Is your smartphone linked to this? There is a good chance this is where your favorite tech gadget begins. The cobalt mines of the Congo.
Cobalt is a key component in rechargeable lithium batteries. So it's needed to manufacture things like smartphones, laptops and electric cars. But human rights groups say often those miners are children and the working conditions can be deadly. Often the miners have to dig by hand, deep inside tunnels without any safety equipment. They tunnel straight down and 50 meters sometimes into the shale.
We heard stories of up to 65 people in one incident, including adults and children. were buried alive and they didn't even find their bodies yet. There are no official statistics on fatalities, but miners have told human rights groups that they risk injury or death whenever they work in unregulated mines.
Now Congolese families want to hold Apple, Google, Dell, Tesla and Microsoft accountable. A US-based human rights nonprofit is suing the tech giants on behalf of 14 families. It's the first time the tech industry has faced legal action over the mining of cobalt.
My 14 clients are either children who have been maimed or the parents of children who have been killed in mining accidents, which are very routine. There's a boy with an amputated leg, there's several boys with smashed legs. They'll never work again in the Democratic Republic of Congo and they need medical attention. According to court documents, families claim that children were paid as little as $2 a day and tech companies are alleged to have been aware of the child labor. Here is how some companies have responded.
Part of the problem... according to experts, is that it's nearly impossible for tech giants to be sure the cobalt they're buying doesn't come from child labor. At the end of the day, even if children are not working in the mines controlled by big companies, their productions end up in the supply chain, in the global supply chain of minerals going out from the sea.
Currently, what I can say is that it's very difficult to have 100% green cobalt coming out from DRC, where we have zero child labor. I went there for about two weeks and I managed to interview children, see children, that they're everywhere. So it's just unbelievable for them to say that they're not aware or that they have fixed this problem. Estimates vary, but thousands of child miners are believed to be working in Congo's cobalt mines.
We are finishing a study in Koloesi. In Wakatanga, our estimate is about 30,000 children aged under 15 years who are now working in the mine. One study places some of the blame on Congo's rampant corruption.
There's no government regulation. The government is extremely corrupt. Often the government has been paid off to look the other way, but no one had ever heard of something called a mine inspector. So we need people on site inspecting the mines, we need safety regulations, and then there has to be a severe consequence for violating these rules. Actionable change on this issue will take time.
The lawsuit filed by international rights advocates still has no set trial date. While global demand for cobalt continues to rise,