Thu, Nov 16, 2017 page10

• Apple leads way in tracing Congolese cobalt: Amnesty

  • Reuters, LONDON
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  Apple Inc is leading the way in tracing cobalt used in its electronics to ensure the metal has not been mined by children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) while Microsoft Corp is lagging, Amnesty International said in a report yesterday.

  Microsoft disagreed with the pressure group’s conclusions.

  The DR Congo is by far the world’s biggest producer of cobalt, accounting for more than half of global supplies of the metal, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.

  However, Amnesty said about one-fifth of the country’s cobalt production is mined by hand by informal miners, including children, often in dangerous conditions.

  Cobalt has shot to prominence in recent months and its price skyrocketed due to expected growth in demand for electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries.

  “Companies have a responsibility to prove they are not profiting from the misery of miners working in terrible conditions in the DR [Congo],” Amnesty official Seema Joshi said in a statement.

  The group ranked 29 companies on how well they were tracking their sources of cobalt since Amnesty released a report in January last year warning about human rights abuses linked to cobalt mining in Congo.

  “Apple became the first company to publish the names of its cobalt suppliers ... but other electronics brands have made alarmingly little progress,” the statement said.

  Most cobalt is produced as a by-product of copper or nickel mining, but artisanal miners in southern Congo exploit deposits near the surface that are rich in cobalt.

  The biggest buyer of ore from small-scale miners was Congo Dongfang Mining International (剛果東方國際礦業), a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese mineral giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Ltd (浙江華友鈷業), Amnesty found in its report last year.

  Since then, Huayou Cobalt “has taken a number of steps” in line with international standards, but “gaps in information remain,” Amnesty said.

  In March this year, researchers from Amnesty and Congolese group African Resources Watch returned to informal mines and still found adults and children in unsafe conditions, the report said.

  Huayou, in a letter to Amnesty, said child labo was a difficult issue caused by poverty, adding that it was working on several initiatives, including building schools and providing microcredit to boost small businesses.

  Microsoft was among 26 companies that had failed to disclose details of their suppliers, Amnesty said.

  In a letter replying to the Amnesty report, Microsoft said its approach was “holistic” and included work within its supply chain, as well as on the ground, to address the socioeconomic causes of child labor.

  “Despite Amnesty International’s assertions, Microsoft has made significant progress on this important issue,” it said.

  Cobalt prices have spiked 85 percent this year on forecasts that demand will double in the next decade due to surging use of the metal in electric car batteries.

  Amnesty said that among automakers, BMW AG had made the most improvements, while Renault SA and Daimler AG “performed particularly badly.”

  Renault said it had set up a working group with its suppliers, which had already shared their systems of controls, their supply chain policies and details of audits.

  The French company had also joined the Responsible Raw Materials Initiative, which expects its first pilot audits by the end of the year, it added in a letter to Amnesty.

  Daimler said it was working on identifying the smelters and mines that supplied its cobalt.

  “Daimler is by no means ignoring its responsibility in terms of human rights due diligence, as your current statement seems to suggest,” it told Amnesty.
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