Catherwood LibraryILR School

As the popularity of electric cars soar in Europe and North America, so do the mining efforts of companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where two-thirds of the world’s supply of cobalt originate. The practices of Congolese mining companies have been under fire for years now in connection with the rampant and unreported use of child labor, the unsafe and at times lethal working conditions, and the generally unethical treatment of workers. As recently as 2016, Amnesty International published a report showing how children as young as seven were mining cobalt under life-threatening conditions for use in Apple and Microsoft technologies. Automakers such as Tesla and Volkswagen are anxious to divorce themselves from ethical scandals such as those faced by the tech giants only two years ago, but regulating cobalt mining in the Congo has proven incredibly difficult given unchecked smuggling and a surge in the output of artisanal mines which escape regulation more easily than large producers.