Last Tuesday, a report titled “this is what we die for” from Amnesty International and Afrewatch revealed that the cobalt mined in DR Congo in actual facts is sourced by children who risk their lives daylily. The report also denounces actors of the supply chain associated to the mines and their role in sustaining this cruel practice.

The defenders of human rights say in their report that children involved in the illegal practice are sometimes as young as 7 when recruited. They work with adults in conditions which are far from respecting human protection standards. They spend as much as 12 hours scavenging through gravels and are paid 1 to 2 dollars each day. In 2014, UNICEF numbered 40,000 of these workers. Categorized as diggers, most of them work in the Ex-Katanga mines located South East and known to be the epicenter of cobalt production in the country.

The report also outlines the factors behind the sustaining of the phenomenon: multinationals that keep silent about source of mined cobalt but keep purchasing it. 16 of those have been indexed in the report namely: Ahong, Apple, BYD, Daimler, Dell, HP, Huawei, Inventec, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Vodafone, Volkswagen and ZTE.

How can that be? Well, simply put, it is because of the lack of a transparency procedure to determine the source of supplied cobalt that these firms indirectly finance child labor in the mines. Indeed, a vicious circle goes around cobalt sourced in DRC as most of output produced by diggers is sold to Congo Dongfang Mining (CDM), a property of mining giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt LTD which processes cobalt and sells it so it is used to produce lithium-ion batteries and other components that serve to build phones, computers and cars that are manufactured by the above mentioned brands.

However, Congolese authorities keep declaring they know nothing of the illegal-sourcing, a claim which the report believes to be non-verifiable.

Stéphanie C. Tohon