The children, even the adults, barely eke out somewhere between 80 cents and maybe $2 a day, depending on the kind of work that they're doing. The children who are working, how much money do they actually make from working in these cobalt mines? Kara says during his research a tunnel at one cobalt mine collapsed and killed 63 people. It didn't take long before we received word that there were 63 people in that tunnel, and 63 people buried alive that day. Family members were swarming in, swooning and howling with with terror for any word of survivors. It had already been blocked off by Congolese military. I was doing research near Lake Malo, which is not too far outside of the city of Kolwezi, and documenting some children when we received word that a tunnel had collapsed barely 100 metres from where I was standing. It's probably one of the most haunting and painful days of all my research. The peasant population, and the children in particular, are eking out a sub-human existence, caked in toxic filth and grime as they mine for the cobalt that is used in every lithium-ion rechargeable battery on the planet.Īnd I think the worst stories I heard - and I heard far too many of these - involved young children and young men who would dig tunnels to find the larger cobalt deposits, some of these up to 100 feet deep, and then these tunnels just would collapse and bury alive everyone inside.Īnd you were actually there doing your research at a time when one of these tunnels collapsed on a bunch of people, including children. has yielded some of the most heartbreaking, appalling and utterly unimaginable levels of exploitation and suffering of any sector that I've researched in almost two decades of research into slavery and child labour. (Junior Kannah/AFP/Getty Images)Ĭan you tell us some of the stories you have heard, some of the things that you have found out about these children who are mining cobalt? 16, 2019, tried to sue the largest tech companies in the world on behalf of the children in the Congo who mine their cobalt.Ī child and a woman break rocks extracted from a cobalt mine at a copper quarry and cobalt pit in Lubumbashi, Congo. Has anyone ever tried this before - suing a tech giant on behalf of children working in mines? He spoke to As It Happens host Carol Off about what he witnessed during his research. ![]() ![]() His research is the foundation of the lawsuit. ![]() Siddharth Kara, a public policy lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School, has been looking into the conditions at Congolese cobalt mines for years. The lawsuit accuses those companies of "knowingly benefiting from and aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children." It has not been tested in court. The defendants named in the suit include Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Tesla and Google's parent company, Alphabet. The metal is key ingredient in the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power most electronic devices. International Rights Advocates brought the case on behalf of 14 Congolese families whose children were killed or injured while mining for cobalt. An international advocacy group has launched a lawsuit against some of the world's largest tech companies for the deaths and injuries of child miners in Congolese cobalt mines.
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