 So, okay. Thank you for this opportunity to present you something on the formalization efforts of the formalization efforts of the artisanal mining sector in Eastern DRC. So, I'm Ken Matassa and I'm working for the International Peace Information Service, which is a Belgian based research institute that does research on complex motives in Sub-Saharan Africa. And so today I will tell you something about, like I said, the formalization efforts of artisanal mining in Eastern DRC and the main driving force behind it, which is the conflict minerals issue. So, first of all, I will give you some more info on the artisanal mining sector in the Congo. So, for the moment, mining in Eastern DRC is almost entirely done through artisanal mining. Industrial mining has almost completely disappeared during the 1990s for several reasons, but I've listed the most important ones here. So, there's Mobutu's devastating economic rule. You have the collapse of mineral prices at the world market at the end of the 1980s, and there's, of course, the Congolese wars in the 1990s. Then, there's many things to say about the artisanal mining sector in Eastern DRC, but for the sake of time I've just selected the two most relevant characteristics for this presentation, which is, first of all, that the artisanal mining sector in Eastern DRC is very informal. There are hardly any miners that are officially registered, but this does not mean, however, that the sector is completely chaotic. The sector is very well structured, indeed. So, there are about, yeah, the estimate is 500,000 to 2 million miners that are working in the mines in the Congo, and they dig the minerals, they exploit minerals with a lot of manpower and very rudimentary tools. Next, they sell their production to local traders who transport minerals from the remote mining sites to trading towns next to the Eastern Congolese border, from where export houses export minerals to the world markets. So, then the second important characteristic is the fact that artisanal mining has become a very important livelihood strategy for many people in Eastern DRC. There is an estimate that 10 to 12 million people depend directly or indirectly on artisanal mining for their income. When I say indirectly, it means, for example, dependents of the miners or shopkeepers at the mining sites or any other business which is linked to the mining sector. So, the fact that the state is hardly present in the Eastern part of the country and the fact that the artisanal mining sector is highly informal makes it very vulnerable to armed groups. Because, indeed, minerals are an important source of revenues, if not the most important source of revenues for many armed groups in Eastern DRC. And when we're talking about armed groups, we're talking about rebellions as well as units of the national army. So, as such, minerals do play a very important role in the prolongation of insecurity and conflict in Eastern DRC. But it's very important on the line that these minerals are definitely not the cause of the conflict. And this is a very important remark because with the heightened attention at the scene of the international community over the last years, there have been many rushly executed conflict analysis which do see a quite direct link between mineral exploitation and conflict. And, yeah, this analysis is quite problematic. And I will come back to this later on. So, with the heightened attention for the conflict minerals issue in Eastern DRC, there has been a bigger push to formalize the artisanal mining sector. In the past, there have already been other formalization efforts, so one by the national government. Yeah, although we do have to say that it's not really an effort. It was foreseen in the Congolese mining code, which was created in cooperation with the World Bank in 2002. But this has had very little effect on the ground because, first of all, there's very little incentive for miners to formalize. In their point of view, they don't get anything in return to register. In their point of view, it's just to pay extra taxes. Because, yeah, just one example is that registered miners have very little security of tenure. If the state deems an artisanal mining site viable for industrial exploitation, it can chase the miners away within 60 days. Furthermore, also, traders or exporters have very little incentive to go formal because export taxes are much lower. Export taxes for minerals are much lower in the Eastern neighboring countries. And, third of all, also, actually, there's very little political will of the national government to formalize the artisanal mining sector as they are much more interested in industrial mining. So the consequences that a lot of the minerals leave Eastern DRC illegally are informing. I forgot to tell just a quick note that when we're talking about this artisanal mining sector in Eastern Congo, it involves mainly gold and the 3T minerals, like Louis already mentioned, which is tin, tungsten and tantal. So, like I said, this heightened attention within the international community for the conflict minerals issue has created a bigger push and has created a bigger push for formalization and the increase of transparency in the Congolese artisanal mining sector. Many initiatives have been created over the last five years. I think the three main categories of initiatives that have been created are due diligence initiatives, traceability initiatives and certification mechanisms. For the sake of time, it isn't possible to explain what these initiatives exactly are because it's quite technical. And also I guess for this presentation, it isn't really essential. So we will go quickly to the effects of these initiatives. First of all, I want to say that it's very difficult to assess the effect of one individual initiative because a wide array of initiatives have been implemented at the same time. So it's very difficult to link one effect to one initiative. But in general we can see that the consequences have been quite mixed and rather negative. Although one positive consequence has been that conflict financing by minerals has indeed decreased in 3T mining areas, so the tin, tantalum and tungsten mining areas. But the negative effects were also quite harsh. And the first one is that there has been a de facto embargo against Congolese minerals. Because companies on the international markets are afraid of reputational damage, they shy away from the Congo and they prefer to source their minerals from other areas in the world or on the world markets. So the effect is that the legal tin trade in the Congo has completely collapsed over the last years. And these of course had had quite some negative consequences for the livelihoods of many artisanal miners. Their income decreased, consumer goods became scarce in remote mining areas. And this of course has had quite some negative effects on schooling, on health care, on the level of criminality. So this brings me to the lessons learned. It's just a few, I guess there's much more, but in our point of view these are the most important ones. So first of all, the first one is not really linked to formalization, but it is a very important one, is that there is more to security than conflict minerals. A lot of the initiatives are linked to a narrow conflict minerals discourse. Like I mentioned before, you have this rashly executed conflict analysis, which sees a quite direct link between mineral exploitation and conflict. So the consequence is that some policy makers create policies that really focus on conflict minerals to solve the conflict. But this doesn't work and a more holistic approach is needed. Approach which includes the conflict minerals discourse, but also for example, security sector reform, the refugee problem in the area, corruption. And I can go on and on other courses of the conflict. So the second lesson learned is that there is more to artisanal mining than conflict. It's very important that initiatives do not limit themselves to just bashing the conflict minerals issue. Because the danger is we should be very careful not to criminalize the entire sector with focusing too much on this conflict minerals issue, because it is such an important livelihood for so many people in the country, even though conflict is involved. Therefore it's important also that something which is linked to this, that formalization efforts, do not just focus on conflict minerals, but also take into account other issues, like for example environmental issues or the bad working conditions that are currently seen at mining sites. Because this is often lacking currently in a lot of the initiatives that are being implemented. The third issue is the top down approach. A lot of the initiatives that have been created are created in Brussels, London or New York, and they use a strong top down approach. And this is quite problematic because if these initiatives make a lot of demands on all kinds of actors in the Congolese mining sector, then these initiatives should also make sure that in addition they try to stimulate formalization efforts from below. Because for the moment if we visit the field we see that hardly any of the local actors know any of the initiatives that affected their business. So it's really important that in the future there is more attention to stimulate local actors to work formal and to give them an incentive to work formal. Because just giving them rules won't do it. So if we want to really stimulate artisanal miners to work formally, and if we want to implement a formalization mechanism or formalization strategy that is driven from below, it is important that there is more attention for capacity building of local state agencies. Because for the moment their capacity is really terrible. They do not have the capacity to implement any initiative or at least on a large scale. And this brings me to the last issue. It is that the initiatives should go beyond just making demands on industry. Because we see that for the moment the only initiatives that are quite far in their implementation phase are initiatives that make demands on industry. And this once again is quite problematic because if you make too many demands on industry without progress from other actors in the sector, there is a big risk that companies either shy away from the region which happens right now. Because it's too difficult for them to prove that they are buying clean minerals. And second of all, another risk is that they more or less twist the original objectives that were behind the formalization initiatives or the complex mineral initiatives. To make this a bit clearer, the risk is that when initiatives focus too much on supply chains of companies, there is a risk that this supply chain becomes the most important thing and that a clean supply chain becomes the name in itself. So the consequence is that we even now see some initiatives where companies really focus on creating a clean supply chain. So they just buy from one mining site that is clean. This wild community or this island of security, of good working conditions. But they neglect the situation around the mining site. And of course this is not the original objective behind the formalization and anti-conflict mineral strategy. Okay, thank you very much for your attention. This was more or less my presentation. Of course, if there are any questions then I would be very happy to reply to them afterwards.