14 DAY TRIAL // The lithium-ion batteries that are currently being used on devices produced by Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, and a few other companies are manufactured with materials collected from mines in Africa by children, an NGO states in a new report.
Amnesty International reveals that children as young as seven years old are working in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to collect the material that’s then being used for the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries featured on devices sold across the world.
Although the involved companies do not necessarily work with the same battery supplier, the cobalt provider is eventually the same - Congo Dongfang Mining, a subsidiary of Chinese firm Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Ltd.
The organization claims that the company does not protect employees from the obvious hazards created by working in mines and often employ children that are paid with just 2 dollars per day. A working day has at least 12 hours, but some 14-year-olds told Amnesty that there were cases when they had to work up to 24 hours.
Dead bodies left in mines
Approximately 80 people have died in cobalt mines in Congo since September 2014, but the organization says that the death toll could be even higher as the company does not register every victim and sometimes covers up the incidents. Bodies are usually “left buried in the rubble,” the NGO claims, noting that approximately 40,000 children worked in mines in Congo in 2014.
“I would spend 24 hours down in the tunnels. I arrived in the morning and would leave the following morning... I had to relieve myself down in the tunnels… My foster mother planned to send me to school, but my foster father was against it, he exploited me by making me work in the mine,” one child was quoted as saying.
Some of the companies whose names got involved in this investigation claim they are now looking into reports in order to determine whether child labor accusations are indeed true. But none had analyzed these claims before Amnesty International went public with it, the organization claims.
“Many of these multinationals say they have a zero tolerance policy for child labour. But this promise is not worth the paper it is written when the companies are not investigating their suppliers. Their claim is simply not credible.”
You can check out Amnesty International’s full investigation here (PDF), with more statements to come from involved companies.