5 tech giants sued over use of child labour in Congolese cobalt mines

A landmark lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court in Washington against five of the world's largest tech companies. The legal complaint accuses five household names of being complicit in the death of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) forced to work in cobalt mines. 

Cobalt is used in the manufacture of computers, lithium-ion batteries, and mobile phones as well as in alloys for jet engines and wind turbines.

The lawsuit was filed on Sunday on the behalf of 14 families from the DRC by US-based human rights non-profit group International Rights Advocates against five tech giants - Tesla, Apple, Google parent company Alphabet Inc., Dell Technologies and Microsoft.

It is claimed that the companies are part of a system of forced labour that ultimately led to the death or serious injury of their children.

The legal action marks the first time the tech industry has jointly faced lawsuits over the source of its cobalt.

Images in documents shown to the court included photos of children with missing or disfigured limbs.

Of the 14 children in the case, six were killed in tunnel collapses with the others suffered life-threatening injuries including paralysis, it said.

"These companies - the richest companies in the world, these fancy gadget-making companies - have allowed children to be maimed and killed to get their cheap cobalt," Terrence Collingsworth, an attorney representing the families, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Over half of the world's cobalt is produced in the DRC. Global demand is predicted to rise by 7 to 13% year on year over the next decade, according to figures stated in a 2018 study by the European Commission.

The lawsuit alleged that children as young as 6 were being forced, as a result of extreme poverty, to leave school and work in cobalt mines owned by UK-based mining company Glencore. Some of the children are paid as little as $1.50 per day and made to work six days a week. Glencore has been previously accused of using child labour.

A spokesperson for Glencore said: "Glencore notes the allegations contained in a US lawsuit filed on 15th December 2019."

"Glencore’s production of cobalt in the DRC is a by-product of our industrial copper production. Glencore’s operations in the DRC do not purchase or process any artisanally mined ore."

"Glencore does not tolerate any form of forced or compulsory child labour."

Dell said in an email that it has "never knowingly sourced operations" that utilise child labour and has begun an investigation into the allegations.

Tesla, Apple, Google and Microsoft have yet to comment.

The lawsuit argues that all five companies have the ability and financial resources to completely overhaul their cobalt supply chains to create safer conditions.

"I've never encountered or documented a more severe asymmetry in the allocation of income between the top of the supply chain and the bottom," said Siddharth Kara, who is a researcher on modern slavery and an expert witness in the case. 

"It's that disconnect that makes this perhaps the worst injustice of slavery and child exploitation that I've seen in my two decades of research."

Over 40 million people are estimated to be held captive in modern slavery, which included forced labour and forced marriage, according to Walk Free and the International Labour Organization.

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