Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2024 September 16

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September 16

Cobalt child mining in Congo

Child labour has been endemic in Africa for a long time, and child laboour in cobalt mines have been used long before we had EVs. I have been looking for any solid evidence that children involved in Cobalt mining in the Congo has increased since the rise of the EV. I have still to find any. If there is solid evidence, I want to add it to the article on Cobalt. If nobody can find any evidence, then should that be added to the article? There seems to be an assumption that there is an increase, as in articles saying that "it is reasonable to assume that... ". Would anyone care to help me find evidence either way that could be added to the article and that leads to enlightenment on the subject? Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 10:50, 16 September 2024 (UTC)

The United States Department of Labor has a project to identify and reduce child labor in Congo cobalt mines called COTECCO (I'm not sure what that acronym is for). Because they work on that specific issue, they likely have plenty of documentation on the topic. My understanding is that the project ends next month, so they should still have current data. 12.116.29.106 (talk) 14:24, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

I think the acronym is French. In neighbouring Angola the expansion might be a COmbater Trabalho de crianças [Enfants] nas minas de Cobaldo na república democrática do COngo. 2A02:C7B:223:9900:A88D:8EE5:E75B:3C1A (talk) 16:03, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Originally an ILO project: Combattre le travail des enfants dans les chaînes d’approvisionnement de Cobalt en République démocratique du Congo.^[1]  --Lambiam 22:41, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the information. I have read all the COTECCO documents I could find on www.dol.gov on the subject. It seemed to be directed towards raising awareness levels with private and govt stakeholders in DRC. I found no mention on any change in child labour. I suppose I shall not have anything of substance to add to the article. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 18:23, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

There is this [2] interesting paper which found: These findings further corroborate the evidence that the boom in cobalt production from mining that occurred since 2007 has caused children in areas surrounding cobalt deposits to achieve lower education rates than children living in non-cobalt-mining villages in the DRC. Although this paper [3], while only looking at artisanal cobalt mines and comparing 3 different studies found an actual decrease in estimates "Artisanal cobalt mine site studies have estimated that children numbered 24,000 or 40% of total artisanal cobalt miners in 2002 (9), 60,000 or 40% in 2007 (25), and 35,000 or 14% in 2017 (28)." But I think the other thing they mention "For the same reasons that it is difficult to estimate artisanal cobalt production, it is difficult to estimate how many people are working at artisanal mine sites. It is especially difficult to estimate the number of children who are digging, tunneling, washing ore, sorting ore, transporting ore, running errands, watching younger siblings, or being watched by parent miners (10, 20–25)" highlights why it's not particularly useful to compare those 3 different studies and suggest the numbers have actually decreased. IMO the sort of stuff in the first paper is probably the best you'll find. I'm sure you can find studies which have estimated an increase, but the limitations in actually gathering good data on how many children are working in such mines means that IMO it's not really much better than "we're fairly sure the absolute number of workers has increased quite substantially with the boom in mining from EVs and electronics and we're fairly we're fairly sure the problems which resulted in children working in the mines remain and we don't think the number of children working in the mines reached saturation so it's likely the absolute number of children working in mines has increased. Nil Einne (talk) 15:42, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you @Nil Einne . No point in putting uncertain estimates into the article. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 07:07, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

At first I was disheartened, but after reading the reports, I find that they may yet yield some article-worthy material. Star Lord - 星爵 (talk) 01:14, 28 September 2024 (UTC)