Getting Critical Minerals Certification and Due Diligence Right In the DRC-Rwanda Accord and Beyond (With a Lesson from a Punk Band?)

So much is being written these days, understandably, to advise governments and companies on critical minerals and rare earths policy issues, especially as the Trump administration and leaders around the world prioritize minerals access as a key foreign policy and national security goal.

Most current analysis focuses on the core challenge of how critical minerals can be extracted in a smooth and efficient manner, on the one hand, and how supply chain certification and due diligence mechanisms can promote responsible practices, on the other. That’s especially the case because so much sourcing occurs in conflict-affected and high-risk countries, such as Ukraine, Central Asia, and beyond. The Regional Economic and Integration Framework that the Trump administration helped craft between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda (known as the REIF) is just the latest of the U.S. president’s foreign policy priorities to be rooted in minerals access for the United States and, purportedly, in responsible economic development for the two countries. (It is to be seen, of course, whether Venezuela goes in this direction, but it could, given that they also have a range of minerals in addition to oil.)

Having worked on these topics for more than 15 years in government, civil society, and the private sector, and co-teaching a graduate school class this semester at Georgetown University on critical minerals policy, I have learned that the most important reference point is not a government strategy, a report from the World Bank, a trade association white paper, an in-region nonprofit, or a think tank’s analysis.

No. It’s legendary D.C. hardcore punk band Fugazi. In perhaps their greatest song, they advise their audience to not “make the same mistakes” and to always remember that “function is the key.” In the song, frontman Ian MacKaye expresses the frustration of late 1980s youth, who desperately wanted to change the world left them by their parents; MacKaye implores them not to just take expedient or superficial action or just do something for the sake of doing something, but rather to be patient to identify an action that would have impact. The world of expanding investment in critical minerals, too, must move past measures that are simply “quick wins” or that result in superficial action on responsible sourcing that can negatively affect both mining operations and the local communities in the long term.

For agreements like the REIF to bear meaningful fruit in high-risk areas, the focus should be less on replicating past generalized models of broad-based certification and due diligence and more on “function.” That is, policymakers and implementers — the latter being, most immediately, mining companies and their financial backers — should look more toward investing in the specific affected communities and working to resolve underlying rights and development issues in a given context. As such investments are made and reported on, then traders, smelters/refineries, and downstream companies can themselves be held accountable when they shun local engagement and fail to respect those investments.

The Shortcomings of Current Approaches to Certification and Due Diligence

The push for critical minerals is now at a seeming fever pitch and certainly unlike anything in the United States in recent times, though arguably still well behind the push undertaken by China beginning in the early 2000s). The international community has taken certain standard approaches to respond to the risks to communities of commodities development and supply chains in the 21st century, particularly where these types of investments can contribute to conflict, human rights violations, and corruption. (Though gold technically isn’t a critical mineral, it should also be ; for ease of reference, this article will refer just to “critical minerals” but the analysis relates to gold, too, as the DRC-Rwanda case illustrates just how economically “critical” it is.)

In far too many cases, the desire for commodities leads to initial investments that do not live up to their expected promise of smooth operations and windfall profits. When projects fail, they may descend into a downward spiral; the companies face frustratingly low production levels and financial results, while the communities are left trying to pick up the pieces, which in turn leaves the companies’ reputation in tatters. Amid the inevitable, downstream companies then face pressure not to source minerals from these projects, and various stakeholders often disagree on whether they should disengage or persist. In Peru, for example, years of protests by mine workers and mining communities have led to deeper questions about whether it is “responsible” to source copper from Peru, one of the world’s major producers of the mineral. These types of quandaries should prompt caution among those in government who developed the DRC-Rwanda REIF, and those in industry who hope to benefit from it.

For the most part, the international community’s responses to the ethical issues related to minerals sourcing have boiled down to, on the one hand, due diligence certification overseen by governments, most notably the Kimberley Process (KP) for rough diamonds, and on the other hand, due diligence undertaken by companies that tends to be rooted in the due diligence guidance first issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2011. In many cases, that due diligence is overseen or facilitated by multi-stakeholder leadership, such as the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance focused on the mining sector, or by industry-run certification bodies, such as the Responsible Minerals Initiative, which companies downstream use to evaluate midstream processors and smelters. Myriad other initiatives exist, with some governments like the United Arab Emirates (for gold) or the United States or European Union (for conflict minerals) at least nominally requiring companies to perform due diligence.

In sum, an enormous amount of work and investment has been applied in the last 25 years, and the overall results are, at best, mixed. Yet the DRC-Rwanda REIF appears to be heading down the same roads, with vague references to “export certification,” “due diligence,” and related processes, but lacking any specifics. Leaving aside the current (and much graver) questions for the Trump administration related to the DRC-Rwanda peace agreement in the M23 advances and escalating violence, a few lessons on minerals due diligence should inform a commitment to not making the same mistakes:

• The Kimberley Process and certification systems like it have proven that governments cannot be responsible for qualitative decision-making about what minerals should be allowed, or not allowed, to enter global supply chains. Governments are simply unwilling to say to companies “it is too risky to allow cobalt from country X to enter supply chains because of ongoing human rights or labor rights abuses.” There may be too much uncertainty about how exactly such a determination would apply (i.e., would a ban apply to all exports, exports from a certain region, made during a certain timeframe, etc.). There also may be too many complicated geopolitical interests that have nothing to do with minerals (see, for example, the unwillingness of the United States or others to take meaningful action against the UAE for its role in the gold trade fueling genocide in Sudan), and too little ability to follow any determination with meaningful implementation, enforcement, and accountability for violations. At most, individual countries can make these decisions through sanctions or import bans, but expecting that global standards bodies can play a role is unrealistic. Even a regional certification mechanism in Central Africa, overseen by the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region, has struggled to implement a consistent system, in part because of capacity constraints and competing interests from countries within the region, especially Uganda and its “partner” in the REIF Rwanda, benefiting from illicit minerals smuggled out of the DRC.
• Similarly, due diligence led by companies on their own, or through the rubric of industry-led certification systems, has also generally failed to proactively exclude minerals from conflict-affected and high-risk areas in a consistent and demonstrable manner. Minerals-related due diligence, and human rights due diligence more broadly, has often evolved into a set of paper processes that companies can put on their books (and thus be audited against). This is, of course, a necessary step, but the concentration on due diligence has come at the expense of scrutinizing supply chain decision-making, where companies can point to how and why they made specific decisions to make a purchase of a particular mineral, knowing that it could be sourced from such an area of risk. While that may be an oversimplification of expectations of how complex minerals supply chains work, at the end of the day, minerals from complex environments like the DRC and Rwanda reach downstream companies every day despite the existence of extensive due diligence systems. The fact that many tons of gold from Sudan continue to move through the global supply chain without meaningful interruption is a testament to the limitation. Until the focus evolves from due diligence processes to ensuring those due diligence standards underlie specific decision-making about transactions, those minerals will continue to flow, including from eastern Congo. In sum, responsible sourcing can and should be a key component of broader due diligence (financial crime, money laundering, etc.), but too often it is not.

At a recent minerals industry discussion, a senior executive bemoaned that “despite our best efforts, illicit minerals somehow make it into supply chains.” There should be no somehow to it; people and companies choose to make these purchases, and the key mistake of the first 25 years of supply chain interventions is not focusing sufficiently at that level of individual responsibility/investment and related accountability.

Why the Debate Matters: Human vs. Business Costs

Balancing minerals certification and due diligence with business efficiency and costs is not a new conundrum, and reflecting on one of the more challenging debates from the recent past can help bring key recommendations into focus. In the early 2010s, Tim Worstall, then a contributing writer for Forbes, and Mike Davis, the now-executive director of one of the leading NGOs focused on minerals issues in the DRC, Global Witness, engaged in a quasi-debate about whether the cost of minerals due diligence for companies could be justified in light of the potential lives saved.

Worstall argued, in sum, that the prospect of billions of dollars spent on due diligence by companies, as required by Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, could not be justified in light of the likely return on investment and would actually make things worse. Davis replied by suggesting that Worstall was essentially trying to come to a number beyond which an investment in due diligence processes is not justified to save lives:

“Is he implying, as it appears, that there is a cost barrier beyond which it ceases to be worthwhile for companies to make sure they are not funding rape and war through their purchases? What is the maximum a company should spend on its supply chain controls to avoid sponsoring a mass-rapist or murderer? How about putting some dollar signs against the suffering of victims of the armed groups that finance themselves through the global minerals trade?”

Impossible ethical questions — but ever more essential in 2026. This debate matters today as much as in 2013 because the DRC-Rwanda REIF focuses on the exact same region as the due diligence over conflict minerals in this early 2010s debate. And undoubtedly the same questions will emerge as minerals produced under the REIF’s auspices begin to flow. Myriad articles and Government Accountability Office reports have been written debating whether the due diligence required by Dodd-Frank was indeed worth it. To be sure, even if the international community has learned that due diligence is an important tool for companies seeking to understand their supply chains, it is clear that these kinds of interventions alone cannot stop conflicts or prevent minerals from such regions flowing, even when the push for mineral wealth is a key factor in why the fighting is happening.

So with all this time and money spent on certification and due diligence, even with many positives resulting from both, alongside the mistakes, the core issue remains: is there any way to ensure meaningful decision-making by governments and companies on whether or not to source critical minerals from regions such as the DRC/Rwanda?

Cue: Fugazi

Maybe, if we go back to Fugazi’s reminder to ensure “function is the key.”

In sum, both minerals certification models like the Kimberley Process and broader due diligence programs have allowed companies to generalize their approach to risk, such that they can avoid both direct engagement in difficult areas and consequences for downstream purchases that may involve minerals from those same areas. Having this broad-based infrastructure in place is useful, even essential, as a starting point, but it is ultimately insufficient, especially for governments seeking to ensure that deals like the REIF deliver on their potential.

The past mistakes have occurred as policymakers try to make these broad approaches capable of addressing more pinpointed needs and concerns. Going forward, the United States and other governments should build on these models and complement generalized approaches like those set forth in the REIF with specific and functional tools, such as:

• Investment in local community-based solutions, from both governments and the private sector, that ensure new projects, as well as broader supply chains, are directly connected to and informed by the expected local beneficiaries. Such investment, especially when done in conjunction with nonprofit implementers with deep experience in the specific community, can also inform approaches that don’t criminalize or marginalize artisanal and small-scale miners but instead find ways to include them while mitigating potential concerns.
• Imposition of sanctions and other punitive mechanisms on companies engaged in illicit activity that undermines the REIF. Ideally, these would not just be actors in the DRC and Rwanda but networks further downstream in refining/smelting, trading, and even in the manufacturing and retail sectors. Although it is often presumed that use of sanctions against mining companies or investors will drive all companies out of a specific sector, this tool can be used instead both to drive out negative actors and also demonstrate to the industry as a whole what practices will be acted against.
• Intelligence-sharing, through public-private partnerships, that can enable companies to take more proactive approaches to due diligence, both in terms of identifying problematic actors and those that are connected to positive investments.
• Issuance of business risk advisories and other statements that are based on shared intelligence and disseminated directly to certification and auditing bodies.
• Revision of certification and sustainability standards that rely on third-party auditing to ensure that (i) auditors truly understand the core risk issues and geographies in the supply chains of the companies they are testing, and (ii) that audits then test not just whether a paper-based process is in place but how those processes applied to specific sourcing decisions. Downstream jewelry or tech companies, for example, should be facing auditor questions and examinations that interrogate how they have made specific decisions on sourcing with DRC, Sudan, or other high-risk areas in mind.

Finally, these improvements can be individualized efforts at national levels or achieved through the panoply of standard-setting certification bodies. A recent United Nations Environment Program report assessing sustainability standards for the mining sector made clear that there is a rubric for assessing when mining-related standards work. Regardless of whether any of these specific standards are integrated into the REIF, a few key needs echo the recommendations above:

• Establish clear expectations for what standards will be followed and how they will be evaluated over time.
• Allow local communities to have direct voices in these processes.
• Ensure direct repercussions and meaningful accountability at every stage of the process.

Shifting public and private approaches from broad-based certification and due diligence to a more specific concentration on decision-making, investment, and accountability will not only make Fugazi proud by showing that “function is the key,” they can also augur a new level of impact for agreements like the DRC-Rwanda REIF.

FEATURED IMAGE: Miners work along unstable slopes of a ridge where there is a significant risk of falling rocks and landslides on May 26, 2025 in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo. (Photo by Michel Lunanga/Getty Images)