- Sky News investigated the Katanga mines and found Dorsen, 8,
and Monica, 4
- The pair were working in the vast mines of the Democratic Republic
of Congo
- They are two of the 40,000 children working daily in the mines,
checking rocks for cobalt
By Barbara Jones for The Mail on Sunday
Published: 17:01 EDT, 5 August 2017 | Updated: 08:37 EDT, 6 August 2017
Picking through a mountain of huge rocks with his tiny bare hands, the exhausted little boy makes a pitiful sight.
His name is Dorsen and he is one of an army of children, some just four years old, working in the vast polluted mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where toxic red dust burns their eyes, and they run the risk of skin disease and a deadly lung condition. Here, for a wage of just 8p a day, the children are made to check the rocks for the tell-tale chocolate-brown streaks of cobalt – the prized ingredient essential for the batteries that power electric cars.
And it’s feared that thousands more children could be about to be dragged into this hellish daily existence – after the historic pledge made by Britain to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040 and switch to electric vehicles.
Eight-year-old Dorsen is pictured cowering beneath the raised hand of an overseer who warns him not to spill a rock
It heralds a future of clean energy, free from pollution but – though there can be no doubting the good intentions behind Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s announcement last month – such ideals mean nothing for the children condemned to a life of hellish misery in the race to achieve his target.
Dorsen, just eight, is one of 40,000 children working daily in the mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The terrible price they will pay for our clean air is ruined health and a likely early death.
Almost every big motor manufacturer striving to produce millions of electric vehicles buys its cobalt from the impoverished central African state. It is the world’s biggest producer, with 60 per cent of the planet’s reserves.
The cobalt is mined by unregulated labour and transported to Asia where battery manufacturers use it to make their products lighter, longer-lasting and rechargeable.
The planned switch to clean energy vehicles has led to an extraordinary surge in demand. While a smartphone battery uses no more than 10 grams of refined cobalt, an electric car needs 15kg (33lb).
He then staggers beneath the weight of a heavy sack that he must carry to unload 60ft away in pouring rain
Goldman Sachs, the merchant bank, calls cobalt ‘the new gasoline’ but there are no signs of new wealth in the DRC, where the children haul the rocks brought up from tunnels dug by hand.
Adult miners dig up to 600ft below the surface using basic tools, without protective clothing or modern machinery. Sometimes the children are sent down into the narrow makeshift chambers where there is constant danger of collapse.
Cobalt is such a health hazard that it has a respiratory disease named after it – cobalt lung, a form of pneumonia which causes coughing and leads to permanent incapacity and even death.
Even simply eating vegetables grown in local soil can cause vomiting and diarrhoea, thyroid damage and fatal lung diseases, while birds and fish cannot survive in the area.
No one knows quite how many children have died mining cobalt in the Katanga region in the south-east of the country. The UN estimates 80 a year, but many more deaths go unregistered, with the bodies buried in the rubble of collapsed tunnels. Others survive but with chronic diseases which destroy their young lives. Girls as young as ten in the mines are subjected to sexual attacks and many become pregnant.
Dorsen and 11-year-old Richard are pictured. With his mother dead, Dorsen lives with his father in the bush and the two have to work daily in the cobalt mine to earn money for food.
When Sky News investigated the Katanga mines it found Dorsen, working near a little girl called Monica, who was four, on a day of relentless rainfall.
Dorsen was hauling heavy sacks of rocks from the mine surface to a growing stack 60ft away. A full sack was lifted on to Dorsen’s head and he staggered across to the stack. A brutish overseer stood over him, shouting and raising his hand to threaten a beating if he spilt any.
With his mother dead, Dorsen lives with his father in the bush and the two have to work daily in the cobalt mine to earn money for food.
Dorsen’s friend Richard, 11, said that at the end of a working day ‘everything hurts’.
In a country devastated by civil wars in which millions have died, there is no other way for families to survive. Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) is donating £10.5million between June 2007 and June 2018 towards strengthening revenue transparency and encouraging responsible activity in large and small scale artisanal mining, ‘to benefit the poor of DRC’.
There is little to show for these efforts so far. There is a DRC law forbidding the enslavement of under-age children, but nobody enforces it.
The UN’s International Labour Organisation has described cobalt mining in DRC as ‘one of the worst forms of child labour’ due to the health risks.
Soil samples taken from the mining area by doctors at the University of Lubumbashi, the nearest city, show the region to be among the ten most polluted in the world. Residents near mines in southern DRC had urinary concentrates of cobalt 43 higher than normal. Lead levels were five times higher, cadmium and uranium four times higher.
The worldwide rush to bring millions of electric vehicles on to our roads has handed a big advantage to those giant car-makers which saw this bonanza coming and invested in developing battery-powered vehicles, among them General Motors, Renault-Nissan, Tesla, BMW and Fiat-Chrysler.
HT/Tom Anderson
This stuff is in every mobile phone… every rechargeable battery used in your vacuum, cordless drill, etc…
Using this to attack renewable energy exclusively is frankly propaganda.
Come back when you’ve given up ALL your modern electronics, then you can have a pop at renewables.
(and this has been going on for a decade, longer…)
Dang Griff. For once I agree with you.
Try not to let it happen again. LOL
To large degree, the western lifestyle is built on the back of 3rd world oppression.
It’s the 3rd World’s reluctance to adopt free-market principles and Western Civilizations’ ideals of virtue, individual rights (not collective), empiricism, private property rights, limited governments and due process that has doomed the 3rd World.
Few corporations are willing to invest in the 3rd Wold as many times 3rd World dictators simply confiscate privately property. Corruption and bribes essential to get anything done in the 3rd World also greatly increases legal liabilities.
The 3rd World did this to themselves. I’m sick an tired of deluded and ignorant Leftists’ virtue signaling and guilt trips.
The ONLY way for 3rd World countries to crawl out of abject poverty is by adopting free-market capitalism and removing Socialist dictators from power by any means necessary and replacing them with limited-government Constitutional Republics.
It’s hard for the 3rd world to adopt those things when the western world that espouses such works to subvert such by installing dictators and despots who allow the raping of their countries.
I Came, that has to be the stupidest thing you have ever written.
Typical—does not understand the mechanics of scale.
Griff,
This is the first time you have said something I agree with!
Back to Janice’s false dichotomy.
Endanger children and pay below starvation wages – or give up your cell phone.
There is enough profit in the total supply chain (Apple earnings anyone?) to enact a minimum increase in wages and fundamental safety in each of the steps.
PLEASE STOP WITH THE “EITHER/OR”.
(And Griff, because it has gone on for a decade or longer it is OK?!? Go back and reread Sheri’s posts.)
You know this for a fact?
Are you so confident that forcing these mines to provide modern tools and safety equipment wouldn’t make their product more expensive than other mines and thus put them out of business?
Just because I am not perfect does not mean I should be a thousand times worse without feeling guilty in my book. Increasing demand will lower the already low health and safety standards to meet the much higher demands as clearly there will not be the mechanisation investment to avoid that.
Griff- “Using this to attack renewable energy exclusively is frankly propaganda.” Propaganda it is, and almost all the rhetoric about global warming/climate change/catastrophic climate change/anthropocene/….. is also frank propaganda.
The premise here is that cobalt is needed in greatly increased amounts for electric cars, windmills, and hence increases the problems for the working poor in the Congo. Since electric cars provide no real benefits we end up with a net loss all around.
The problem is that electric cars and windmills do nothing to reduce pollution and barely anything to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Electricity is not a “fuel” it is a method to get power from one place to another in a highly useful form. Electric cars do not reduce pollution or CO2, they simply produce it outside of overpopulated cities. Once ALL the systemic costs are factored in the amount of pollution from electric cars is barely reduced, if at all, compared to a hybrid vehicle getting 52km/liter.
The ONLY situation where electric makes any sense is in the central urban districts of large cities. Pollution there is already too high from population density and moving some of it to less urban areas would have benefits overall if the people who have to put up with the power plant are OK with it.
Janice Moore,
May I suggest that you give up all the cobalt alloys you use daily? And any product that uses cobalt containing tools in their manufacture?
You would find yourself living in hunter gatherer conditions.
Failure to understand the workings of scale.
You keep repeating that as if it were relevant.
So one cell phone is fine but 3 billion is so wrong.
Have you given yours up? Have you convinced your friends to do the same? Or are you hoping that an army will enforce your ideals?
The Greenie reprimand “think of the children” would seem to apply. What the numerous concern trolls don’t seem to get here is the rank hypocrisy of Greenies and their “save-the-planet” “green energy”.
YES. It does not matter if there are children or not. The damage done by the mining itself is so very NOT green, but they can’t see it so they do not care. If their children had to mine the cobalt, you’d see the industry shut down.
Yep, save the planet for future children. Screw the children that are destroyed in the meantime.
Centrally planned anything will never work best for everyone. Some will be screwed so the planners can achieve their goals. Read history, it always works this way. Liberals and greenies are fundamentally central planners attempting to achieve nirvana. LOL
I think of the food all the money we are spending on renewables could buy in the here and now to give these children. Do you think moving beyond starvation might let these folks do better things? Could one of them be the next Einstein?
This is happening now. It can therefore have little to do with electric vehicles or new types of solar cells
http://www.etf.com/sites/default/files/hai/stories/HAI_cobalt_img2.jpgBatteries make up 23%
Metals alloys 33%
Catalysts 11%
Magnets 7%
Soaps 8%
http://www.etf.com/sites/default/files/hai/stories/HAI_cobalt_img2.jpg
I’d like to point out that cobalt is the main component of vitamin B12 which is an essential component to our health by keeping our blood and brain functions in working order. It has also been used since ancient times as a blue pigment ‘cobalt blue’ for ceramics. It is also used in magnets, catalysts and numerous industrial applications. More recently it is being used in superalloys which are an important component in spacecraft, military hardware, turbines and jet motors. However, its growing and now most important function is in lithium cobalt batteries where it provides more energy density and enables electric cars like Tesla’s to travel longer distances on a single electric charge. This is driving the recent upswing in demand for the metal.
Cobalt is an extremely important metal for our future in transport and energy and although 60% is sourced from the DR Congo it also occurs mostly as co-product with copper or nickel deposits at other places (Australia, Canada, Brazil) where it is mined by modern methods and standards.
Only about 15% of the cobalt mined in the DR Congo (arguably the poorest country on earth) is by local ‘family’ groups and this bought by merchants who sell it to the Chinese market. The mining is usually by hand picking and shallow excavations in old mine areas.
The report is taken out of context. Without this income many poor people with no land to grow food would not survive. These people need to be helped to make their work safer and better paid. Stopping this trade will only add to their misery.
Arguing for the child sex trade again…..
Ha ha Sheri – Like climate change it has little to do with child sex trade.
You are arguing that ANY activity is acceptable if it keeps people alive. The child sex trade keeps some children alive. Therefore, it is acceptable.
Sheri believes that it is better for whole families to starve to death rather than engage in work that she disapproves of.
Sheri, there is a world of difference between “acceptable” and the “least bad alternative”.
Your continued attempts to lie about what the positions others are taking is destroying your credibility.
MarkW: Again, if you are for “whatever keeps the child alive—which you seem to be, then you’re for not using sanctions against North Korea and buying more and more products from countries with child labor to make their lives better. It’s the same argument. Support the child labor and oppression of people so they don’t die. Why are saying that is not your argument?
So Sheri has now accused just about everybody on the thread of being in favor of slavery, prostitution, toxic child labor, North Korea, as well as putting words in people’s mouths so she can righteously beat her own strawman to death…
All Amusing stuff, except
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO FEED THESE PEOPLE TOMORROW IN A COUNTRY WHERE MILLIONS HAVE RECENTLY STARVED TO DEATH, AND IT IS HIGHLY LIKELY (EVEN IF NOT 100% CERTAIN) PEOPLE WITHOUT JOBS WILL DIE
I’ve never been a fan of sanctions because the people being hurt are not the ones who have the power to change the situation.
I’m a fan of doing things that will actually help the people involved.
Eliminating what they view as their best option in a bad situation does not help them. No matter how virtuous it may make you feel.
Comments are refusing to post.
Clyde and gnomish have hijacked the thread to a debate on whether child labor is a heaven sent gift or an evil and away from the actual thread’s point—it is a LIE that green solutions are environmentally friendly. Whether 4 year olds are hauling rocks all day long or not, the mines are HORRIBLE for the environment. Yet the greens do not care in the least. It’s not in their back yard.
I have seen this poverty…
At the least the EU nordic red-greens seem ready to preserve lithosphere from the harmful effects by carbon-based lifeforms.
Funny, I thought that you were the one who brought up the topic of morality with your initial comment, “Yes, it is better to live as an abused slave than to die. Thus, slavery is justified. So say you.”, at the top of the thread!
Yes, all mines are evil and should be banned. /sarc
Your sarcasm does not have thing to do with my comment. You clearly say any life is better than death. You repeat it over and over. I assume you mean it. Unless you left the sarc tag off.
As I said earlier, whether poor working conditions are worse than death is not your call to make.
An issue you do not really get into is decolonization in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. This was coincident with the Cold War, and the various actions done by both sides resulted in very few stable governments in the former colonies.
As no one can be assured of property rights, very low capital investment methods of utilizing a resource are practical. This does include forced labor, which would be uneconomic if investors could be reasonably sure of not getting “expropriated” by either the local rebels or the (not really different) national government.
Personally, I blame Soviet Marxists and their defacto allies on the Left, and unethical buyers in the West for this situation. Currently, the Chinese seem to be bribing the appropriate warlords, and using their own labor, which is arguably worse for the locals.
Sheri,
You said, “You clearly say any life is better than death. You repeat it over and over. I assume you mean it.” Yes, I do mean it! Required to make the choice, there are few things that I would not do to keep myself and my child alive. Consider what you are saying as the alternative to my position!
I WILL stop reading your offensive, cheap moralizing.
Well Sheri, it’s difficult (actually useless) to attempt adult discussion with a shrill, idealistic rant that, if implemented, will kill the very people you profess to care about. You conveniently ignore that or demand “proof” it will happen in a country where millions have recently died the same way.
And that ignores all the twisted words you cram in everybody else mouth (“hijacked the thread to a debate on whether child labor is a heaven sent gift”) so you can virtuously refute them.
Best case: you are willfully ignorant; worst case: you actually believe that crap.
Sheri has hijacked this thread by lying about what others have written.
Nobody has said that child labor is a heaven sent gift. The argument is and always has been. Are there better opportunities available.
Your cheap moralizing and continued lying about what others have said is a sad testament to your inability to behave rationally.
i’m gonna name a new fallacy in honor of sheri – let’s call it argument ad pedofilio.
MarkW: Commenters have called this “working alongside your child” or “working alongside your parent”. Sounds to me like they approve and are calling this something other than the least bad alternative.
I will not apologize nor stop with the “cheap moralizing”. If you find it offensive, stop reading my comments.
As always, feeling good about herself is more important that actually helping people.
Sheri
Do you think the people in the mining picture would rather have their jobs or your cheap moralizing?
Nobody disagrees that what is happening is horrible; the issue is how this happens & what to do about it.
YOU CONTINUE TO AVOID THE ISSUE OF HOW YOU WOULD FEED THESE PEOPLE THE MINUTE YOU ELIMINATE THEIR JOBS; THERE ARE NO CALORIES IN VIRTUE SIGNALING.
This article highlights an excellent reason to switch to the BioSolar batteries made with
polyacetylene.
http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2016/04/this-battery-is-game-changer.html
RS,
Polyacetylene: made from a feedstock of crude oil or natural gas. Aluminum and titanium catalysts are important, which requires mining.
Dad lives in the bush, single parent, my guess is he is using the mine as a way to keep an eye on his kids while he works. All sorts of things can happen to little kids in the bush while no one trusted in around, lots of predators both 2 and 4 legged.
Canada is a distant third in cobalt production like a lot of other metals it could produce more of. Like a lot of other ‘advanced’ countries and wealthy colonialists they would rather forgo more production and just let unregulated sources show up on the market to get the high value added premiums at later stages of use.
Child miners and electric cars might be one association, but child miners would probably be a reality even without electric cars, and so the article seems to force a one-track association to make electric cars seem more horrible.
It’s a neat trick, … to use the old “think of the children” ploy against alarmists, but, really, it’s sort of sinking to their level to make a point. Desperate people are opportunists — they take advantage of any opportunity available if it helps keep them alive, even alive struggling with physical forces and threats of harm to their health — it’s better than being outright dead.
In 1973, as a young geologist student, I worked for 4 months in the Kilembe Mines in West Uganda where they mined copper and cobalt. The mine was closed a decade later. I am glad that a Chinese company has reopened the mine some two years ago giving an enormous economic boost to the region. The conditions in the mine were very good at the time, nothing like what is described above.
http://www.miningweekly.com/article/chinese-breathe-life-back-into-ugandas-kilembe-coppercobalt-mine-2015-02-06/rep_id:3650
“though there can be no doubting the good intentions behind Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s announcement last month“…
The road to hell is paved with good intentions…
In China, the true cost of Britain’s clean, green wind power experiment: Pollution on a disastrous scale…
“When Chandrasekhar Reddy traveled to northeastern India in 2011, the director was looking for material for a film on forests in the region famed for its misty hills and waterfalls.
Instead, he found children as young as five working in coal mines.”
That is coal for use in India. What if that coal was going to US coal fired power plants.
THis may be the dumbest argument against electric cars ever made. Blaming them for cobalt mining practices. I might point out that the vast majority of lithium batteries are being used NOT to power the few electric cars on our streets, but to power computers, cellphones, LED flashlights, etc etc.
Agh, I just googled and found this:
“President Museveni ordered for the termination of the $175m (about Shs620 billion) concession awarded to a Chinese company to revive Kilembe Mines amidst claims of top officials having pocketed bribes, is one of those things.”
http://allafrica.com/stories/201707030587.html
What a shame!
Is is obvious to all that nobody cares what blacks do to blacks, either here or in Africa. Black lives just don’t matter. Harsh but true.
When there was a black on black genocide in Rwanda, the international community did nothing. Well, hold on. They did do something. They declared there was no genocide going on. So, there’s that. When there was a Christian on Muslim “genocide” in Yugoslavia, NATO intervened after the UN intervention failed.
What you say? It was in Europe so of course NATO intervened, but not in Africa? NATO intervened in Libya and destroyed that country’s govt.
I bet if I were in college I would be suspended for writing the above words. Not because they are mean. But, because they are true.
I hesitate to enter this fray, but I’m just arrogant enough to believe I can make some useful points others have overlooked.
Much of what we need to keep industrial civilization going we get by extracting from the earth, otherwise known as mining. Humans have been mining for thousands of years and it has always been hazardous, to the point where slave and prison labor has often been used. For whatever geological reasons I don’t claim to understand, it appears cobalt has been distributed very selectively such that large amounts are concentrated in one country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Current lack of oversight by the DRC government or any other organization such as trade unions has left DRC citizens, including young children, practically no choice except to work dangerous mining jobs for very little pay.
Is this right? Clearly not. Who is to blame?
(1) greedy exploitative corporations. Buy low, sell high. If you can’t sell for more, then buy for less.
(2) corrupt governments. Greedy corporations generally require cooperation from “flexible” government officials to really exploit local populations. If the cobalt companies are making a killing, some of it is being paid out in bribes.
(3) consumers who buy products containing cobalt.
The answer is all three.
Who can fix it?
Just addressing (3) doesn’t fix the problem as some of the previous comments have pointed out. And it may have the effect of pushing the very vulnerable populations you are trying to help over the line from subsistence to starvation.
We have a limited ability to fix (2). Perhaps if the UN would stop condemning Israel every waking hour they would have some time and energy to address the many corrupt governments on this planet which exploit, abuse or neglect their own populations. But probably not, because I suspect DRC is one of the votes they’re counting on for their climate policies (not to mention resolutions condemning Israel).
(1) we can do something about. Starbucks proudly advertises “ethically sourced” coffee beans, so you’ll feel better about spending $5 for a cup of it. Maybe someone in the fawning media covering “sustainability” issues could ask Elon Musk what he is doing to promote ethically sourced cobalt. Ditto for Apple, Samsung, Motorola and any other significant cobalt users. If necessary legislation can be enacted to put some teeth into it.
If cobalt has a genuine value in the marketplace, there will be sufficient margin to set up a modern mining operation that can pay reasonable wages to adult miners so their young children can spend at least some of the day in school, while still making a profit. We’ve got no shortage of rich people advertising how environmentally virtuous they are; they should be willing to provide some of the capital investment so we don’t build the future perfect world on the bones of exploited third-world children.
I’ve always found it weird how some people condemn in corporations, those very behaviors that they take pride in.
Unless you routinely go out of your way to only buy the most expensive products available, you don’t have much room to condemn corporations who don’t either.
PS: Starbucks is and will always be a luxury product bought by a tiny fraction of the population.
http://fortune.com/2017/03/03/apple-cobalt-child-labor/
There are other companies doing the same thing and looking for alternatives. Unfortunately, just like with the coconut oil fiasco, people go where the money is and the alternatives become as bad as the original.
Alan, I also am reluctant to enter this discussion – typically one gets accused of crimes against humanity..
Here are a few observations, based on my significant business experience on six continents:
1. There is no Rule of Law in about 90% of the countries on Earth. Rule of Law is not even that good in the Western world, and is often under threat from scoundrels and imbeciles.
2. In the developing world, you don’t get to choose between good and bad – you get to choose between bad and worse. In Tunisia during the hot war in Libya next door and Arab Spring, I tried to explain this to some influential friends. I said “Just because you throw out a ‘bad’ leader doesn’t mean you will get a better one.” In fact most or all the countries involved in Arab Spring got worse regimes than the ones they threw out.
3. Taking Western practices into the third world often leads to unintended consequences. When I managed two armed invasions of my project in Kazakstan, I was under pressure to bring in the police and the army. I refused, and managed both situations myself with no bloodshed. The armed forces typically come in shooting in hostage situations, kill everyone, and let God sort them out.
4. I am reluctant to offer any thoughts as to a solutions, because the situation in Congo is complex and I have not studied it. If the solution was easy, it would already be in place. How do you restore Rule of Law that left Africa fifty years ago? How else can these people earn a living? Are you going to make their lives better or worse with your proposed “solution”?
Just because you toss about a bad system does not mean you will make a better one…
Regards, Allan
“How do you restore Rule of Law that left Africa fifty years ago? ”
Them dang colonials. Hate it when they leave. Hate it when they stay.
http://bit.ly/1rZ5gk0 Virtue signaling is of no value to humanity.
Margaret Sanger is smiling in her grave knowing that human weeds are being eliminated while engaging in providing the ruling class their sense of righteousness. Sarc off.
The historian Hugh Thomas in his book The Slave Trade quotes King Gelele of West Africa (Dahomey I believe), when confronted with the British Government’s desire to end the slave trade, he refused. He reportedly said,”If I cannot sell my captives taken in war, I must kill them, and surely the English would not like that?” Thomas, in the following paragraph in his book states, “It was an argument for which abolitionists were unprepared.” This occurred about the time of the US Civil War. I see from this article and the subsequent thread there hasn’t been much progress on that account. The waste of humanity continues in various forms to this day. It appears most of us are as unprepared to answer the question as to what to do with “surplus people” as the abolitionists of the 1860’s. Can all of us live the kind of life we believe we deserve? I certainly can’t answer that.