Amnesty International says it has traced cobalt used in batteries for household brands to mines in DRC, where children work in life-threatening conditions 
 
 Children as young as seven are working in perilous conditions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to mine cobalt that ends up in smartphones, cars and computers sold to millions across the world, by household brands including Apple, Microsoft and Vodafone, according to a new investigation by Amnesty International. 
 
 The human rights group claims to have traced cobalt used in lithium batteries sold to 16 multinational brands to mines where young children and adults are being paid a dollar a day, working in life-threatening conditions and subjected to violence, extortion and intimidation. 
 
 More than half the world’s supply of cobalt comes from the DRC, with 20% of cobalt exported coming from artisanal mines in the southern part of the country. In 2012, Unicef estimated that there were 40,000 children working in all the mines across the south, many involved in mining cobalt. 
 
 In a joint-investigation with African Resources Watch (Afrewatch), an African NGO focusing on human rights in the minerals and extractive industries, Amnesty International says it interviewed 90 adults and children working in five artisanal cobalt mine sites. Workers spoke of labouring for 12 hours a day with no protective clothing, and with many experiencing significant health problems as a result. 
 
 The report says that child miners as young as seven carried back-breaking loads and worked in intense heat for between one or two dollars a day without face masks or gloves. Several children said they had been beaten by security guards employed by mining companies and forced to pay “fines” by unauthorised mines police sent by state officials to extort money and intimidate workers. 
 
 The human rights groups say they traced the supply chain from these mining sites to Congo Dongfang Mining (CDM), one of the largest mineral processors in the DRC and a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese mineral company Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Ltd (Huayou Cobalt). 
 
 The report says that Huayou Cobalt sources more than 40% of its cobalt from the DRC and processes the raw mineral before selling it to battery makers, who claim to supply companies including Apple, Microsoft and Vodafone. This supply chain has not been independently verified by the Guardian. 
 
 
 
 Responding to the allegations, Huayou Cobalt told Amnesty International that “our company has not been aware that any of our legitimate suppliers has hired child labour in their mining sites or operated in unsafe working conditions … CDM has rigorously selected its ore suppliers to ensure the procurement of raw materials through legitimate channels”. 
 
 Of the 16 companies listed in the report as sourcing from battery manufacturers using processed cobalt from Huayou Cobalt, two multinational companies denied sourcing any cobalt from the DRC and five said they had no links with Huayou Cobalt. The remaining companies either accepted Amnesty’s claims or were investigating the claims. 
 
 In its response to Amnesty’s allegations, which Amnesty has published in full alongside responses from the other named companies, Apple said it was currently evaluating whether cobalt in the company’s products originated in the DRC. 
 
 “Underage labour is not tolerated in our supply chain and we are proud to have led the industry in pioneering new safeguards,” it says. 
 
 Vodafone, in its response to Amnesty, stated that the company “is unaware as to whether or not cobalt in our products originates in Katanga in the DRC … both the smelters and the mines from which the metals such as cobalt are originally sourced are several steps away from Vodafone in the supply chain”. 
 
 Amnesty International and Afrewatch claim that despite the denials by some of the named multinationals, none of those companies named could independently verify where the cobalt in their products come from. 
 
 
 
 “What is very worrying is that none of the companies that we identified through our research and named in investor documents could trace the cobalt they use in their products back to the mines where it originated. Around half of all cobalt comes from the DRC, and no company can validly claim that they are unaware of the human rights and child labour abuses linked with mineral extraction in the region,” says Mark Dummett, business and human rights researcher at Amnesty International. 
 
 He said that some of the company responses to Amnesty’s assertions were “staggering”. For example, when asked by Amnesty International whether it sourced cobalt from CDM or Huayou Cobalt, Microsoft responded by saying: “We have not traced the cobalt used through our supply chain to the smelter level due to the complexity and the resources required.” 
 
 
 
 “These are some of the biggest companies in the world, with combined profits of $125 billion and there is no excuse that companies aren’t investing some of that profit into ensuring that they can trace where the minerals they are using are coming from,” says Dummett. “Anyone with a smartphone would be appalled to think that children as young as seven carrying out back-breaking work for 12 hours a day could be involved at some point in the making of it.” 
 
 The DRC has a long history of bloody conflict fuelled by the region’s mineral wealth and the region still has an estimated $24 trillion in untapped minerals. 
 
 Global demand for cobalt is increasing, but the global cobalt market remains largely unregulated as it falls outside “conflict mineral” legislation regulating the extraction and sale of other mineral such as gold, coltan and tin from the DRC. 
 
 Amnesty and Afrewatch are using the findings of the report to call on multinational companies to conduct investigations of their supply chains for lithium-ion batteries, to check for child labour or labour abuses and to be more transparent about their suppliers. ||||| Children mining cobalt in slave-like conditions as global demand for battery material surges 
 
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 If you have not spared a thought for cobalt since high school science, then it might be time. 
 
 It is having a boom, and the modern world is increasingly reliant on it — using it to stabilise batteries in phones, computers and electric cars; in fact, it is probably in the device you are using right now. 
 
 But there is a catch. 
 
 Cobalt is mined in a string of countries around the world including Australia, but most of the world's supply comes from just one country in Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — a nation with a long record of poorly-enforced labour standards and child exploitation. 
 
 And because cobalt is in such high demand right now, its global price has soared, doubling over the course of last year. 
 
 According to human rights organisation Amnesty International, that growth has put pressure on miners in the DRC to ramp up production, leading in turn to tens of thousands of children being lured or forced into gruelling and dangerous mine work. 
 
 Amnesty International researcher Lauren Armistead has spent time in the DRC and told the ABC's daily news podcast The Signal the work in the cobalt mines was extremely hazardous, especially without the right protective equipment. 
 
 "The work, by its very nature, is the worst possible form of child labour," Ms Armistead said. 
 
 "Often the children are not engaged in the mine pits themselves, but they will be engaged in tasks such as crushing, transporting, sifting and carrying heavy loads." 
 
 Ms Armistead said she believed a UNICEF estimate made in 2014 — that 40,000 children were toiling illegally in Congolese mines — was now a severe underestimate, given the recent increase in global demand. 
 
 She said the hours the children were working were particularly exploitative — and would be even for adults. 
 
 "Children are sometimes working 12 hours or more," she said. 
 
 "We met one boy, Paul, who said he has been working 24 hours straight down in one of the pits." 
 
 Much of the cobalt mined in the DRC is extracted from small mines, sometimes literally run out of semi-rural backyards. 
 
 Former child labourer Yannick from Kolwezi, a city of more than 500,000 people in the south of the DRC, dropped out of school and went into full-time work at the age of seven. 
 
 "When I was going to the mines it was to look after my family, because there was a lot of suffering," Yannick said. 
 
 "I gave up on studying to help my mother — she was sick, my father was dead, and his family did not look after us." 
 
 Yannick said the work in the mine involved intense physical labour using only a crowbar, and said conditions underground were generally hot and sticky. 
 
 He also described former bosses who insisted their underage employees put in long working days without breaks. 
 
 "People died in the mine, and you could suffocate when you are deep in the mine," he said. 
 
 "When it rained, it created a lot of landslides. 
 
 "When we were working there and when someone hurts himself, we could not even look at him — the person had to go and get treated on his own, as we were there to work. 
 
 "It is not good to let children work at the mines." 
 
 Mine work 'modern day slavery' 
 
 The conditions described by Yannick amount to modern day slavery, according to law experts in Australia who think companies here could do more to isolate their supply chains from exploitative practices. 
 
 Professor Jennifer Burn, a lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney Law School and a spokeswoman for the organisation Anti Slavery Australia, said exploitative workplace practices both here and overseas accounted for at least some of the relatively low cost of electronic goods. 
 
 She supports the Modern Slavery Bill currently awaiting a vote in the Parliament, which would compel an estimated 3,000 Australian companies to conduct annual audits of their supply chain for signs of exploitative practices. 
 
 "When we see goods that are becoming cheaper and cheaper, we should wonder about the source of those goods," Professor Burn said. 
 
 "It's extraordinary for any of us really to go into any of the major supermarkets or department stores and to see how cheap these goods are — we know that they're made overseas, but it's unimaginable really that you can buy a toaster for about $10. 
 
 "The situation in the [DRC] with cobalt mines is slavery — slavery is where a person is treated as if they're an object, and where there are powers exercised over that person as if they are a commodity." 
 
 The Modern Slavery Bill was tabled in the House of Representatives late last month just before parliamentarians adjourned for their winter break. 
 
 It would apply to entities in Australia with an annual consolidated revenue of more than $100 million, and would require them to submit a "Modern Slavery Statement" annually to a new Government-run register. 
 
 A parliamentary committee is currently consulting on the bill, with a final vote due some time before Christmas. 
 
 Topics: mobile-phones, information-and-communication, human-rights, australia, congo-the-democratic-republic-of-the
– For the last four decades, cobalt mining has been almost non-existent in the US. That's changing now with what the BBC labels a rush for the precious metal recently named as critical to the US economy. With increases in price and demand for the silver-blue mineral—used in everything from the lithium-ion batteries to jet engines to drones—mining firms that have "never actually gone looking for cobalt" are doing so, says Trent Mell, CEO of Canada-based First Cobalt. His is one of several firms planning to dig for cobalt in the US, including in Idaho and Missouri, over the next several years. Along with the risks—there's availability and price volatility to consider, not to mention the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to establish a mine—comes the potential for big rewards. Consumption of cobalt—selling for $32 a pound, up from $20 in early 2011—is on pace to rise 8% to 10% a year, per the BBC. Indeed, some analysts expect to see shortages as soon as 2022. American-mined cobalt could ease the burden and might even fetch a premium price as the US looks to ease its reliance on imports and more companies begin to request ethical sources of the metal. ABC Australia reports that more than 60% of the world's supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Amnesty International claims child slaves toil in mines. Some, however, see the rush as coming too late. Tiberius Group CEO Christoph Eibl tells Bloomberg that "the craziness that you see in cobalt will in many ways actually be corrected." For example, future batteries may use less lithium, he says. "There’s so much uncertainty about how future technologies will be applied."