Tech companies sued over child coblat miners

International Rights Advocates (IRA), a human rights group in class action lawsuit has claimed Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell, and Tesla have all “aided and abetted” a supply chain for cobalt metal critical for smartphones and electric vehicles that forces children to work in dangerous conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Apple, Alphabet, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla all have specific policies claiming to prohibit child labour in their supply chains and their failure to actually implement these policies to stop forced child labour in cobalt mining is an international act to avoid ending the windfall of getting cheap cobalt.”

The suit is the first to target tech companies for their cobalt sourcing practices and raises the pressures on the industry to take stronger action to acquire the metal responsibly.

The DRC  produces about 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt of which approximately a third comes from unregulated “artisanal” miners who dig by hand. The demand for the metal is forecast to increase rapidly due to expected growth in electric vehicle use.

Glencore, the largest cobalt producer supplies the metal to Umicore, a Belgian chemicals group, which then supplies refined material to the tech companies, according to the lawsuit.

It also identified Chinese producer Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, as a supplier to Apple, Dell, and Microsoft.

London Metal Exchange the largest marketplace for industrial metals, this year set out new rules to allow responsibly sources metals only to be traded by 2023, which will potentially allow for metals dug up by artisanal miners.