Microsoft's concerning conflict minerals disclosure reflects industry-wide slippage

gamesindustry.biz:

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Welcome to our ninth conflict minerals report, our annual look at game companies' efforts to ensure their business isn't fueling armed conflict, slave labor, child soldiers, and other human rights abuses.

We'll go into detail about 10 different companies' disclosures on conflict minerals below. We're skipping a few from last year because they either no longer use the minerals in question (Activision Blizzard), aren't required to disclose numbers of substance (HTC, Razer), or because they could not be bothered to respond to our inquiries for the fifth straight year and apparently won't be shamed into caring about the subject in the least (Valve).

But that still leaves some of the biggest and most influential companies in the world, companies whose attention to the problem – or lack thereof – has significant ramifications.

This year's numbers reflect something we've been told for years now: That conflict minerals concerns simply aren't "trendy" any more, and companies are deprioritizing the issue as a result.

Conflict minerals sourcing gathered a lot of attention in the mid-2000s, specifically around how mining companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo had formed ties with various armed groups to control the country's goldfields and other natural resources. Those armed groups waged war with each other to wrest and maintain control of those resources, often using children as laborers or soldiers.

US legislators were moved enough to include regulations around conflict minerals in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, with the law requiring companies to file annual disclosures on the sourcing of four minerals –