There is increasing international pressure on the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to clean up its cobalt mining practices.Volumes of cobalt and processing chemicals could be affected as producers of electric vehicles and electronic devices risk reputational damage and consumer backlash for using cobalt mined in the DRC, which is used in the manufacture of lithium ion batteries.Companies are already securing alternative sources or reducing the amount of cobalt used in these batteries. Time to Recharge, a report by Amnesty International, names and shames a number of tech and automotive industry giants for not doing enough to ensure that the cobalt they use is not mined using child labour. More than half of the world’s cobalt comes from the DRC, and 20% of it is mined by an estimated 150 000 informal miners who dig by hand in Kolwezi. Amnesty International has documented children and adults mining cobalt in narrow man-made tunnels, at risk of fatal accidents and serious lung disease.“When you visit this area of the DRC, one of the most striking things you see is just how polluted it is, and just how little is being done by the government and mining companies to prevent pollution and protect the people living and working there. They simply can’t escape the dust,” says Mark Dummett, head of business, security and human rights at Amnesty International.He was responding to a study by the universities of Lubumbashi, Leuven and Ghent which found that exposure to toxic pollution was causing birth defects in the children of cobalt and copper miners.In response to international attention generated by Amnesty’s first report in 2016, the DRC government has set up a committee to address child labour in the mineral sector, and drafted a national strategy aimed at removing children from all artisanal mines by 2025.While the focus at present is on the end users of the cobalt, it could shift to include the supply chain, which is responsible for providing the logistics needed for the human rights abuses to continue.“Companies have an individual responsibility to identify, prevent, address and account for human rights abuses in their cobalt supply chains,” says Amnesty International in its report.
