Topic:
Country: Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Delegate Name: Ava Balint
Special Political
Republic of Korea
Ava Balint
Topic A: Conflict Minerals
The four main Conflict minerals consist of (3TGs, Tin, Tantalum, Tungsten, Uranium and Gold) mined in 10 African countries such as Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, etc. These conflict minerals are obtained through armed groups transporting and trading minerals through inhuman practices. These minerals are critical for worldwide use of the production of jewelry, cellphones, computers, explosives, medical equipment, and vehicles. Unfortunately, conflict minerals are obtained through cruel and harsh practices and are present knowingly and unknowingly in the supply chain.
South Korea has a zero-tolerance policy for conflict minerals. To prevent the usage of conflict minerals, as they are unknowingly in the supply chain, South Korea has implemented a Supply Chain Management Process with a simple 5-step prevention process. This process consists of raising awareness to partner companies, investigating the conflict materials in the supply chain, systematic due diligence and verification of results, identifying and assessing risk within the supply chain, developing a risk improvement plan and reporting relevant information. This process was introduced after the U.S congress, in 2010, made it mandatory to report the use of conflict materials.
South Korea believes that a simple supply chain management process being implemented in other countries would be highly beneficial. This would reduce the inhuman practices of child labor and human right violations used to obtain these conflict minerals. Furthermore, South Korea feels threatened by the usage of conflict minerals, such as Uranium, that is continuously used to make explosives by North Korea. South Korea hopes that fellow and neighboring countries will take this into consideration of limiting their usage of conflict minerals.
1. Conflict minerals policy – korea zinc. (n.d.). https://www.koreazinc.co.kr/files/contents/download/KZ_Conflict_Minerals_Policy.pdf
2. Conflict minerals. EcoVadis. (2020, February 28). https://ecovadis.com/glossary/conflict-minerals/#:~:text=They%20provided%20a%20 major%20source,%2C%20 computers%2C%20 jewelry%20and%20 vehicles
3. Poole, G. (2023, September 11). Home. GLICA.org. https://glica.org/glica-conferences/glimun-2023-conference/glimun-2023-committees/conflict-minerals/
