Bandi Mbubi: Demand a fair trade cell phone

29,726 views ・ 2012-09-24

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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I want to talk to you today
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about a difficult topic that is close to me,
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and closer than you might realize to you.
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I came to the UK 21 years ago, as an asylum-seeker.
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I was 21.
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I was forced to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
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my home, where I was a student activist.
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I would love my children to be able to meet my family in the Congo.
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But I want to tell you what the Congo has got to do with you.
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But first of all, I want you to do me a favor.
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Can you all please reach into your pockets and take out your mobile phone?
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Feel that familiar weight ...
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how naturally your finger slides towards the buttons.
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(Laughter)
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Can you imagine your world without it?
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It connects us to our loved ones,
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our family, friends and colleagues,
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at home and overseas.
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It is a symbol of an interconnected world.
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But what you hold in your hand leaves a bloody trail,
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and it all boils down to a mineral:
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tantalum, mined in the Congo as coltan.
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It is an anticorrosive heat conductor.
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It stores energy in our mobile phones, PlayStations and laptops.
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It is used in aerospace and medical equipment as an alloy.
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It is so powerful that we only need tiny amounts.
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It would be great if the story ended there.
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Unfortunately, what you hold in your hand
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has not only enabled incredible technological development
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and industrial expansion,
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but it has also contributed to unimaginable human suffering.
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Since 1996,
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over five million people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
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Countless women, men and children have been raped, tortured or enslaved.
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Rape is used as a weapon of war,
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instilling fear and depopulating whole areas.
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The quest for extracting this mineral
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has not only aided, but it has fueled
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the ongoing war in the Congo.
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But don't throw away your phones yet.
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Thirty thousand children are enlisted
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and are made to fight in armed groups.
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The Congo consistently scores dreadfully
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in global health and poverty rankings.
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But remarkably,
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the UN Environmental Programme has estimated the wealth of the country
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to be over 24 trillion dollars.
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The state-regulated mining industry has collapsed,
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and control over mines has splintered.
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Coltan is easily controlled by armed groups.
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One well-known illicit trade route is that across the border to Rwanda,
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where Congolese tantalum is disguised as Rwandan.
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But don't throw away your phones yet,
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because the incredible irony
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is that the technology that has placed such unsustainable,
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devastating demands on the Congo
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is the same technology that has brought this situation to our attention.
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We only know so much about the situation in the Congo and in the mines
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because of the kind of communication the mobile phone allows.
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As with the Arab Spring,
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during the recent elections in the Congo,
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voters were able to send text messages of local polling stations
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to the headquarters in the capital, Kinshasa.
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And in the wake of the result,
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the diaspora has joined with the Carter Center,
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the Catholic Church and other observers,
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to draw attention to the undemocratic result.
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The mobile phone has given people around the world
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an important tool towards gaining their political freedom.
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It has truly revolutionized the way we communicate on the planet.
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It has allowed momentous political change to take place.
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So, we are faced with a paradox.
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The mobile phone is an instrument of freedom
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and an instrument of oppression.
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TED has always celebrated what technology can do for us,
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technology in its finished form.
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It is time to be asking questions about technology.
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Where does it come from?
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Who makes it?
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And for what?
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Here, I am speaking directly to you,
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the TED community,
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and to all those who might be watching on a screen,
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on your phone, across the world,
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in the Congo.
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All the technology is in place for us to communicate,
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and all the technology is in place to communicate this.
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At the moment,
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there is no clear fair-trade solution.
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But there has been a huge amount of progress.
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The US has recently passed legislation
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to target bribery and misconduct in the Congo.
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Recent UK legislation could be used in the same way.
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In February, Nokia unveiled its new policy on sourcing minerals in the Congo,
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and there is a petition to Apple to make a conflict-free iPhone.
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There are campaigns spreading across university campuses
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to make their colleges conflict-free.
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But we're not there yet.
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We need to continue mounting pressure on phone companies
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to change their sourcing processes.
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When I first came to the UK, 21 years ago,
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I was homesick.
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I missed my family and the friends I left behind.
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Communication was extremely difficult.
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Sending and receiving letters took months --
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if you were lucky.
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Often, they never arrived.
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Even if I could have afforded the phone bills home,
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like most people in the Congo,
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my parents did not own a phone line.
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Today, my two sons --
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David and Daniel,
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can talk to my parents and get to know them.
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Why should we allow
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such a wonderful, brilliant and necessary product
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to be the cause of unnecessary suffering
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for human beings?
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We demand fair-trade food and fair-trade clothes.
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It is time to demand fair-trade phones.
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This is an idea worth spreading.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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