The Paw Print

By Isabella Sun

In the Congo cobalt mines, workers of all ages, including around 40,000 child laborers as young as six, are being placed in dangerous working environments to mine for cobalt. Every day, they work with the looming possibility of death for a pay of less than 2 dollars a day. Despite how illegal cobalt mines are, they continue to operate and very few people know that Congolese blood is powering their devices.

Cobalt is a mineral used in manufacturing almost all lithium-ion batteries and is used by huge corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Tesla, and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. However, cobalt itself is toxic to breathe and touch, but to make a day’s worth of money for food, poor Congolese people gather around mines to work arduously while breathing in the toxic fumes.

The cobalt mines have thus consequently destroyed the environment of the Congo, with incredibly high concentrations of carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide being released, contaminating the air and water. However, with the increasing demand for cobalt, trees have also been cut down to create more room for mines. 

This activity has been ongoing since the early 1990’s and continues to persist today despite being very illegal. The reason for this is that poor Congolese people can’t receive money in any other way other than working in these mines. The owners of these mines, which include multiple Chinese companies like CMOC group, have been exploiting the lives of Congolese people. If you are in a world where people are willing to do anything to get a daily wage, put them all in a mining pit, and pay them a meager wage, you can produce massive amounts of cobalt every year. 

This degradation of human life is equivalent to a level of modern-day slavery; there are multiple hidden factors behind the cobalt mines that huge corporations have been hiding, which have put the workers there at incredible risk. In the artisanal mines, adults and children have been working in environments where death and serious injury occur every day. Along with the toxic cobalt air, these cheap mines are always at risk of falling apart. There are no supports or ventilation shafts, proving to be a serious health and safety hazard, and tunnels inside the mines are prone to collapsing, very commonly burying children and adults alive. Along with the exploitation of their health, children’s lives are often taken advantage of by human traffickers who gain money by trafficking children so they can work in the mines. These militias, also called commandos, will abduct children from all parts of the Congo and send them away for money, bearing the weight of these children’s lives. 

The reason for the need for more cobalt in recent years is due to the need for more lithium-ion batteries, which power our iPhones, laptops, electric cars, and medical equipment, from brands like Tesla, Apple, and Alphabet. It is popular due to its lightweightness, high density, and rechargeability. Although it is important to continue mining for cobalt, the mining conditions in the Congo need to be drastically improved from their current conditions. Endangering others for our own expense is the same evil as rich companies utilizing their lives for more profit.

In December 2019, Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla were involved in a lawsuit over Congolese children’s deaths. They have been named defendants in the court case filed by International Rights Advocates, which is a result of the findings of Siddarth Kara. The lawsuit had accused them of aiding the deaths of and injury of children who were working in the mines. This has been linked to child abuse, child labor, and environmental destruction. However, in 2021, all of the companies charged were able to avoid the accusation because a US court dismissed the lawsuit. 

Siddarth Kara, a researcher at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Kennedy School, has studied this case of modern slavery for over 20 years. He published the book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, which explains more about these mines and their effects on the Congolese people. In an interview, he addressed the importance of understanding what is happening. 

Siddarth Kara stated “Imagine a mountain of gravel and stone just avalanching down on people, crushing legs and arms, spines. I met people whose legs had been amputated, who had metal bars in where their legs used to be…And I met mothers pounding their chests in grief, talking about their children who had been buried alive in a tunnel collapse. And these stories never get out of the Congo. People just don’t know what’s happening down there.”