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Who should take a stand against abusive child labor being used in the Congo DR to dig out coltan? All of us!To the very last person, that's who.

We can go further to also ask when, must we take a stand against humanitarian tragedies? And the answer would be, early enough in the life of any crisis. We all know that all tragedies have a specific gestation period. Some long, some short, just as plants and animals have gestation periods.

Now, it is possible to accurately trace the gestation period of most plants and animals. In the same manner, our sociologists and political scientists should be in a position to trace accurately, and draw up a "gestation period" for crises.From this we can react early enough when a problem has not degenerated into a crisis.

Crises always give an advance warning of their coming, if only we are observant enough. This is why my answer looks at the Congo crisis from its conception, gestation,and to the present mature fruits- the blight of children working as virtual slaves for a pittance in the coltan mines, in unsanitary conditions.

If we look at the crisis over its gestation period spanning decades, we would find it easy to look behind the present manifestation of the Congo tragedy to its origins. Viewed from its beginnings, we all bear a responsibility to take action against the situation.

The crisis finally manifesting as disorder in the Congo predated by decades, the rise of the PC, laptops and mobile phones as big money spinners for manufacturers or status symbols and must-have items for consumers. It is therefore not very fair to suggest that only those presently connected with coltan and its products have a responsibility to take a stand.

It is easy to lay the blame or the responsibility for taking a stand on the big Companies that are using coltan in their products. It is also possible to emotionally browbeat the users of the products made with coltan input: laptops, computers, cell phones etc as bearing responsible for the tragic scenes at the manual mining fields of the Congo.

But it is my view that the Companies paying for the tarred coltan from the child labor fields bear no exclusive responsibility for remedial action, and that the consumers using laptops and other products with coltan inputs do not have special burden of guilt or responsibility to discharge.

The tragic scenes in the Congo have taken a long time in coming to this point. We all bear responsibility for what has developed there over the decades either by acts of

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