Sixteen multinational tech companies use cobalt mined by children – report

Over half of the global supply of cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the government estimates that 20% of the cobalt currently exported comes from artisanal miners in the south of the country, including children as young as seven, working with their hands and using basic tools, according to the report.

Chronic exposure to dust containing cobalt can result in a potentially fatal lung disease, ‘hard metal lung disease,’ said the report, which also lists other diseases that can come from breathing and skin contact with cobalt.

The report blamed the DRC as well as the various parts of the supply chain including companies, stating that the companies’ promise of zero-tolerance of child labour was meaningless if they do not investigate their suppliers.

Apple, when contacted, e-mailed a copy of its full submission to Amnesty International. In that statement, it said that underage labour is never tolerated in its supply chain and the company not only has “strict standards, rigorous audits and industry-leading preventative measures, but we also actively look for any violations”.

The company said it is currently evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to identify labour and environmental risks as well as opportunities for Apple to bring about “effective, scalable and sustainable change,” but warned that it could not do this alone and that there are no quick fixes to challenges in the global supply chain.

Samsung did not immediately respond. Samsung SDI, the battery making business of the Samsung group, told Amnesty International and Afrewatch that “it is very hard to trace the source of the mineral due to the suppliers’ nondisclosure of information and the complexity of the supply chains.” The company said it was impossible for it to determine whether the cobalt supplied to Samsung SDI comes from DRC Katanga’s mines.

Of the multinationals identified in the report as buying from battery manufacturers that used processed cobalt from Huayou Cobalt, two multinational companies denied sourcing any cobalt from the DRC and five denied sourcing through Huayou Cobalt. Some of the companies either accepted or were uncertain about Amnesty’s claims or said they were investigating, according to the report.

The cobalt market is not regulated and it does not fall under existing conflict minerals rules in the US, according to the Amnesty International report.