To anyone who uses a smartphone, drives an electric car, or flies on a plane, Here are the facts:
FIRST – The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the source of more than 60% of the supply of cobalt used around the world, and at least 20% of this output derives from mining by peasants, called creseurs. These creseurs dig, wash, and sort cobalt-containing heterogenite stones at so-called artisinal mining sites located across the “copper belt” of the southeastern provinces of the DRC. The remaining cobalt from the Congo is mined at industrial sites largely operated by foreign companies.
SECOND – At least 35,000 children toil in the southeastern provinces in cobalt mining. At two mining sites one in Kipushi and another in Kambove - a total of 4,900 adults and 1,100 children slog in rancid and dehumanizing conditions. The children, as young as six, are caked in filth as they hack, sort, shovel, and scrounge for cobalt, earning between $0.50 and $0.80 per day of grueling labor. They endure lacerations and broken bones, and they suffer permanent damage to their health by handling cobalt with their bare hands and by breathing toxic mineral dust all day. None of these children attend school. Teenage mothers toil under the blazing sun with delirious infants strapped to their backs, breaking only for a moment to breastfeed their doomed babies. Young children and orphans can also be found in heavy numbers at sites near lakes and rivers. Near Lake Malo and Lake Golf, more than 5,100 adults and 1,200 children dig for cobalt across the contaminated landscape, which they wash in the lakes to sort out the precious stones. It takes a full day to fill one sack, for which they receive a scant $0.65 to $0.70.
THIRD – More than 220,000 adults toil in similarly harsh and harmful conditions. In the Kasulo neighborhood of Kolwezi, 14,000 males as young as fourteen engage in the most perilous activity I encountered. Even though this neighborhood has been walled off by one of the largest suppliers of cobalt in the DRC to prevent people from documenting the dangerous conditions, Young men dig tunnels along heterogenite veins as deep as thirty meters underground. They descend into darkness, crawling along narrow tunnels without room to stand, spending more than twenty-four hours at a time hacking at the walls for cobalt. Every moment is suffused with dread because tunnels in Kasulo collapse regularly, crushing those inside. A nearby village called Biwaya has also been walled off by the same cobalt supplier, but this area is guarded more militantly. No one is allowed in or out, and it is well known locally that most of the 60,000 inhabitants of the village – women, men, and children – are compelled to dig for cobalt. The same is true at scores of artisinal mining sites in remote mountains and forests close to the Zambian border. At Kimpese, more than 11,000 creseurs, including 2,000 children, mine cobalt and gold in deplorable conditions under military guard. By all accounts, many of these people are slaves.
FOURTH – The cobalt mined by creseurs in the southeastern provinces invariably enters global supply chains. The creseurs are forced to sell their cobalt to traders (negotiants) at whatever pathetic prices they are offered. The negotiants then sell the cobalt to hundreds of “buying houses” (maisons d’achat) across the region. Crucially, none of the buying houses documented enquired as to whether children were involved in the excavation of the cobalt they purchased, let alone the other oppressive conditions under which the creseurs toil. The buying houses sell the cobalt to refiners in the DRC that process the stone into crude cobalt hydroxide. Here again, cobalt from numerous sources can be mixed. The refined cobalt is then loaded onto trucks and driven across the Zambian border for export to China from ports in Dar es Salaam and Durban. In China, cobalt from a plethora of sources is mixed and refined further. Finally, the fully processed cobalt is sold to component manufacturers and consumer electronic companies. Since tainted cobalt is invariably mixed with cobalt from industrial mines, there is no way any company can assure us that the products we purchase do not contain tainted cobalt.
Men, women and children are suffering, anguishing, and dying for cobalt which is transformed into the flashy new products sold at profits that mock decency. Companies that buy cobalt from the DRC cannot jettison their responsibility for the vicious and unjust treatment of their Congolese employees simply because they are separated from them by a few thousand miles, and a few thin layers in their supply chains.
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