In the Democratic Republic of the Congo six children were killed in tunnel collapses while mining for cobalt. In response International Rights Advocates has filed a legal complaint on behalf of 14 families from the DRC against Tesla Inc, Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc, Dell Technologies Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The complaint is accusing these corporations of taking part in a forced labor system that has resulted in the death of children. Children as young as six years old are being forced to leave school and work in cobalt mines as a result of their families\u2019 extreme poverty. The wages for the workers were as low as $1.50 per day for a six day work week.
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More than half of the world\u2019s cobalt is produced in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the demand for this metal is on the rise. according to a 2018 study by the European Commission, the demand for cobalt is predicted to increase at seven percent to 13 percent annually over the next decade. In order to make rechargeable lithium batteries used in millions of products sold by the tech industry, Cobalt is a key ingredient.
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The cobalt mines are owned by the British and Swiss mining company Glencore, which has previously been accused of using child labour. In 2012 they were accused of breaching international law by allowing children as young as 10 to work at one of its mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. These children were found going down shafts 150ft deep at the Tilwezembe copper mine without any safety or breathing equipment.
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\u201cI\u2019ve never encountered or documented a more severe asymmetry in the allocation of income between the top of the supply chain and the bottom,\u201d said Siddharth Kara, a researcher on modern slavery. Modern slavery as a result of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor is demonstrated with the working conditions of these mines. Regardless as to whether those who were working in these mines were children, these conditions should not be legal for anyone, regardless of age. A slave to their poverty, these families are forced to work in such horrific conditions in order to survive. It is a vicious cycle that never seems to end, that of poor families in africa forced to work long hours next to nothing while rich, white, American billionaires reap the benefits. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo six children were killed in tunnel collapses while mining for cobalt. In response International Rights Advocates has filed a legal complaint on behalf of 14 families from the DRC against Tesla Inc, Apple Inc, Alphabet Inc, Dell Technologies Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The complaint is accusing these corporations of taking part in a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3988"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3989,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3988\/revisions\/3989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}