CV NEWS FEED // A new study confirmed previous reports that the electric vehicle (EV) industry is extensively connected to child labor in Africa.
The study, which was compiled by various think tanks, held that much of the cobalt used in EV batteries is sourced from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
FOX News corroborated this finding, noting that last year, “the DRC produced nearly 70% of the world’s cobalt and is home to nearly half of known global reserves of the mineral.”
“There is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from [the DRC],” the researchers stated:
All is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, low wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.
Even monitoring the situation is impossible as conditions are adversarial at every turn, including aggressive security forces, intense surveillance, the remoteness of many mining areas, distrust of outsiders and the sheer scale of hundreds of thousands of people engaged in the feverish excavation of cobalt in medieval conditions.
FOX reported: “The Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs concluded that more than 40,000 children, including children as young as 6 years old, work in cobalt mines in the DRC.”
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According to FOX, the study was conducted by The American Energy Institute (AEI), the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, the International Climate Science Coalition, and Truth in Energy and Climate.
Reports detailing the alleged connection between EV batteries and African child labor have been surfacing for some time.
In April, CatholicVote’s Erika Ahern reported that in the Congo basin, “tens of thousands of children, along with hundreds of thousands of ‘artisanal workers’ … work for a pittance in dangerous, inhumane conditions, mining the minerals and metals required for EV production.”
“Rarely in history has the practice of preying on the weak been so severe, generated such profit, and touched the lives of so many,” observed modern abolitionist, author, and professor Siddharth Kara earlier that month.
“Every level of the chain is preying on some of the poorest and most heavily exploited people in the world,” he added. Kara has written extensively about human rights violations such as modern slavery and sex trafficking.
>> BLUE STATES EMBRACE CCP-LINKED EV BATTERY COMPANY <<
In addition to the link to child labor in Africa, reports have also hinted at a connection between EV battery production and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“The Democratic governors of Illinois and Michigan allowed a company with ties to the [CCP] to open factories producing batteries for [EVs] in their states,” CatholicVote reported last month.
CatholicVote co-founder and former ambassador Joseph Cella asked at the time: “Unlike other states, why do the governors of Michigan and Illinois spend their taxpayers’ money bringing in companies deeply tied to the Chinese Communist Party into their states?” Cella is a Michigan resident.
“Don’t they understand the clear and present danger this totalitarian regime presents?” he continued. “It’s a bipartisan issue.”
