The French Front National is now one of the most successful political protest forces in Western Europe. The party is preparing to participate in the April 2017 Presidential election where the migrant crisis and the capacity of the government to provide security from terrorist attacks will be pressing issues.

According to some scholars, such as Cas Mudde, the French Front National (FN) now appears to be one of the most successful populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Since the mid-1980s, the FN has established itself as a permanent force in French politics. Nowadays, the party appears to offer strength in a climate where European security appears weak and vulnerable. Flourishing in a France characterized by strong concerns about the migrant/refuges crisis and recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists, the party is currently placed in a European ideological space of extreme right protest, often dominated by racism and xenophobia. The FN supports a concept of “Europe of Nations” and protectionism. These ideas have been encouraged by the recent winning of the “leave” campaign in the UK referendum and the Donald Trump’s rise in the USA. What are the origins of the FN, its current strategies and its role in the contemporary political landscape (at national and supranational level)?

From Jean-Marie to Marine: a family party

Since Marine Le Pen took over party leadership from her father in 2011, the FN has entered a new stage of its political development, which demonstrates its adaptability and an ability to survive its founding leader: Jean-Marie Le Pen. However, the party has an even longer history in French politics. It was founded in 1972 from a small neo-fascist organization, Ordre Nouveau, as an electoral umbrella for nationalist groups to run in the 1973 legislative elections. The FN remained electorally irrelevant during the first decade of its starting phase. Its turning point was the 1984 European elections where it obtained about 11% of the vote. From the mid-1980s, the party maintained a sort of electoral stability (between 11 and 15% of electoral support). Since 1984, the FN has also fielded candidates in all local and regional elections, winning representation in regional, departmental and municipal councils, as well as in the European Parliament.

The change of leader in 2011 reinforced the party’s electoral appeal: the FN under Marine Le Pen has enlarged its base of support, reaching new heights in the 2012 Presidential election with about 18% of the vote. The FN also topped the 2014 European election winning a quarter of the national vote and 24 seats, which allowed Marine Le Pen to establish leadership over the pan-European nationalist right. Success at the national level has been corroborated locally. In the 2014 municipal election, the party won 11 municipal councils and 1,544 councillors, outperforming its previous record (1995). The departmental elections of March 2015 showed another surge in FN support at 25% of the vote, with 62 local councillors. In 2015 again (December) the party participated in the regional elections and it obtained a new record. In particular in two regions (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie) the FN arrived at 40% of the vote during the first round of elections.

Under Marine Le Pen’s leadership, party change has been embedded in the concept of “de-demonization” (dédiabolisation). As Gilles Ivaldi suggests, de-demonization is primarily characterized by the attempt to detoxify the party’s extremist reputation, while simultaneously preserving its populist radical right potential for voter mobilization. The current FN seeks to improve its credibility through party modernization and professionalization. Whilst the 2011 leadership election represented a first notable step towards greater intra party democracy, there is little evidence of a more substantial move towards a party “normalization”, neither ideologically nor organizationally. Instead, the party has taken a process of “Marinization” (personalization) whereby Marine Le Pen has successfully replaced her father as charismatic leader, both inside and outside the party.

The 2011 congress represented probably the most important change in the French Front National organizational path, with Marine Le Pen taking over the party. Following Jean-Marie Le Pen’s decision to step down, the party had initiated an internal leadership campaign. During the same campaign against Bruno Gollnisch, Marine Le Pen had indicated that she would turn the party into a professionalized and more effective party organization: “I want to create a renewed, opened and well-functioning party”, she said. In 2011, the FN had experienced its first change of leader since 1972, together with a new executive team and a new logo. The “new” FN has pushed an agenda, which aims primarily to shed its extreme right profile and to achieve agency credibility.

A “Europe of Nations”

The FN articulates a strong populist anti-establishment agenda. It opposes European integration, exemplifying the “hard Euro-scepticism” defined by Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart as “a principled opposition to the EU and European integration”. Its opposition to Europe concerns a wide range of institutional, economic and national identity issues. The FN’s concept of a “Europe of Nations”, argues that institutional cooperation should only take place between sovereign nation-states, opposes the EU as a supranational entity, and criticizes the EU as elitist and bureaucratic. A pledge for a return of competences and powers to the national level has been central to the FN electoral platforms since the early 1990s. The 2014 FN ’s programme featured primarily the promise to shed the Euro which was portrayed as “ a jail” serving the “sole interests of bankers and the wealthy”, and from which the French people “should free themselves”.

The FN’s distrust of European integration revolves around immigration and issues of national identity, and it is often linked with welfare-chauvinist positions. The FN’s hostility towards the EU is underpinned by the party’s traditional ethno-nationalist policies. As Mudde suggests, the FN’s anti-EU positions are incorporated into a typical populist radical right agenda, which combines nativism, authoritarianism and anti-establishment populism.

The party is notorious for its politicization of immigration issues. During the 1980s, Jean Marie Le Pen laid out the basis for a potent ethno-nationalist and welfare-chauvinist “master frame”, which later diffused throughout Europe. In 2014, the European campaign by the FN was marked by the continuation of xenophobia and welfare-chauvinism, showing no significant departure from the party’s traditional ethno-nationalist ideology.

The FN committed to “defending, in all circumstances, France’s values, identity, traditions and way of life” against what would be stigmatized as a “sieve Europe”. The party’s 2014 platform lashed out at the Schengen agreement, campaigning on withdrawal, and claiming that the FN would close France’s borders to “stop uncontrolled immigration and put an end to the free movement of Roma and delinquents across Europe”. In line with its 2012 manifesto, the FN proposedpolicies, which would remove the possibility within French law to regularize illegal migrants. The party’s 2012 presidential platform featured a range of nativist policies, including the FN’s traditional “national preference” scheme, which seeks to give priority to the French people over foreigners in welfare, jobs and housing.

A product of France’s political system and climate?

French political parties are characterized by their instability, organizational weakness and fragmentation. As one of the oldest parties in France, FN has shown greater signs of stability over time. Since 1972, it has experienced only one change at the top and it has retained its name. The Parti Socialiste (PS – Socialist Party), currently the most important centre-left party in France, underwent important organizational changes since 1971 as it opened itself to other political forces. Parties of the right exhibit an even greater degree of volatility over time. In 2002, the loose electoral alliances of the 1980s and the 1990s between the Gaullists and the Centre-Right gave way to organizational merger with the creation of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP – Union for a Popular Rally), which was an attempt by the centre-right to consolidate its identity.

In 2007, the new president of the UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected in the presidential election. In 2011, however, disgruntled liberals and Christian Democrats left the UMP to form an independent party, the Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI). Following Sarkozy’s defeat in 2012, the UMP entered a period of high ideological, leadership and strategic factionalism. In November 2014, Sarkozy returned to the UMP and won the leadership election with a large internal consensus. He pushed important changes to the party statutes, including a renaming of the party to Les Républicains (The Republicans). Recently, the party reorganized itself around a new right-wing leader, François Fillon, who became the Presidential candidate in view of 2017 appointment and after a victory during an open primary election.

The same event has generated a new political and social weakness in France, also fuelled by the election of Donald Trump as US president in November 2016. In current context, France is faced with another crucial battle between populist radical right and establishment (right again) forces. The unexpected victory of Fillon in the Republican primary, Socialist President François Hollande’s decision not to run again, may be complicating Le Pen’s efforts to turn her political success into an electoral victory in the two rounds of voting scheduled for April 23 and May 7, 2017. In fact, there are themes, such as Islam, insecurity and immigration, with which the FN is able to rule the debate in general and worry public opinion.

The FN has been able to aquire a new agenda, a sort of “cultural hegemony”, a “vocabulary” even more used also by other traditional party from the centre-right area. France remains, therefore, pervaded by a strong wave of right-wing extremism. In this changed and menacing context, the FN maintains a high appeal and it is ready to prepare its battle in the 2017 Presidential election and probably it is going to reinforce its campaign and its strategies. In any case, it has become (and  remained) a constant presence in the French political system.

Maria Elisabetta Lanzone, PhD, is Research Fellow and Teaching Assistant at University of Genoa (Italy). She is expert in comparative populism, Euro-scepticism and migration policies. She is the author, with Gilles Ivaldi, of the book chapter From Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen: Organizational Change and Adaptation in the French Front National (2016, Palgrave Macmillan). From April 2015 she is also member of the ERMES Laboratory at University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France).

The French Front National is now one of the most successful political protest forces in Western Europe. The party is preparing to participate in the April 2017 Presidential election where the migrant crisis and the capacity of the government to provide security from terrorist attacks will be pressing issues.

According to some scholars, such as Cas Mudde, the French Front National (FN) now appears to be one of the most successful populist radical right parties in Western Europe. Since the mid-1980s, the FN has established itself as a permanent force in French politics. Nowadays, the party appears to offer strength in a climate where European security appears weak and vulnerable. Flourishing in a France characterized by strong concerns about the migrant/refuges crisis and recent terrorist attacks by Islamic extremists, the party is currently placed in a European ideological space of extreme right protest, often dominated by racism and xenophobia. The FN supports a concept of “Europe of Nations” and protectionism. These ideas have been encouraged by the recent winning of the “leave” campaign in the UK referendum and the Donald Trump’s rise in the USA. What are the origins of the FN, its current strategies and its role in the contemporary political landscape (at national and supranational level)?

From Jean-Marie to Marine: a family party

Since Marine Le Pen took over party leadership from her father in 2011, the FN has entered a new stage of its political development, which demonstrates its adaptability and an ability to survive its founding leader: Jean-Marie Le Pen. However, the party has an even longer history in French politics. It was founded in 1972 from a small neo-fascist organization, Ordre Nouveau, as an electoral umbrella for nationalist groups to run in the 1973 legislative elections. The FN remained electorally irrelevant during the first decade of its starting phase. Its turning point was the 1984 European elections where it obtained about 11% of the vote. From the mid-1980s, the party maintained a sort of electoral stability (between 11 and 15% of electoral support). Since 1984, the FN has also fielded candidates in all local and regional elections, winning representation in regional, departmental and municipal councils, as well as in the European Parliament.

The change of leader in 2011 reinforced the party’s electoral appeal: the FN under Marine Le Pen has enlarged its base of support, reaching new heights in the 2012 Presidential election with about 18% of the vote. The FN also topped the 2014 European election winning a quarter of the national vote and 24 seats, which allowed Marine Le Pen to establish leadership over the pan-European nationalist right. Success at the national level has been corroborated locally. In the 2014 municipal election, the party won 11 municipal councils and 1,544 councillors, outperforming its previous record (1995). The departmental elections of March 2015 showed another surge in FN support at 25% of the vote, with 62 local councillors. In 2015 again (December) the party participated in the regional elections and it obtained a new record. In particular in two regions (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie) the FN arrived at 40% of the vote during the first round of elections.

Under Marine Le Pen’s leadership, party change has been embedded in the concept of “de-demonization” (dédiabolisation). As Gilles Ivaldi suggests, de-demonization is primarily characterized by the attempt to detoxify the party’s extremist reputation, while simultaneously preserving its populist radical right potential for voter mobilization. The current FN seeks to improve its credibility through party modernization and professionalization. Whilst the 2011 leadership election represented a first notable step towards greater intra party democracy, there is little evidence of a more substantial move towards a party “normalization”, neither ideologically nor organizationally. Instead, the party has taken a process of “Marinization” (personalization) whereby Marine Le Pen has successfully replaced her father as charismatic leader, both inside and outside the party.

The 2011 congress represented probably the most important change in the French Front National organizational path, with Marine Le Pen taking over the party. Following Jean-Marie Le Pen’s decision to step down, the party had initiated an internal leadership campaign. During the same campaign against Bruno Gollnisch, Marine Le Pen had indicated that she would turn the party into a professionalized and more effective party organization: “I want to create a renewed, opened and well-functioning party”, she said. In 2011, the FN had experienced its first change of leader since 1972, together with a new executive team and a new logo. The “new” FN has pushed an agenda, which aims primarily to shed its extreme right profile and to achieve agency credibility.

A “Europe of Nations”

The FN articulates a strong populist anti-establishment agenda. It opposes European integration, exemplifying the “hard Euro-scepticism” defined by Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart as “a principled opposition to the EU and European integration”. Its opposition to Europe concerns a wide range of institutional, economic and national identity issues. The FN’s concept of a “Europe of Nations”, argues that institutional cooperation should only take place between sovereign nation-states, opposes the EU as a supranational entity, and criticizes the EU as elitist and bureaucratic. A pledge for a return of competences and powers to the national level has been central to the FN electoral platforms since the early 1990s. The 2014 FN ’s programme featured primarily the promise to shed the Euro which was portrayed as “ a jail” serving the “sole interests of bankers and the wealthy”, and from which the French people “should free themselves”.

The FN’s distrust of European integration revolves around immigration and issues of national identity, and it is often linked with welfare-chauvinist positions. The FN’s hostility towards the EU is underpinned by the party’s traditional ethno-nationalist policies. As Mudde suggests, the FN’s anti-EU positions are incorporated into a typical populist radical right agenda, which combines nativism, authoritarianism and anti-establishment populism.

The party is notorious for its politicization of immigration issues. During the 1980s, Jean Marie Le Pen laid out the basis for a potent ethno-nationalist and welfare-chauvinist “master frame”, which later diffused throughout Europe. In 2014, the European campaign by the FN was marked by the continuation of xenophobia and welfare-chauvinism, showing no significant departure from the party’s traditional ethno-nationalist ideology.

The FN committed to “defending, in all circumstances, France’s values, identity, traditions and way of life” against what would be stigmatized as a “sieve Europe”. The party’s 2014 platform lashed out at the Schengen agreement, campaigning on withdrawal, and claiming that the FN would close France’s borders to “stop uncontrolled immigration and put an end to the free movement of Roma and delinquents across Europe”. In line with its 2012 manifesto, the FN proposedpolicies, which would remove the possibility within French law to regularize illegal migrants. The party’s 2012 presidential platform featured a range of nativist policies, including the FN’s traditional “national preference” scheme, which seeks to give priority to the French people over foreigners in welfare, jobs and housing.

A product of France’s political system and climate?

French political parties are characterized by their instability, organizational weakness and fragmentation. As one of the oldest parties in France, FN has shown greater signs of stability over time. Since 1972, it has experienced only one change at the top and it has retained its name. The Parti Socialiste (PS – Socialist Party), currently the most important centre-left party in France, underwent important organizational changes since 1971 as it opened itself to other political forces. Parties of the right exhibit an even greater degree of volatility over time. In 2002, the loose electoral alliances of the 1980s and the 1990s between the Gaullists and the Centre-Right gave way to organizational merger with the creation of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP – Union for a Popular Rally), which was an attempt by the centre-right to consolidate its identity.

In 2007, the new president of the UMP, Nicolas Sarkozy, was elected in the presidential election. In 2011, however, disgruntled liberals and Christian Democrats left the UMP to form an independent party, the Union des démocrates et indépendants (UDI). Following Sarkozy’s defeat in 2012, the UMP entered a period of high ideological, leadership and strategic factionalism. In November 2014, Sarkozy returned to the UMP and won the leadership election with a large internal consensus. He pushed important changes to the party statutes, including a renaming of the party to Les Républicains (The Republicans). Recently, the party reorganized itself around a new right-wing leader, François Fillon, who became the Presidential candidate in view of 2017 appointment and after a victory during an open primary election.

The same event has generated a new political and social weakness in France, also fuelled by the election of Donald Trump as US president in November 2016. In current context, France is faced with another crucial battle between populist radical right and establishment (right again) forces. The unexpected victory of Fillon in the Republican primary, Socialist President François Hollande’s decision not to run again, may be complicating Le Pen’s efforts to turn her political success into an electoral victory in the two rounds of voting scheduled for April 23 and May 7, 2017. In fact, there are themes, such as Islam, insecurity and immigration, with which the FN is able to rule the debate in general and worry public opinion.

The FN has been able to aquire a new agenda, a sort of “cultural hegemony”, a “vocabulary” even more used also by other traditional party from the centre-right area. France remains, therefore, pervaded by a strong wave of right-wing extremism. In this changed and menacing context, the FN maintains a high appeal and it is ready to prepare its battle in the 2017 Presidential election and probably it is going to reinforce its campaign and its strategies. In any case, it has become (and  remained) a constant presence in the French political system.

Maria Elisabetta Lanzone, PhD, is Research Fellow and Teaching Assistant at University of Genoa (Italy). She is expert in comparative populism, Euro-scepticism and migration policies. She is the author, with Gilles Ivaldi, of the book chapter From Jean-Marie to Marine Le Pen: Organizational Change and Adaptation in the French Front National (2016, Palgrave Macmillan). From April 2015 she is also member of the ERMES Laboratory at University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (France).

Authors’ note: This piece presents a summary of the article: Gëzim Visoka and John Doyle, ‘Neo-Functional Peace: The European Union Way of Resolving Conflicts’, Journal of Common Market Studies. Vol. 54, No. 4, 2016, pp. 862-877. Free access link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcms.12342/epdf.

Today, the European Union (EU) plays an important role in preventing conflicts, as the EU’s role facilitating dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia shows. But the EU’s role as regional peacebuilder could suffer drawbacks as a result of internal turbulences cases by the Brexit and other lingering disintegrationalist forces.

Introduction

The European Union has expanded its role in preventing conflicts and building peace, but its institutional practices remain insufficiently conceptualized. In this piece we argue that, drawing from a strong self-perception toward a neo-functionalist interpretation of its own history, the EU has started to use its own internal model of governance as an approach for resolving protracted disputes, through deconstructing highly political issues into technical meanings in order to achieve mutually acceptable agreements. We illustrate this by examining the EU’s approach in facilitating a dialogue for normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia. However, the EU’s role as regional peacebuilder can suffer drawbacks as a result of internal turbulences cases by the Brexit and other lingering disintegrationalist forces.

The EU’s approach to resolving conflicts and building peace

In the past ten years, the European Union (EU) has increased its role in resolving conflicts and building peace in its neighbouring regions and beyond. However, analysis of the EU peacebuilding work has placed EU practice almost entirely within traditional instruments of security governance, such as conflict prevention and mediation, crisis management, post-conflict stabilization and normative frameworks, such as human rights, human security and civilian protection. This is largely because scholars have argued that the EU’s peacebuilding framework does not yet represent a coherent intellectual project and relies on existing liberal peacebuilding frameworks affiliated with restoring security, strengthening the rule of law, supporting democratic processes, delivering humanitarian assistance, and supporting economic recovery. Yet the EU’s peace support operations should not only be studied through the lens of liberal peacebuilding, but should also be seen as self-mirroring its internal dynamics of neo-functional integration and consolidation. Thus, the EU’s external actions are partly based on the externalization of its own model of integration, especially neo-functionalism which accounts for the incremental convergence of self-interest through economic and technocratic co-operation in a particular sector, which then can spill over to other sectors and enable broader political co-operation and integration.

The EU’s peacebuilding approach is different to that of other international actors, mainly due to the contextual factors regarding how it has transformed internally, how its complex institutional and multi-layered governance works and what capacities, norms and practices it invokes in dealing with external situations. The domination of new alternative accounts, such as liberal intergovernmentalism, in explaining the EU’s common foreign and security policy, as well as the complex unfolding of EU enlargement, development, and peacebuilding policies, have overshadowed neo-functionalism’s space in exploring developments in EU peacebuilding. Liberal intergovernmentalism grants more agency to the national preferences of member states than the EU institutions in shaping internal and external policy.

In peacebuilding studies, there is a tendency to avoid neo-functionalism, because it can be associated with technocracy – the rule of experts and bureaucratic procedures, based on universal blueprints, privileging of external knowledge and imposition of frameworks for governing societies.

Despite its overshadowed academic relevance, neo-functionalism continues to be an underlining frame of reference and culture of practice among EU policy-makers and bureaucrats. Neo-functionalism accounts for the incremental convergence of self-interest through economic and technocratic co-operation in a particular sector, which can spill over to other sectors and enable broader political co-operation and integration. The increased role of the EU in merging peace, development and security speaks to the neo-functionalist evaluation of EU governance of external security. Neo-functionalism, therefore, is not only relevant for theorizing regional integration, but can also help us understand the EU’s peace support practices.

Neo-functional peace: Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue

The EU’s neo-functionalist approach has played a crucial role in normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia, and in resolving a range of outstanding political disputes. In policy discourse, the Kosovo–Serbia dialogue was presented as a major success of European foreign policy and evidence that the EU was a reliable partner of the UN. But, how has the EU managed to resolve one of the protracted conflicts in Europe?

First, as prescribed by neo-functionalists, background conditions need to be conducive for a peace process to work. In the case of Kosovo and Serbia, the background conditions were ripe for both sides to initiate a peace process, whereby the normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia emerged as a key condition for advancing the stalled EU integration process for both countries. The peace processes between Kosovo and Serbia in the past two decades are marked by several missed opportunities. The EU’s integration perspective for Kosovo and Serbia has been the driving force for both sides to engage in dialogue. Hence, despite its unpopularity now in Europe, the enlargement of the EU in the Western Balkans is key to transforming protracted conflicts.

Second, neo-functionalist approaches prefer technical dialogue and agreements in areas of ‘low politics’, which permit confidence-building, socialization and development of mutual commitments. A key feature of Kosovo–Serbia Dialogue was the conversion of sensitive political issues into technocratic process. The essence of this process was to find a mutually agreeable solution, leading to Serbia’s removal of its parallel institutions in Kosovo and de facto acceptance of Kosovo’s legal and political authority territory Kosovan territory, but also as an independent state in the region. Equally important and sensitive was Serbia’s demand to expand political rights and the scope of local self-governance of the Serb community living in Kosovo. The technical dialogue has resulted in a number of important agreements on regional co-operation and representations, integrated border management, regulation of customs steps, return of cadastral records and civil registry and recognition of university diplomas. The agreements were written in technical language but had far-reaching political implications.

Third, in neo-functionalist logic, technical agreements had a spill over effect which launched a high-level political dialogue and resolved numerous outstanding sensitive political issues. After each agreement, the EU outlined the need for continuing dialogue, for pragmatism and for new agreements. The technical dialogue has facilitated a high-level political dialogue and in turn, the political dialogue later allowed new technical agreements.  In fact, technical dialogue proved to be insufficient without upgrading the process to the highest political level that would ensure stronger political commitment, domestic legitimacy and faster progress in implementing the outcomes of the dialogue. The key breakthrough in the Kosovo–Serbia Dialogue was the negotiation of the ‘First Agreement Governing the Principles for Normalisation of Relations’, which permitted progress on sensitive political issues, such as sovereignty and regional membership, without negatively affecting the self-interest and domestic legitimacy of parties.

Fourth, neo-functionalist interactions are often embedded in multi-meaning liminalities to enable each party to interpret agreements in their own terms. While Kosovo utilized them to strengthen sovereignty, Serbia utilized the agreements to improve and advance the rights of Serbs in Kosovo and enhance its EU accession agenda.  If, however, a highly political vocabulary was used to describe the contentious issues, neither party would have been able to reach any agreement. Liminality was chosen to reduce the potential politicization of these issues and create space for both parties to sell to their domestic audiences these technical agreements as favourable deals in their national interest. For instance, the agreement on the freedom of movement provides that citizens of Kosovo and Serbia would cross the border not with passports but with ID cards, accompanied only by a written entry/exit. In this way the question of recognizing the Kosovo passport was avoided, by using alternative national documents.

Another interesting example is the IBM agreement, which for Kosovo is referred to as integrated border management, while Serbia refers to it as integrated boundary management. The substance of this agreement is in favour of Kosovan sovereignty, as it is a de facto demarcation of the border, setting the permanent border crossing between two countries where each party recognizes the jurisdiction on their respective sides.

Fifth and final feature, as the EU’s desire to reward intentions and rhetorical commitments, rather than tangible results and outcomes of the peace process, which does not exclude the possibility for encapsulation, spillback and retrenchment of all sides in the peace process. From the EU’s perspective, just the fact that the parties are talking to each other and the dialogue has not failed completely constitutes a promising basis for success. The EU has tried to promote positive conditionality and delivered some benefits irrespective of actual implementation. The facilitative role of the EU has proven to be more effective than the previous imposing nature of UNMIK in Kosovo. Nevertheless, conditionality and incentives for EU integration have certainly been key ingredients that have transformed the conflicting positions of actors.

Conclusion

Despite numerous achievements, the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia was not without challenges. The agreements deriving from technical dialogue have only partially been implemented. Each side has delayed the implementation of certain parts of agreements that were not seen to be in their best interests. Both Kosovo and Serbia ran into domestic legal and institutional complications, especially in cases which required legislative change. There is some evidence (but still limited to date) that the agreements have improved people’s lives. The main critical uncertainty is how the implementation of agreements will reshape political and institutional life in Kosovo and what role it will have in fostering local peacebuilding and ethnic reconciliation. Another critical uncertainty is the EU integration dynamics of Serbia and Kosovo, which serve as a key incentive for both sides’ engagement in the normalization dialogue. The rise of euroscepticism, refugee crises and regional instability has made enlargement unpopular within the European Union. Most importantly, Brexit and other internal challenges can hold back EU’s role as regional peacebuilder. Moreover, it remains uncertain what the endgame of the dialogue will be, especially the regulation of diplomatic relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Despite these difficulties, the progress made since 2011 compared to previous international engagement is clear, especially in opening the prospects for resolving key outstanding issues. Nevertheless, these future uncertainties show that this neo-functional peace could experience setbacks, but is a promising approach through which to view the EU’s engagement in the resolution of protracted conflicts.

The key principles of neo-functionalism, such as the interplay between technical and political, deconstructing of larger political issues into smaller technical decisions, spillover effects and shifting grounds of interests – when decontextualized and modified from their original usage to describe the EU integration process – are a useful means to conceptualize how the EU addressed the protracted conflict around the sensitive questions of sovereignty, recognition and political autonomy. This neo-functional approach does not seek to make progress by avoiding sensitive issues and focusing on something else; rather, it seeks to deconstruct the contentious issues into acceptable technical and everyday decisions. Another distinct feature of EU’s neo-functionalist approach is the extensive involvement of local actors and ownership of the process. While liberal and technocratic peacebuilding is often associated with the imposition of external blueprints and template-like solutions, and suppressing local alternative dispute resolution approaches, EU’s approach can be different. It can be a situational strategy, where the local actors are the main parties that decide on the form and substance of agreements and implementation.

EU’s neo-functionalist distinctiveness lies in its ability to transform disagreement by deconstructing language and practice and translating their meaning differently, by providing facilitative space through third parties. This sequential approach to the peace process has been first and foremost a practice and process-driven approach. Technocracy in this context does not depoliticize issues, but it helps reframe, temporarily at least, the meaning of things in such a fashion that it enables the transformation of hostilities and building of interdependent co-operation. It is this logic from its own history which makes neo-functional approach again a useful way to think about EU peace support practices. This approach deserves more merit and needs to explore how it can be utilised in contemporary peace-making and mediation efforts, especially in frozen and protracted conflicts.

Dr Gëzim Visoka is a Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies at Dublin City University. His latest book entitled “Peace Figuration after International Intervention: Intentions, Events, and Consequences of Liberal Peacebuilding” is out this month with Routledge.

Professor John Doyle is Director of the Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction and the Executive Dean in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Dublin City University.

Young people are frequently ‘othered’ in discussions about on conflict. This is a dangerous practice as youths can play a very positive role aiding peacebuilding in societies recovering from conflict.

The UN World Population Prospects statistics estimate that there are 1.3 billion 15-24 years olds in the world and nearly one billion live in developing countries where conflict is more likely to have taken place.

In such demographic realities, the potential youths hold for change and positive action is the subject of growing research agenda, and this is particularly the case with the recent wave of social upheavals and humanitarian crises in different parts of the world.

For much of human social interaction, the category called ‘youth’ has been perceived as a historically constructed social category, a relational concept, and as a group of actors that is far from homogenous. A myriad of factors make childhood and youth highly heterogeneous categories in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, political position as well as age.

They also have multi-faceted roles. Youths can be heroes as well as victims, saviours and courageous in the midst of crisis, as well as criminals in the shantytowns and military entrepreneurs in the war zones. Yet, as a category, youth are often approached as a fixed group or demographic cohort.

Youth, peace and conflict

Youths as a conceptual category are frequently ‘othered’ in the discourse on conflict. They are seen as potentially dangerous ‘subjects’ and policy approaches often regard them as ‘a problem’. Often, male youths in the age group 16-30 have been observed as the main protagonists of criminal and political violence. In other words, much of contemporary thinking on youth and conflict tends to be overly negative. It focuses on the dangers posed by disaffected youths as is evident in the negative connotations of the ‘youth bulge’ or ‘at risk youth’ concepts.

A number of dangerous assumptions about the role, position, and contribution of youths appear to plague thinking among national and international elites driving recovery efforts within societies in transition. The majority of national and international policy pronouncements or security-related programmes in post-conflict and fragile contexts reflect a polarised discourse.

The young vacillate between the two extremes of ‘infantilizing’ and ‘demonizing’. On the one hand, youths are viewed as vulnerable, powerless and in need of protection. On the other, they are feared as dangerous, violent, apathetic and as threats to security. Youths are subjected to stereotypical images of being angry, drugged and violent and as threat, especially those who participated in armed conflict as combatants.

On the other hand, recent literature on youth in post-conflict societies marks a shift in thinking about youth. It underlines the agency perspective, and acknowledges the importance of making the connection between youth and peacebuilding for transforming a predominantly negative discourse on the role of youths in societies recovering from conflict.

Youth as peacebuilders

The positioning of youth in society has a bearing on their leadership potential and their possible role in peacebuilding. The tension between young and old has been one of the key features of inter-generational shifts pertaining to the control over power, resources and people.

The tension lies in the palpable impatience of youth, their desire to strive for more, their willingness to be seen as responsible and capable, and the structural barriers to their social mobility. Independence from others and responsibility for others, such as taking care of a family or household, can be seen as defining markers of pre-requisites of social adulthood.

In this sense, dependency, exclusion, and social or political marginalization become prominent sources of social contest. At the same time, it should be recognised that such societal dynamics, challenges and opportunities vary across different cultural contexts whether it is in Africa, Europe, Asia or Latin America.

Within the challenging fluidity of post-conflict environments, which are nothing but contexts where the politics of war continue through different means, the young would need to show great ‘navigational skills’ in order to respond to such power dynamics. Their social, political and economic navigation is about their identity transformation as well as the negotiation or re-negotiation of societal norms, values and structures so that they can find a voice and place in the emerging structures of post-conflict environments.

What needs to be underlined is that youth should be conceptualized and studied as agents of positive peace in terms of addressing not only the challenges of physical violence, but also the challenges of structural and cultural violence, and the broader social change processes to transform violent, oppressive and hierarchical structures, as well as behaviour, relationships and attitudes into more participatory and inclusive ones.

The key point to remember is that without recognizing youths as political actors, their trajectories in peacebuilding would likely be ignored, wasted and at best, under-utilized. To recognize their agency as a political actor in peacebuilding, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of their conflict trajectories, and this is particularly important for those young people who have taken direct participation in an armed conflict as combatants.

To understand the engagement of youth in peacebuilding, first of all, the youth mobilization and reintegration factors such as who they are, what they did before the conflict, how they were recruited, what specific fighting roles they undertook, what they experienced physically, socio-economically and psychologically, during the armed conflict, and what ‘home’ context they will be reintegrating into will all be critical for the youth’s trajectories in peacebuilding.

Second, the involvement of youth in non-violent politics, and from a wider perspective, the enablement of their political agency in a more positive and peace-oriented role in post-conflict environments, is likely to depend on how these trajectories are shaped by the overall political and governance context.

Third, the enablement of youth as an active agent in peacebuilding cannot be considered without considering such challenges they tend to face due to the armed conflict such as the loss of education, a lack of employable skills and the destruction of a stable family environment. The wider socio-economic needs of youths are often ignored in post-conflict contexts as they are not seen as a ‘vulnerable’ group.

Fourth, it is important to provide youths with training opportunities to take an active part in peacebuilding. With their youthful energy and capabilities, and ability of adaptation to new technological trends, for example, youths could act as mediators, community mobilisers, humanitarian workers and peace brokers. Like any particular conflict affected population group, the mobilisation of youths’ capacities requires a targeted and long-term approach.

At the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, an annual event called Global Peace Workshop is held in Turkey every year. Around 70-80 young participants from across the world get together in this one-week training, networking and solidarity event, and it is incredible to see the transformation of those young people in a such a short span of time as peacebuilders and start undertaking a wide range of peacebuilding projects in their own communities, schools and work places.

Fifth, the engagement of youth in peacebuilding in a wider perspective can be ensured through the arts, culture, tourism, sports and education. The innovativeness and creativeness of young people in those areas could be mobilised effectively by connecting them with wider peacebuilding objectives such as building bridges between divided communities and ensuring a viable process of reconciliation.

There are many examples across the world of the contributions that the young make towards peacebuilding such as the strengthening of community cohesion and reconciliation in South Sudan, civic awareness for peaceful social relations and development programmes in Nepal,  trust-building across different ethno-religious groups in Sri Lanka, and community entrepreneurship and livelihoods programmes in Burundi. Furthermore, the UN Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development  Report entitled ‘Young People’s Participation in Peacebuilding: A Practice Note’ presents a number of policy and programme examples from different conflict affected countries that would facilitate such participation more effectively.

Finally, in undertaking all of these objectives it is also pivotal to avoid the well-known cliché of referring to youths as the ‘future leaders’. Leadership should not be considered as a factor of age and providing appropriate governance contexts would likely enable young people to flourish as leaders today. In other words, they need to be treated as leaders today without postponing it to an elusive future whether it is in governance in general or peacebuilding programmes specifically.

To achieve this objective there have recently been a number of critical developments such as the UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security of December 2015 which makes a clear recognition of positive contributions of youth to peace and sets an overall framework to support their efforts. In May 2016, the UN Peacebuilding Fund started its first Youth Promotion Initiative, which could play a key role to encourage youth leadership in peacebuilding. Therefore, the current trends show that there will be many more similar youth leadership programmes across the world in the near future, but the key point for their successes will depend on whether or not such initiatives can also respond to wider socio-economic, cultural and political barriers that young people face in their quest of becoming an active agent of positive change, peacebuilding and reconciliation.

Professor Alpaslan Ozerdem is Co-Director of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University.

Young people are frequently ‘othered’ in discussions about on conflict. This is a dangerous practice as youths can play a very positive role aiding peacebuilding in societies recovering from conflict.

The UN World Population Prospects statistics estimate that there are 1.3 billion 15-24 years olds in the world and nearly one billion live in developing countries where conflict is more likely to have taken place.

In such demographic realities, the potential youths hold for change and positive action is the subject of growing research agenda, and this is particularly the case with the recent wave of social upheavals and humanitarian crises in different parts of the world.

For much of human social interaction, the category called ‘youth’ has been perceived as a historically constructed social category, a relational concept, and as a group of actors that is far from homogenous. A myriad of factors make childhood and youth highly heterogeneous categories in terms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, political position as well as age.

They also have multi-faceted roles. Youths can be heroes as well as victims, saviours and courageous in the midst of crisis, as well as criminals in the shantytowns and military entrepreneurs in the war zones. Yet, as a category, youth are often approached as a fixed group or demographic cohort.

Youth, peace and conflict

Youths as a conceptual category are frequently ‘othered’ in the discourse on conflict. They are seen as potentially dangerous ‘subjects’ and policy approaches often regard them as ‘a problem’. Often, male youths in the age group 16-30 have been observed as the main protagonists of criminal and political violence. In other words, much of contemporary thinking on youth and conflict tends to be overly negative. It focuses on the dangers posed by disaffected youths as is evident in the negative connotations of the ‘youth bulge’ or ‘at risk youth’ concepts.

A number of dangerous assumptions about the role, position, and contribution of youths appear to plague thinking among national and international elites driving recovery efforts within societies in transition. The majority of national and international policy pronouncements or security-related programmes in post-conflict and fragile contexts reflect a polarised discourse.

The young vacillate between the two extremes of ‘infantilizing’ and ‘demonizing’. On the one hand, youths are viewed as vulnerable, powerless and in need of protection. On the other, they are feared as dangerous, violent, apathetic and as threats to security. Youths are subjected to stereotypical images of being angry, drugged and violent and as threat, especially those who participated in armed conflict as combatants.

On the other hand, recent literature on youth in post-conflict societies marks a shift in thinking about youth. It underlines the agency perspective, and acknowledges the importance of making the connection between youth and peacebuilding for transforming a predominantly negative discourse on the role of youths in societies recovering from conflict.

Youth as peacebuilders

The positioning of youth in society has a bearing on their leadership potential and their possible role in peacebuilding. The tension between young and old has been one of the key features of inter-generational shifts pertaining to the control over power, resources and people.

The tension lies in the palpable impatience of youth, their desire to strive for more, their willingness to be seen as responsible and capable, and the structural barriers to their social mobility. Independence from others and responsibility for others, such as taking care of a family or household, can be seen as defining markers of pre-requisites of social adulthood.

In this sense, dependency, exclusion, and social or political marginalization become prominent sources of social contest. At the same time, it should be recognised that such societal dynamics, challenges and opportunities vary across different cultural contexts whether it is in Africa, Europe, Asia or Latin America.

Within the challenging fluidity of post-conflict environments, which are nothing but contexts where the politics of war continue through different means, the young would need to show great ‘navigational skills’ in order to respond to such power dynamics. Their social, political and economic navigation is about their identity transformation as well as the negotiation or re-negotiation of societal norms, values and structures so that they can find a voice and place in the emerging structures of post-conflict environments.

What needs to be underlined is that youth should be conceptualized and studied as agents of positive peace in terms of addressing not only the challenges of physical violence, but also the challenges of structural and cultural violence, and the broader social change processes to transform violent, oppressive and hierarchical structures, as well as behaviour, relationships and attitudes into more participatory and inclusive ones.

The key point to remember is that without recognizing youths as political actors, their trajectories in peacebuilding would likely be ignored, wasted and at best, under-utilized. To recognize their agency as a political actor in peacebuilding, there needs to be a comprehensive understanding of their conflict trajectories, and this is particularly important for those young people who have taken direct participation in an armed conflict as combatants.

To understand the engagement of youth in peacebuilding, first of all, the youth mobilization and reintegration factors such as who they are, what they did before the conflict, how they were recruited, what specific fighting roles they undertook, what they experienced physically, socio-economically and psychologically, during the armed conflict, and what ‘home’ context they will be reintegrating into will all be critical for the youth’s trajectories in peacebuilding.

Second, the involvement of youth in non-violent politics, and from a wider perspective, the enablement of their political agency in a more positive and peace-oriented role in post-conflict environments, is likely to depend on how these trajectories are shaped by the overall political and governance context.

Third, the enablement of youth as an active agent in peacebuilding cannot be considered without considering such challenges they tend to face due to the armed conflict such as the loss of education, a lack of employable skills and the destruction of a stable family environment. The wider socio-economic needs of youths are often ignored in post-conflict contexts as they are not seen as a ‘vulnerable’ group.

Fourth, it is important to provide youths with training opportunities to take an active part in peacebuilding. With their youthful energy and capabilities, and ability of adaptation to new technological trends, for example, youths could act as mediators, community mobilisers, humanitarian workers and peace brokers. Like any particular conflict affected population group, the mobilisation of youths’ capacities requires a targeted and long-term approach.

At the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, an annual event called Global Peace Workshop is held in Turkey every year. Around 70-80 young participants from across the world get together in this one-week training, networking and solidarity event, and it is incredible to see the transformation of those young people in a such a short span of time as peacebuilders and start undertaking a wide range of peacebuilding projects in their own communities, schools and work places.

Fifth, the engagement of youth in peacebuilding in a wider perspective can be ensured through the arts, culture, tourism, sports and education. The innovativeness and creativeness of young people in those areas could be mobilised effectively by connecting them with wider peacebuilding objectives such as building bridges between divided communities and ensuring a viable process of reconciliation.

There are many examples across the world of the contributions that the young make towards peacebuilding such as the strengthening of community cohesion and reconciliation in South Sudan, civic awareness for peaceful social relations and development programmes in Nepal,  trust-building across different ethno-religious groups in Sri Lanka, and community entrepreneurship and livelihoods programmes in Burundi. Furthermore, the UN Inter-Agency Network on Youth Development  Report entitled ‘Young People’s Participation in Peacebuilding: A Practice Note’ presents a number of policy and programme examples from different conflict affected countries that would facilitate such participation more effectively.

Finally, in undertaking all of these objectives it is also pivotal to avoid the well-known cliché of referring to youths as the ‘future leaders’. Leadership should not be considered as a factor of age and providing appropriate governance contexts would likely enable young people to flourish as leaders today. In other words, they need to be treated as leaders today without postponing it to an elusive future whether it is in governance in general or peacebuilding programmes specifically.

To achieve this objective there have recently been a number of critical developments such as the UN Security Council Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security of December 2015 which makes a clear recognition of positive contributions of youth to peace and sets an overall framework to support their efforts. In May 2016, the UN Peacebuilding Fund started its first Youth Promotion Initiative, which could play a key role to encourage youth leadership in peacebuilding. Therefore, the current trends show that there will be many more similar youth leadership programmes across the world in the near future, but the key point for their successes will depend on whether or not such initiatives can also respond to wider socio-economic, cultural and political barriers that young people face in their quest of becoming an active agent of positive change, peacebuilding and reconciliation.

Professor Alpaslan Ozerdem is Co-Director of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University.

Dr Michael Nest has expertise in political and social issues around mining. He is also an anti-corruption expert and formerly worked for the Independent Commission Against Corruption in Sydney, Australia. He has recently focused on building capacity to prevent corruption in community development programmes, including a research paper on corruption in local-level development schemes funded by mineral revenues.  Michael is the author of Coltan (Polity Press, 2011), which is about the changing global supply chain for the mineral ‘coltan’ (or tantalum), the new US legislation focused on conflict minerals, and China’s emerging role in the market for this mineral. In 2012 and 2014, Michael advised African governments on the new certification mechanism for tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold being established to prevent conflict minerals from Central Africa entering the supply chain.  His latest co-authored book, Still a Pygmy: the unique struggle of one man’s fight to save his identity from extinction (Finch, 2015) is the first memoir by a Pygmy ever published.

In this interview, Dr. Nest discusses the political, environmental, ethical and social issues surrounding the mining of columbite–tantalite (coltan).

Q. In the past, arguably very few had heard of coltan. Yet in the past two decades it has entered into discussions in the UN and featured in several international media outlets’ reports. What is coltan and what is it used for?

Coltan is the nickname for the mineral ‘tantalite’.  When processed, the mineral tantalite is called tantalum – so tantalum is the metal.

Coltan – or properly speaking, the metal ‘tantalum’ – has a wide application.  About two-thirds of coltan is used in a device called a ‘capacitor’.  Capacitors are found in electronic products, especially consumer electronic products such as mobile phones, laptops, gaming platforms, and ipads, and are used to store and regulate the flow of electricity from the source of power (such as a battery) to the working parts of the device.  Capacitors have a crucial role in ensuring there is no power surge or fluctuations to the device that could disable or break it.  Coltan is also used for special alloys (mixtures of different metals), in memory chips for electronic consumer goods, and special coatings (such as on camera lenses).

Q. In which parts of the world is coltan mined?

Coltan comes from three sources: as a by-product of tin slag (20% of supply) – ‘slag’ is the waste material that sits in dumps around historic tin mines; recycling (30% of supply); and mines (50% of supply).

Coltan is extracted from tin slag in Brazil, Malaysia and Thailand.  Coltan that comes from recycled scrap materials is extracted at metal recycling plants in many countries around the world.

In terms of mines producing coltan/tantalite, these are found around the world.  In 2016, according to the US Geological Survey, the biggest producers of coltan are Rwanda, D.R. Congo, Brazil, China, and Australia (in this order), although historically Canada and Ethiopia have also been significant producers, and Australia was the largest producer until the global financial crisis in 2008.  There are lower levels of mine production in Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.  Tantalite deposits have been identified and are being explored in Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Greenland, Madagascar, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

Q. There has been some literature examining the relationship between coltan extraction and violence with a fair amount of discussion focused on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). What role did coltan play in the DRC’s war?

The allegation made by activist organisations focused on reducing conflict in the D.R. Congo is that profits from coltan mining were a primary source of funding for armed militias waging war against the government.  These militias, so the argument goes, used coltan profits to buy weapons and food, which allowed them to wage war.  Militias in the DRC are notorious for their attacks on civilian populations, so the argument was not just that coltan profits perpetuated conflict against the government, but also that these profits were a chief cause of massacres of civilians, systemic rape and widespread destruction of property of civilians who live in Eastern DRC where coltan mines are located.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, activist organisations – as well as some media, academics and the UN – made connections between coltan profits and conflict in Eastern DRC, and focused overwhelmingly on coltan and not other minerals.  Many journalists continue to portray coltan as a major cause of conflict, although other commentators have now backed away from such simplistic claims and talk more broadly about ‘conflict minerals’ and acknowledge that conflict in the DRC occurs for a complex range of reasons.

Conflict in Eastern DRC occurs for multiple reasons, including:

• Local level struggles by powerful individuals for political domination
• Competition for land for agricultural purposes
• Ethnic rivalry
• For control of natural resources, especially minerals
• To protect land from outsiders seeking to exploit it (e.g., miners and loggers)
• Poor men waging war as a means of making a living through theft and looting

There were also broader factors around national-level conflict over the past 20 years that have drawn in local level actors and created incentives for war, including: military campaigns in DRC territory by the Rwandan and Ugandan armies (supposed by their local Congolese allies) focused on security concerns regarding opponents of their respective governments; defensive military campaigns by the DRC armed forces and government-allied local forces against the Rwandans and Ugandans and their proxies in the DRC, including retribution against civilian populations when they have regained territory; and armed groups with regional political agendas that oppose the DRC national government.  Fighting over mineral deposits was a minor element in all of these conflicts (a UN estimate of 1,500 local-level conflicts in the early 2000s was that fighting over natural resources accounted for only 8% of all conflicts), and conflict over coltan deposits was even less significant.

As I argue in my book Coltan (Polity 2011), some armed groups did, however, profit from coltan and undoubtedly these profits were used to buy weapons, food and other material used to wage war.  These profits were gained in four ways: armed groups stole coltan stocks from mine sites and mining companies’ depots; armed groups directly controlled production of coltan by controlling mines themselves; armed groups taxed the trade of coltan into and out of territory they controlled (as they did for other minerals and goods); and armed groups became directly involved in the export of coltan from Central Africa to the buyers on the international minerals market.  Calculating profits made from coltan is difficult, but I estimate that the total amount made by the Rwandan army from coltan in 1999 was approximately US$62m; by the Rwandan army and its Congolese-based ally (the RCD-Goma) in 2000 approximately US$10m; and by all armed groups in 2008 approximately US$11.8m.  Note that the high total in 1999 was largely because the price of coltan on the international market boomed that year and in 2000.

In sum, the war in the DRC was never just about minerals, and was certainly never just about coltan (gold, tin and tungsten were also importance sources of mineral revenue in the 2000s).  Tracing the role of coltan in war in the DRC, however, can tell us a lot about the connections between natural resources and conflict generally and research into these connections have helped broaden our understanding of the relationships between these natural resources and war.

Q. Were any Western corporations responsible for indirectly financing armed groups during the war in the DRC through purchasing coltan from the country?

During the wars between 1998 and 2003 companies from many different countries were involved in the coltan trade, including Western corporations.  The UN’s Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the D. R. Congo (April 2001) identified scores of private trading, brokerage, banking and transportation firms that participated in the illegal exploitation of natural resources from the DRC by trading or importing coltan from the DRC.

While almost none of these transactions were directly with armed groups (with the probable exception of some transactions involving Rwandan and Congolese firms), foreign firms were an important element of the coltan commodity chain that enabled armed groups in the DRC to profit from the production and export of illegally mined coltan to the rest of the world.

Because of the conflicted and dangerous conditions in Eastern DRC at the time, few foreign companies sent representatives into the country.  Instead, smaller Congolese or Rwandan trading firms bought and transported coltan into Rwanda, from where international minerals trading companies then imported it.  The UN identified twenty-seven firms from the following countries that imported coltan from the DRC via Rwanda: Rwanda (2 firms), Malaysia (1 firm), Germany (3 firms), Belgium (10 firms), Switzerland (1 firm), Netherlands (4 firms), UK (2 firms), Kenya (1 firm), India (1 firms), Pakistan (1 firm), and Russia (1 firm).  These firms sold the coltan they imported on to other minerals trading firms, or they sold it directly to processing plants.

Three big minerals processing plants bought much of the coltan that was exported via Rwanda during the early phase of the Congo Wars: Cabot from Canada, HC Starck from Germany and Ningxia Non-Ferrous Metals Smelter from China.  After 2001, Cabot and HC Starck released statements saying they no longer bought Congolese coltan.

Several airlines were involved in flying coltan out of Rwanda to second destinations, including Alliance Express (then 49% owned by South African Airways and 51% owned by the Rwandan government), Kencargo International (20% owned by Martinair), Airflo, Astral Aviation, and Martinair Holland, as well as the former Swissair and Sabena before these airlines collapsed.

The UN’s final report into the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the DRC (published October 2002), recommended placing financial sanctions on 29 companies from Belgium, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC itself, that were identified as being involved in the illegal coltan trade.  The same report identified businesses from OECD countries that the UN considered to be in violation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, including from the UK, USA, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany.  Firms from non-OECD countries that were also identified as having violated these guidelines were from Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, South Africa, and St Kitts.  The UN did not recommend sanctions on these OECD and non-OECD firms.  Rather, it brought attention to the firms’ breaches of these guidelines, presumably with a view to the companies then being reported to the national reporting contact point for such breaches in the relevant OECD country.

Q. In addition to the human rights issues attached to the coltan industry, is the mining process itself environmentally harmful?

Yes, there are environmental harms associated with coltan mining.  In the DRC, coltan mining overwhelmingly uses artisanal and small-scale (and occasionally medium scale) methods, although the harms these methods cause to the environment are not distinctive in that there is nothing specific about mining coltan that creates a different kind of harm to, for example, tin or tungsten.  Compare this to gold, where there are harms associated with the use of mercury.

 

In the DRC when a coltan deposit is found, miners rush in to exploit the site, regardless of whether it is on agricultural land or in a national park, and the mining destroys the potential for the land to be used for grazing or cropping, or as a biological reserve for fauna and flora.  Like other artisanal mining of minerals, artisanal coltan mining involves stripping forest and bush cover, then any topsoil, and digging pits to a depth of about 6m to get access to the ore deposit.  Water, provided through a pump system where a generator can be used, or by diverting a creek or river if a generator is not available, is used to soften the earth and rock, to break it up, and then to separate mineral ore from soil and to wash away the soil.  Water use is a major factor in the environmental harm caused by mining.

As I outlined in my book Coltan on pp.49-50, specific environmental effects of artisanal coltan mining include the following:

• Forest clearance to expose soil for mining;
• Cutting of timber to build worker camps;
• Cutting of firewood;
• Removing the bark from trees to make panning trays to wash coltan;
• Pollution of streams by silt from washing process;
• Diversion of streams from their original course;
• Cutting lianas to make baskets to carry coltan;
• Hunting animals, including for food, ivory and other body parts;
• Animals injured after escaping snares;
• Disturbance of fauna due to people resident in, and moving through, reserves;
• Reduced population of invertebrates and reduced photosynthesis in aquatic plants due to silting of streams;
• Reduced fish stocks in lakes and rivers affected by silt pollution;
• Erosion, including landslides, of unprotected ground during rains;
• Ecological changes due to loss of key species, such as elephants;
• Long-term changes in watershed due to rapid run-off in deforested areas;

There have been some studies that document these impacts.  A study of mining communities in the Kahuzi Biéga National Park in 1999 found that they ate elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, buffalo, and antelope – all poached from the park.  However, a subsequent report in 2001 found that tortoises, birds, small antelope, and monkeys were being eaten because all the big animals had been killed.

Q. Do you feel that there are any plausible ways for companies to be certain that the coltan they use in manufacturing their products is not from a conflict zone or unethically produced?

A company can improve certainty around the origins of any coltan used in its products, if it sources metals directly through a smelter that has an exclusive long-term contract with a coltan producer in a country such as Brazil, China, or Mozambique.  In such smelters, supply from these producers is so consistent there is virtually no likelihood of it being ‘contaminated’ by ore from other destinations.  The conflict-free smelter programme, which works with over 200 smelters, has safeguards in place to verify the origins of minerals processed by its members.  While there is always a chance that these consignments of minerals could be mixed with ore from militia-controlled mines in the D.R. Congo, this would be fairly unlikely as the reputation of the smelter (and the programme) is at stake and there is considerable due diligence around the provenance of minerals.

The challenge of sourcing ethically produced coltan is complicated when companies are buying components, especially components manufactured from yet other components, to manufacture their final goods, e.g., electronic items.  It is impracticable for an end-manufacturer to check the origin of all the metals that are used in all components – because literally thousands of components may be involved – and unrealistic to think that companies are able to do this.  The best they can do, is try to identify component manufacturers that have declared they will abide by ethical standards for sourcing minerals and have systems in place this claim to be verified – and of course end-product manufacturers should insist on seeing evidence of such checks.

It is important that all D.R. Congo coltan is not seen as being a ‘conflict mineral’, in a way that become common after the US Government first passed its conflict minerals Dodd-Frank legislation in 2010.  Civilian Congolese producers of coltan should be allowed to sell their product on the world market, and such production and trade is one of the few economic opportunities available to many Congolese.  The emphasis in terms of due diligence around ethical production of coltan should be on determining if coltan comes from conflict zones and is produced by armed groups, rather than if it comes from the DRC itself – this is an important distinction.  There are various schemes in place, or being established, in the DRC to ensure civilian-produced coltan is traced through to export.  The most well-known of these is the industry traceability and due diligence programme for coltan, tin and tungsten, which is managed by the International Tin Research Institute.

Q. As you mention, there have been a range of international efforts that have endeavoured to address the ethics surrounding coltan mining. Overall, do you feel that current efforts are succeeding or falling short?

Efforts have brought attention to ongoing violence and instability in the DRC, which is a good thing.  The problem is that the focus of activists, and even government initiatives such as the US Dodd-Frank legislation, has often been solely on conflict minerals as a cause of violence rather than a range of factors.  Thus, while there is heightened attention, there is also a simplified narrative being propagated that is detrimental to understanding the causes and consequences of the conflicts.

There is no doubt that international efforts have had an effect on the mining industry in DRC, but also Rwanda.  The passing of US legislation and consequence temporary embargo by the DRC government in late 2011 on any exports of conflict minerals, severely curtailed mining and trading of these minerals in eastern provinces (it was business as usual for mining in other provinces, such as Katanga).  This showed that international efforts can definitely have an impact (presumably President Kabila of the DRC felt that he had to impose the embargo to appear to be doing something about the conflict minerals trade).  New OECD regulations, the conflict-free smelter program and the International Tin Research Institute’s ‘tag and bag’ scheme for tin and coltan in Rwanda and some mines in DRC are also closing opportunities for ‘laundering’ conflict minerals through civilian-controlled supply chains, while also guaranteeing opportunities for civilian-produced and traded minerals.

There are criticisms of these schemes, especially ITRI’s tracking scheme which is expensive for participants, and regional governments and officials feel they are excluded from its data or operations.  Nevertheless, in a complex and difficult political and economic environment, the combination of regional and international efforts have resulted in more mines and more mineral transactions coming under civilian control, and therefore generated economic opportunities for Congolese civilians.  This said, anti-government militias and the DRC army are still involved in some mining and trading of the 3Ts and gold.

The big question is whether current political tensions around President Kabila’s possible election to a third term, will cause the ITRI scheme to be suspended, see renewed militias activity in Eastern provinces, and a resumption of widespread smuggling of minerals out of Eastern Congo into Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

Q. Do you think China will complement the efforts of Western organizations and the DRC’s own efforts at cracking down on the conflict mineral trade or will China’s status as the world’s largest coltan refiner make matters more difficult?

To answer this question properly, we have to pull apart the idea of ‘China’.  The Chinese government may have some interest in protecting its international reputation by participating in or publicly supporting international government initiatives to control the production and trade of conflict minerals.  This might include passing some minimal regulation on its own industry (possibly that it has no intention of enforcing).  It will have no interest in supporting activist initiatives, as it will not to want to fuel or strengthen independent civil society, let alone one that might actually have influence over aspects of international commerce.  The Chinese minerals industry, on the other hand, is aware of its strong and growing position in the global mining and minerals sector – a sector that the Chinese government itself sees as strategic.  Without pressure from its own government to desist from importing, smelting or otherwise trading in conflict minerals, the Chinese minerals industry will see no reason to change the current situation.  Some Chinese consumer product manufacturers, especially in the electronics sector, will be aware of the potential for boycotts by Western consumers to damage their sales and reputation, but Western consumers are not significant for some electronics manufacturers.  Asian (especially Chinese), African and Latin American consumers will be far more important, and awareness or concern by these consumers about conflict minerals is low.  In sum, while Chinese actors may be interested in some international efforts to regulate the trade of certain products, conflict minerals will be low on the list of priorities and there is unlikely to be any Chinese effort in this regard.

Q. Looking to the future, what impact do you feel Donald Trump’s presidency may have on talking the problem of conflict minerals?

Trump made it clear during his campaign that he is in favour of minimal regulation for business and that the US should be more isolationist in terms of spending less time and effort worrying about global affairs.  Given that responses to conflict minerals are based around additional regulations for business (regulations that everyone agrees have a cost in terms of compliance), which also represent an effort by OECD governments to shape conflict minerals production and trade in Central Africa, a Trump administration is highly unlikely to have much, if any, interest in such initiatives.  US business groups have already contested the regulations of the Dodd-Frank Act, and they will see a Trump presidency as creating another opportunity to exert pressure and have the regulations pared back or abolished.  A Trump administration is also likely to cut funding for USAID projects focused on capacity building for Central African governments to regulate production and trade of the mining industry.