Companies should be taking steps to source minerals responsibly from all conflict-affected or high-risk areas. However, laws on responsible sourcing of minerals tend to focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and its neighbouring countries - the so-called Great Lakes Region. As a result, company may focus their efforts on the DRC or the Great Lakes Region rather than other countries where the trade in minerals is linked to conflict and human rights abuses. If a company's responsible sourcing policy covers all conflict-affected and high-risk areas - as opposed to just the DRC or Great Lakes Region - this would be a good sign that they take the issue seriously and are willing to go beyond the legal requirements.
This metric is asking whether the company's responsible sourcing policy covers all conflict-affected or high-risk areas - not just the DRC or neighbouring countries. To research this metric, you'll need to be familiar with some terms:
Conflict-affected or high-risk area: A term used in international standards on responsible sourcing of minerals to describe areas where or from which companies need to take extra care when sourcing minerals - for example because they are affected by armed conflict or widespread human rights abuses. Under international standards, companies should be sourcing minerals responsibly from all conflict-affected or high-risk areas.
Great Lakes Region: Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
You should only answer this question with a “Yes” for a company if you find evidence that their responsible sourcing policy covers all conflict-affected and high-risk areas. If you find this kind of evidence and enter a “Yes” value please leave a comment with some details of what you found as a comment. The only way we can find to make this judgment is to read in detail the material the company produces about its responsible sourcing policies and practices. You may be able to make this judgment faster by searching those materials for terms such as "conflict" or "risk". If you find a faster way to make this judgment while conducting your research, please make a comment and let us know!
You can find relevant materials through the metrics for Conflict Minerals Report, Conflict Minerals Policy and Conflict Minerals Page – if the company you are researching doesn’t have values for those metrics please consider adding values for those metrics before you add one for this.
If you don’t find any evidence that the company's responsible sourcing policy covers all conflict-affected and high-risk areas – set the company’s value to “No” and include the document(s) you read as source(s) as well as a list of countries covered by the company's policy.
When researching a company on this metric, you might also want to consider researching the sourcing all minerals responsibly metric because they both involve reading the same sources.