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	Digging for Transparency by Global Witness, Amnesty International   April 2015   How U.S. companies are only scratching the surface of conflict minerals reporting.   Nearly 80 per cent of U.S. public companies analyzed by human rights groups are failing to adequately check and disclose whether their products contain conflict minerals from Central Africa, reveals a new report by Global Witness and Amnesty International.   The report, Digging for Transparency, analyzes 100 conflict minerals reports filed by companies including Apple, Boeing and Tiffany & Co under the 2010 Dodd Frank Act (Section 1502), known as the conflict minerals law. The findings point to alarming gaps in U.S. corporate transparency.   Under the law, more than one thousand U.S.-listed companies that believe they may source minerals from Central Africa submitted reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2014, the first year they were required to do so. The law is designed to reduce the risk that the purchase of minerals from Central Africa contributes to conflict or human rights abuses.   The Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo) is an important source of minerals - including gold, tin, tungsten and tantalum - for global businesses. These minerals are essential for electronic devices, such as smartphones and laptops. For over fifteen years armed groups in eastern Congo have preyed on the mining sector to finance their operations with devastating impact, committing gross human rights abuses in the process.   The report’s key findings include:   79 of the 100 companies analyzed failed to meet the minimum requirements of the U.S. conflict minerals law.   Most companies in the sample are not doing enough to map out the supply chain of the minerals they purchase. Only 16 per cent go beyond their direct suppliers to contact, or attempt to contact, the smelters or refiners that process the minerals.   More than half of companies sampled do not even report to senior management when they identify a risk in their supply chain.   Global Witness and Amnesty International’s analysis also shows that one in five surveyed companies did comply with the law’s requirements. This dismantles the argument put forward that implementation is too difficult and too expensive - there is no excuse for companies failing to properly investigate their supply chains.   Congo’s minerals are exported, smelted, and sold internationally, where they end up in cell phones, laptops, or as pieces of jewelry. We know that some of these minerals sourced from conflict-areas have funded violence, abuses, and corrupt criminal networks. And yet, the response of international companies and states has been too slow and timid to make the necessary fundamental changes. - Dr Denis Mukwege, Congolese surgeon and medical director of the Panzi Hospital, writes the foreword to our report.   The second set of U.S. company Conflict Minerals Reports will be submitted in June. We urge companies to improve their supply chain investigations and their future reports.   * Access the report via the link below. Visit the related web page
	Interview: Yezidi Girls who escaped ISIS. Now What? by Amy Braunschweiger Human Rights Watch   Mar 2015   Last August, the world watched in horror as the extremist armed group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, attacked Iraq’s Yezidi community. Thousands fled without food or water into the nearby Sinjar mountains, but ISIS fighters waylaid many, executing men and abducting thousands of people, mainly women and children.   Rumors of forced marriage and enslavement of Yezidi girls and women swirled, and were later confirmed as a trickle of women and girls – now numbering into the hundreds – escaped. Human Rights Watch researchers Samer Muscati and Rothna Begum interviewed 20 of these women and girls and shared their findings with Amy Braunschweiger.   No one knows how many Yezidis have been killed by ISIS – they’re still uncovering mass graves. Very little information comes out of ISIS-controlled areas.   Every family has been affected, has had a husband or son killed, a daughter abducted, or has had to flee.   We visited informal settlements and the main camp, Khanke, near Dohuk, which houses more than 18,000 Yazidis, mainly from around the city of Sinjar, about a two-and-a-half hour drive away.   The Yezidis are living in a virtual sea of displaced person tents and nearby unfinished buildings, which lack doors and heat, perched on windswept hills.   In the camps you interviewed women and girls who escaped ISIS and made their way back home. What happened to them at the hands of ISIS?   Rothna: We heard stories of abuse ranging from being forced to wait on ISIS members hand and foot, to beatings, rape, electric shocks, forced marriage, and sexual slavery.   Samer: One girl said ISIS members, wanting to find out who “desecrated” their Quran, handcuffed and blindfolded her and two other girls, beat them with a cable, and then fired a gunshot into the air. Apparently, the girl told us, one of the many cats in the house had ripped the Quran.   Most of the girls we spoke with said they were transferred from one place to another, ultimately living in big houses or halls with between 5 and 60 other girls. During the course of the day, ISIS fighters would come in, pick a girl to take, and if she refused, she’d be slapped or beaten.   What happened to these girls when they returned home, especially considering the moral weight placed on their virginity?   Rothna: Virginity is a huge issue across the region. There is a stigma attached to the abducted women because they could have experienced sexual violence from the ISIS fighters – and it extends to their families. We know that in conflicts around the world, communities retaliate against women who are victims of sexual violence. Husbands leave wives, families abandon daughters.   One of our biggest concerns was, would these women be treated violently after returning home?   That’s not what we found – in part thanks to the Yezidi religious leader, Baba Sheikh, who instructed the community to welcome back and not harm those who were abducted, forced to convert, or raped. Because of this, most families have welcomed back their female relatives.   We didn’t interview Baba Sheikh, but we spoke with another religious leader, Baba Chawish. He welcomed us, and spoke calmly and with dignity, despite the chaos surrounding him. He told us how, over centuries, Yezidis have had to flee numerous attacks. This was just another crisis, he said, and his goal was to keep the community together as much as possible and, frankly, to survive.   The families we met just wanted to be reunited. They already had so many family members killed or abducted by ISIS, they just want their families back.   How are these girls doing?   Samer: It’s difficult for them, they’ve endured terrible abuses. For me, the hardest part was when they talked about their missing parents, or about how ISIS men separated them from their sister, and where could she be? It’s terrible to be a young girl and be abducted and endure horrific abuses, but then to also lose your family on top of that?   One of the most common sentiments I heard was that their biggest wish is to be reunited with their families, as they don’t know how to be whole without them.   As a group, these were among the worst cases I have ever documented for Human Rights Watch, and that says a lot as I’ve documented a wide range of abuses for years in war-plagued Iraq – everything from torture in secret prisons to abuses against people displaced by the fighting.   One 12-year-old girl really stood out to me. Her shy disposition reminded me of my 12-year old cousin. The man who abducted her told her not to worry, that he’d treat her as he’d treat his own daughter. Then he drugged her and she woke up to see blood between her legs.. Visit the related web page
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