Many years ago, in 2013, I wrote a post titled “What’s Your Slavery Footprint” where I said:
How many leather shoes are in your closet? How many gadgets do you own? Do you use coffee? Do you have jewels? Silver or gold?
Today I should be adding:
Do you use an electric or hybrid vehicle? Do you use a battery storage device?
Today I was contacted by one of the people who found my 2013 post about slavery and she sent me a comprehensive article by Arnold Mutinda about modern slavery. The details presented are amazing and the facts put in front of us astounding. Here is the link:
What Is Modern Slavery: A Comprehensive Research
One of the gravest offenders is the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the biggest contributor to the phenomenon is the infamous cobalt mining in the country. Congo produces over 70% of the world’s cobalt. China controls around 75% of the global cobalt production and around 90% of China’s cobalt comes from the DRC.
Congolese miners are often children, abducted by militia and forced to work in the mines, digging tunnels by hand without securing them using beams. Miners sometimes get buried alive. They often work 12-hour shifts with only one break, six days in a row.
In 2016 , the provincial governor of Kolwezi confirmed that children worked in the cobalt mines but that the government was “too poor” to address the issue. Of course, conditions like this are ripe for abuse by the industrialized nations where markets and profits count above everything else, and where human rights are viewed by the prevailing governments as secondary objectives at best. This counts for China, and unfortunately also the United States.
As a consumer I am pretty powerless. I am writing this post on a set of gadgets that use many microchips and batteries, which consume rare earth minerals, lithium and cobalt from the DRC. There is a hybrid car in my garage with a lithium-based battery. By doing this, I am abusing some child in the Congo. Make no mistake about it, I am NOT providing a livelihood or income to the child miner. I am using up the child until he or she can no longer work and becomes expendable.
Living the “the first world” and listening to “America First” soundbites all day long, it is easy to forget that we are building our lifestyles on the backs of the poor of the rest of the world.
Slaves are worse off than just the poor. They are nothing but tools. I urge you to read What is Modern Slavery and make up your own mind.
Also, there is a category selector in this blog where you can select “Slavery” and it shows you a plethora of posts I wrote over the years about slavery, including book reviews, movie reviews, article references and general opinion pieces.