Ten percent of cobalt produced and used by the world's largest technology and mining companies relies on child labour and worker exploitation, a new report has claimed.
Amnesty International and the African Resources Watch (Afrewatch) said in a joint investigation that 20 percent of cobalt exported from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) -- which produces half the world's supply -- was extracted by small-scale operations with virtually no oversight.
Used in lithium-ion batteries, cobalt is an essential part of every mobile gadget sold around the world. Though most cobalt is mined by major industrial companies, a significant amount is still crudely extracted by hand and mixed into the main supply chain before being used by major technology firms, according to the report.
Cobalt is often described as one of the so-called "conflict minerals", alongside tin, gold, tungsten and tantalum (the '3TG', or three Ts and gold). It also lies outside legislation regulating mining of the 3TG, meaning its extraction is difficult to scrutinise. With lithium-ion battery production set to explode with the growing market for electric vehicles, the pressure to extract more supplies of the metal is intensifying.
Approximately 110,000 to 150,000 "artisanal" (meaning 'small-scale') miners in the DRC, including up to 40,000 children (according to Unicef), extract cobalt with basic tools, wash it and sell it into a market that -- Amnesty claimed -- eventually resells that material to technology companies including LG, Microsoft, Vodafone, Sony, HP, Huawei, Lenovo, Apple, Samsung and Dell.
Amnesty and Afrewatch said 90 interviews with Congolese adults and children revealed that typical conditions require miners work without face masks or gloves for shifts of 12 hours or more. Wages in these mines are as low as 1,000 Congolese francs (£0.75) per day, not enough to even cover the typical cost of education. Many who work in those mines to do not attend school. Even those who do said that they work up to 12 hours on weekends and holidays. Up to 80 miners had died mining cobalt between September 2014 and December 2015, the report said.
Amnesty identified one child, 'Paul', aged 14, who said he would often spend 24 hours down in the tunnels. "I arrived in the morning and would leave the following morning," the boy is reported to have said. Others complained they were beaten and pressured into work by armed security guards and cheated out of earnings by traders who paid per sack of minerals without verification of weight or quality. "It is widely recognised internationally that the involvement of children in mining constitutes one of the worst forms of child labour, which governments are required to prohibit and eliminate. The nature of the work that researchers found that the children do in artisanal cobalt mining in the DRC is hazardous, and likely to harm children’s health and safety," the report explained.
While most media coverage has focused on the technology companies who use cobalt in their products, the report identified failings at virtually every level. It found the DRC government employs just 20 inspectors for the entire mining region in the south of the country, with non-governmental bodies providing little extra oversight.
It also raised concerns over Congo Dongfang Mining International, a trading company owned outright by China-based Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company Ltd, which buys much of the cobalt gathered by intermediary traders and is "tied" to the Chinese government, Amnesty claimed.
Huayou Cobalt smelts this material and sells the processed cobalt to battery component manufacturers, who sell it to battery makers, who in turn say they sell those products on to technology brands and the massive manufacturing plants that assemble their gadgets. However of the 16 companies listed as sourcing cobalt from Huayou, two multinationals denied buying any cobalt from the DRC, while five said they did not deal with Huayou.
Regardless of the complexity of these supply chains, Amnesty points to UN advice which states the responsibility of companies to carry out due diligence at each stage, and to "identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how they address their impacts on human rights". The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also provides a practical due diligence guide, which it says lays out a clear process for companies to follow.
Several of the technology companies listed in the report provided responses to Amnesty and separately to the press, with most insisting they were doing more to examine their supply chains -- and had a zero-tolerance approach to child labour, wherever it was identified.
- Samsung SDI: "In reality, it is very hard to trace the source of the mineral due to the suppliers’ nondisclosure of information and the complexity of the supply chains. Therefore it is impossible for us to determine whether the cobalt supplied to Samsung SDI comes from DRC Katanga’s mines". It added in a press statement that "If a violation of child labour is found, contracts with suppliers who use child labour will be immediately terminated".
- Sony: In a response listed in the report, Sony said: "We take this issue seriously and have been conducting a fact-finding process. So far, we could not find obvious results that our products contain the cobalt originated from Katanga in the DRC." In a press statement it added: "We are working with the suppliers to address issues related to human rights and labour conditions at the production sites, as well as in the procurement of minerals and other raw materials."
- Apple: "We are currently evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to identify labor and environmental risks as well as opportunities for Apple to bring about effective, scalable and sustainable change. As we gain a better understanding of the challenges associated with cobalt we believe our work in the African Great Lakes region and Indonesia will serve as important guides for creating lasting solutions."
- Microsoft: "Tracing metals such as cobalt up through multiple layers of our supply chain is extremely complex. ... Tracking the origin of the cobalt metal in [the different compounds used in Microsoft products] to the precise mining area is extremely challenging. Due to our supply chain complexity and the in-region co-mingling of materials, we are unable to say with absolute assurance that any or none of our cobalt sources can be traced to ore mined in the Katanga region. To create such a tracing mechanism would require a large degree of vertical and cross-industry collaboration."
- HP: "As of now we have not found any linkage between our products and the DRC mine. If a linkage is found, we will take steps to address the risks you have raised."
The other responses to the report can be found at Amnesty International's website.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
