the world in terms of mineral wealth.

SLACK: Control over the mineral resources is one of the issues that are driving the conflict.  By and large benefits of that huge mineral wealth in that country have not trickled down to the poorest communities.

LYNCH: Slack says the key to ensuring the wealth is shared is transparency; laws and procedures and practices to bar any shady deals.  He says the very nations that are now fighting in Afghanistan can help by passing laws back home to force countries to report all transactions with governments like Afghanistan’s.  American officials are already said to be concerned that China will rush in.  It’s already won one bid to mine copper.  And China’s record in Africa suggests it will do business with governments without regard to their commitment to human rights and democracy.  But Saleem Ali of the University of Vermont says in this case, China might actually do the United States a favor.

ALI:  There’s been a lot of conspiratorial rhetoric about the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and that all of it has been about mineral wealth, but lo and behold, China is the country which gets the tender, so that shows that the U.S. is not all powerful in Afghanistan and this is now an open playing field where you can have multinational investment.  And so this should also put to rest some of those conspiracy theories about resource led invasions and so on.

LYNCH: Of course, today’s news doesn’t mean mining companies will be rushing in to dig anytime soon.  Developing the industry could take many years and there’s the small matter of a war that’s yet to be resolved.  For The World, I’m Laura Lynch in London.

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MARCO WERMAN: Yesterday Hillary Clinton was in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She traveled east to a war zone to speak out against rampant sexual violence there. But she also focused on the causes of the conflict. That includes Congo’s lucrative minerals trade. Armed groups in the east fight to control the mines and then use the proceeds to fund their operations. The World’s Jeb Sharp reports.

JEB SHARP: Congo’s mineral wealth is legendary. Its mines supply some of the most valuable metals in the world including tungsten, tin, and coltan. And the United Nations as well as advocacy groups have long documented the way the trade in minerals there fuels the conflict in the eastern part of the country. Colin Thomas-Jensen is with the advocacy group Enough.

COLIN THOMAS JENSEN: The lack of state authority coupled with abundant natural wealth in Congo allows armed groups to control mines, to control taxation routes, and to make tons of money. And in the case of eastern Congo we estimate that armed groups make anywhere from $100 to $180 million last year from taxation and trade in illegal minerals.

SHARP: And Thomas-Jensen says there’s a good chance that some of those minerals are ending up in your cell phone.

THOMAS-JENSEN: Every time your cell phone vibrates the vibration is helped and caused by a little piece of tungsten. That’s what tungsten’s used for. Tin is used for solder to hold electronic parts together. And coltan, or tantalum, is a critical element in cell phone batteries.

SHARP: So when Hillary Clinton called on the international community yesterday to start looking at steps to try to prevent the mineral wealth of the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund the violence advocacy groups were heartened. Amy Barry is with the group Global Witness in London.

AMY BARRY: Even before she arrived, Secretary Clinton’s choice of countries was important. We were struck by the fact that a number of countries that she visited were effected in one way or another by what’s known as the resource curse. So when did she did speak about the issue of minerals, mineral wealth in the DRC, as an underlying driver of the conflict, that was something that we do see a form of progress.

SHARP: Global Witness has been documenting the problem of so-called conflict minerals for a long time. The group put out a new report on Congo just last month. According to Barry the report showed that all the armed groups in eastern Congo, including the national army, are involved in the mines. And yet the issue is rarely discussed in coverage of the conflict she says.

AMY BARRY: Often the focus of press reports or political dialogue on the conflict in the DRC is around political differences between the groups of between the countries, Rwanda and the DRC for example, or ethnic divisions. In actual fact Global Witness has been saying for a long time that the underlying economic drivers, this vast natural resources wealth, is something that really must be addressed if the conflict is going to come to an end.

SHARP: As for those steps Clinton mentioned, Barry says companies buying, trading, and processing minerals as well as end users like computer and cell phone manufacturers should find out where their minerals are coming from. She says governments can take steps to make sure that happens as well as help the government of the DRC take back control of the industry inside its own borders. And of course consumers themselves can put pressure on both governments and companies. Again, Colin Thomas-Jensen of Enough.

THOMAS-JENSEN: The best way to put pressure on any industry is through consumers and I think what we’re starting to see, and it’s early yet, what we’re starting to see in the United States is a growing number of people who are aware of the situation in eastern Congo, appalled by it and who are learning about this connection between the trade and conflict minerals and consumer electronics. The minerals that are fueling this war are components, are critical elements of cell phones, laptops, mp3 players.

SHARP: What Thomas-Jensen doesn’t want is for companies to simply pull up stakes and take their trade elsewhere as some companies have already done. The idea isn’t to boycott minerals from eastern Congo, or have a moratorium on mining there; that only hurts the Congolese. What advocates do want is for companies to make sure any minerals they do buy aren’t passing through tainted hands, much as the diamond industry learned to avoid the so-called blood diamonds from West Africa that once fueled conflict there. For The World, I’m Jeb Sharp.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.