The Moral Obligation to be Accurate

So it's official: Dodd Frank has had a "considerable but not disastrous impact" on local livelihoods in eastern Congo. So says the UN Group of Experts on the DRC, which gave a long, two-part interview to Jason Stearns at Congo Siasa last week. 

This would appear to settle the matter. The Group of Experts is a multi-national, disinterested body of experts on eastern Congo. Like Human Rights Watch, or the Centers for Disease Control, it provides the final word on the relevant facts in its area of expertise. As it rightly states:  

[We are] not in the business of making unsubstantiated allegations, but rather reporting information as objectively as possible to the Security Council and seeking to corroborate, document, and/or disprove information based upon what we’re able to obtain through first-hand observations, witness testimony, extensive interviews with current and former combatants, documentary evidence and government cooperation.

Still, I was curious to learn how the group had reached such a definitive conclusion on the impact of DF-1502, so I left a note on the blog asking what methodological tools the GoE used to gather its data on the well-being of the artisinal miners. I was delighted to be contacted by one of the GoE members soon thereafter and had the chance to put my question directly to them. (I am being ungrammatical here to disguise the person's gender.)

I learned that while the GoE’s last mandate did not include researching the well-being of the miners, its members had visited dozens of mining zones, interviewed hundreds of people, and followed the SC-approved methodological practices as outlined in the GoE’s interim report. 

Well, that’s great, I said, but what did all those visits and interviews and methodological practices reveal about the well-being of the miners? What data did the GoE gather on that question and what evidence could it share about its findings?

I should pause here and say that I am summarizing what was in fact a surprisingly lengthy exchange of emails. Eliciting this much information required me to ask questions in a variety of ways and in a succession of emails, each of which received a quick, courteous, and for the most part unilluminating reply. For example, when I asked what methodology the GoE used, I was told they had used the one outlined in the interim report. When, after reviewing the report, I pointed out that it says nothing about gathering data on the artisanal miners, I was told that they had conducted interviews, visited sites, reviewed documents, and so on, as per the report's methodology. And when I asked, repeatedly, what all those interviews taught them about the miners’ welfare, I received a promise of a personal visit--but nothing on the facts of the matter.

All of which left me wondering what is going on. Why was the GoE unable to present me with a straightforward account of how it had come to that determination about the miners' welfare?  After all, the obvious first question any journalist asks researchers is how they arrived at their findings. Does anyone doubt that if I were to ask the IRC how it determined that the wars cost 5.4 million excess deaths, or NASA that global temperatures increased by 0.3 degrees Celsius since 1980, they would give me all the information I would need?

You can't 1) make definitive statements about the impact of the embargo on the well being of the miners; 2) refuse to make clear the nature of the research you've conducted on the topic; and 3) expect to be taken seriously.

Perhaps everything will become clearer during the personal visit. I hope so. But in the meantime, it certainly appears to me as if the United Nations' Group of Experts has given a verdict on a matter it has not properly researched, and that it remains unable or unwilling to admit as much. That is troubling not only for the sake of the miners, but for the credibility of the GoE itself. After all, if it has rendered judgment on an important subject like the welfare of the miners without having made a serious effort to gather and consider the evidence, then on what other matters has it felt free to substitute its opinion for considered fact? And how will it respond the next time critics accuse it of making things up to suit its political agenda--and point to this episode as an example?

The miners, and the UN, deserve better. A GoE that has lost its reputation for doing precise and careful work is worse than useless; it becomes a liability, a shield for those who would exploit the Congo for their own ends.