Now, the report urges, participants in the cobalt market need to restart the promising pilot project at Mutoshi and other sites around the DRC.Ī third recommendation centers on the need to involve local actors in these reforms, both mining cooperatives that can give workers a voice in shaping their future, and the DRC government, which has an essential regulatory role to play. Everyone benefited, and the formalization experiment succeeded - until it was unfortunately cut short by the pandemic. With more women integrated into the workforce, family incomes increased and economically active mothers sent more of their children to school rather than to the mines. Another is that male miners could be dissuaded of traditional superstitions about working with women. One important takeaway from the truncated pilot effort is that mine safety improved, in large part because the mining company in question created shallow open pits to replace precarious vertical shafts. This model was successfully tested at one mine in a place called Mutoshi beginning in 2018, though the venture was suspended in early 2020 because of Covid. The access controls provide a means of excluding children from work sites. Formalization entails putting fences around active mining areas, hiring guards, and developing strict safety protocols that are safeguarded by local mining cooperatives, including the distribution of boots, gloves, and other personal protection equipment. Second, the only way to make real progress in limiting child labor or improving mine safety is to formalize these ASM sites. It is not credible for any company to assert that its own operations are fully insulated from ASM mining. They need both to accept their own share of responsibility for addressing the challenges and play a role in developing enforceable safety and labor standards. Based on her visit to the DRC in December, Baumann-Pauly makes several sensible recommendations about how global mining companies and relevant governments need to address the cobalt market.įirst, corporate buyers of cobalt should acknowledge that ASM is an integral component of cobalt mining in the DRC. Released this week and entitled, “ Cobalt Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Addressing Root Causes of Human Rights Abuses,” the paper is co-published by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, which I direct, and our sister organization, the Geneva Center for Business and Human Rights at the University of Geneva, which Baumann-Pauly heads. The second, more prescriptive (and hopeful) publication is a white paper by my colleague Dorothée Baumann-Pauly.
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