
Apple May Be Using Congo Cobalt Mined by Children, Amnesty Says - adventured
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-19/apple-may-be-using-congo-cobalt-mined-by-children-amnesty-says
======
VeejayRampay
People already know that their phones are made using materials excavated in
awful conditions, then built in awful conditions by minors in Asia and then
sold at ludicrous prices around the world. The consensus seems to be (based on
my observation) that no one really cares. We can keep on sharing those links
to articles that stimulate the outrage for about 10 minutes, might keep social
networks fuzzy for a few days, but in the end, it doesn't change anything.

Sweatshops still exist, kids are still being exploited.

Either people stop buying those goods (and that is NOT happening ever) or
start buying green/human-friendly alternatives at 3 times the price for 1/10th
of the quality or it will keep on keeping on. It's sad, but it is a reality,
as grim as it is.

~~~
derrida
I don't believe consumer choice is the only agency we have. Can you imagine
any others?

~~~
calibraxis
Faced with 0.1% possiblity to make cash: "Disrupt markets!!1 Work myself to
the bone!"

Faced with child-slavery they benefit from: "<shrug> Jeez, I just don't know,
guess it's inevitable <shrug>, I'm sure they're better off as slaves...
<shrug>"

~~~
meric
I don't know, are we going to pay the children directly to not work in cobalt
mines, or are we going to prevent them from accessing the 100% opportunity to
make cash? It sounds like they have the same attitude as the people you are
chastising. Reading this comment, it appears I'm one of them. What's an action
you would suggest to improve things?

~~~
fucking_tragedy
Stop viewing people that use child laborers as a benevolent force that are
keeping children from dying in the streets.

These people buy, sell and take children by force employing tactics such as
threats, violence and (gang) rape. They then traumatize, abuse, kill and use
force to secure their profit.

Understand that children and families are not weighing the option as "send my
kid to a factory or starve". It is "I just got murdered / will be murdered if
these people don't take my kid" or "I simply want to sell my child for cash".

~~~
spdustin
Stop making the same-but-different sweeping generalizations! You cannot
discredit one hypothesis by changing the Boolean and calling it a proof.

While _this_ child labor could be performed by abducted children, it's also
possible that it's performed willingly by children to pay for their school
uniforms or supplies, rather than drop out of school. [0].pdf discusses this
sort of thing.

[0]:
[http://www.oeko.de/oekodoc/1294/2011-419-en.pdf](http://www.oeko.de/oekodoc/1294/2011-419-en.pdf)
(PDF link)

------
ianstormtaylor
Why is the title here only "Apple", when the article's title is "Tech Giants"
and it mentions Apple, Samsung and Microsoft?

~~~
DrScump
Maybe because Apple is the one named company that refused to comment.

"(Samsung) SDI, told Amnesty it doesn’t do direct business with the major
Chinese suppliers mentioned in the report and that they aren’t in its supply
chain."

~~~
Malic
We've seen this before. Apple's silence in the past is because 1) they are
doing their due diligence in fact gathering and 2) if change is necessary,
coming up with a plan to do so.

Meaning you'll hear nothing from them until they have planned, prepared and
can respond in detail.

(Supporting Reference:
[http://www.macworld.com/article/1159548/apple_crisis_managem...](http://www.macworld.com/article/1159548/apple_crisis_management.html))

~~~
DrScump

      they are doing their due diligence
    

They are _claiming_ that they _try_ to do their due diligence -- not the same
thing.

------
cbeach
From the article: "mobile-phone and laptop makers such as Apple Inc. and
Samsung Electronics Co."

I'll up vote stories like this when they have the right title. Not one
designed for clickbait. Apple goes further than most companies to inspect its
supply chain and improve working conditions. So it grates to see Apple singled
out for criticism here.

~~~
pervycreeper
Apple deserves to be singled out, because they specifically promote themselves
as being friendly to humanity, so actions like this are hypocritical, in
addition to being immoral. Also, as the largest company, they are able to lead
by example.

~~~
snarfy
Samsung is larger than Apple, Microsoft, and Google combined.

~~~
gruez
define "larger". it's certainly not by market cap.

~~~
Symbiote
If Samsung sell more phones, we could assume they use more cobalt, so have
more influence on its production.

------
m_st
Our electronics are composed of so many modular elements that no single
company can produce them all entirely. Not even Samsung. It must be very
difficult to track down all suppliers on the chain and control and monitor
them. All while still making a profit (even for Apple).

So I expect the usual behavior here from Apple: Remain silent, listen to
accusations first, prepare a good reply and take necessary actions. Quite
exemplary in my opinion.

~~~
k-mcgrady
There's already been a statement from them, although it doesn't say much more
than if they remained silent:

> “Underage labour is never tolerated in our supply chain and we are proud to
> have led the industry in pioneering new safeguards. We are currently
> evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to
> identify labour and environmental risks as well as opportunities for Apple
> to bring about effective, scalable and sustainable change.”

~~~
blockross
That mostly sounds like your typical marketing statement to me though, which
is of course the best available move in their situation.

Sourcing every component for a manufacturing company's supply chain in a
responsible way is hard. Especially because tracking these components is made
hard by shady providers who know or - for those higher in the chain - suspect
that the components they provide are produced/extracted by children and/or
exploited workers. But it's basically a "don't ask don't tell" situation where
investigating what happens further down the chain can only cost you money or
stir up shit, so as long as consumers don't complain there's no business
incentive to do that.

Obviously Apple is not the only company involved in this, but contrarily to
their claim they don't lead the industry at all on this matter. If we had to
elect a leader I'd argue it would rather be Intel, see this entry from a week
ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10874850)

------
golergka
What I don't inderstand about this outrage is, will the Apple declining go buy
from this supplier actually change these children lives for the better or not?

This child labour happens not because of particular supplier, but because of
economic situation in the whole country. If Apple switches from Congo mines to
cobalt from more developed places, won't it just make Congo even more pure?
Right now, these children work in mines because they need to survive; but if
the mines close, doesn't it mean that these children will just loose the means
to survive an end up being hungry instead?

(Please notice: I'm not making statements, I only ask questions. I don't know
enough about this to assume anything.)

~~~
anon1385
You're looking at things only in terms of purely economic transactions. The
reality is that plenty of kids "working" in dangerous mines are not there
because they made some rational choice to accept the risk in exchange for
enough money to buy food[1] but because of threats of physical violence. To
put it another way they are slaves.

[1] why would we even expect children to have the capability to make those
kinds of decisions rationally anyway?

~~~
golergka
Being a slave is awful. But dying of hunger seems worse.

So, what do you think will happen to child slaves when their owner suddenly
finds that he no longer has any use for them and they no longer earn their
food and lodging?

What will they eat? Where will they live?

~~~
anon1385
It's really not that simple at all. Please read this report:
[https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/repor...](https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/report_en_final_0.pdf)

Buying minerals from the wrong people in the DRC doesn't mean you buy from
people who benevolently employ children to save them from starvation. It means
you buy from the people that set up roadblocks and extort minerals from
civilians in exchange for nothing (other than not shooting them). It means
buying minerals from organisations that are gang raping women and kidnapping
children. Buying from those people further funds their operations, making the
situation for civilians _worse_.

The report makes recommendations, including a section "to companies and
traders purchasing, handling or trading in minerals originating from eastern
drc or neighbouring countries":

>Exercise stringent due diligence regarding their mineral supplies: find out
exactly where the minerals were produced (not only the broad geographical
area, but the precise location and mine), by whom they were produced and under
what conditions (including use of forced labour, child labour, health and
safety and other labour conditions).

>Refuse to buy minerals if the above information is not available or if there
are indications that the minerals have passed through the hands of any of the
warring parties, benefited them in other ways, or otherwise involved human
rights abuses.

>Be able to demonstrate, with credible written evidence, the exact origin of
their mineral supplies, the routes they have taken and the identity of those
involved in the chain of custody, including intermediaries or third parties
who have handled them.

>Do not accept oral or vague assurances from suppliers as to the origin of
minerals and the identity of their own suppliers. Carry out spot checks to
verify the sources and the accuracy of suppliers’ assurances. Require these
measures in all circumstances, including in cases where minerals originate
from areas which may be remote or difficult to access.

>Commission and publish regular independent third-party audits of their supply
chain.

>Federations and associations of comptoirs and other trade bodies: adopt an
explicit policy not to buy or handle minerals which benefit any of the warring
parties in eastern DRC. Require their members to carry out the above due
diligence steps systematically and to demonstrate precisely where all their
supplies come from. Set up mechanisms for independently monitoring and
checking whether their members are complying with these requirements.

~~~
golergka
This explains a lot and makes a lot of sense, thanks.

------
r0muald
In case it's not widely known, take this as an opportunity to look at the
FairPhone [http://www.fairphone.com/](http://www.fairphone.com/) that seeks to
address exactly this problem.

~~~
lenlorijn
For those who want to know a bit more about FairPhone and specifically how
they address cobalt mining. They have a pretty good video and a blogpost about
the sourcing of cobalt. Blogpost:
[https://www.fairphone.com/2013/03/14/a-fair-price-for-
cobalt...](https://www.fairphone.com/2013/03/14/a-fair-price-for-cobalt/)
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVFXesVScA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVFXesVScA)

Full disclosure: I once worked on a part of FairPhone's webshop.

~~~
SyneRyder
I like this answer, because it starts proposing a solution (and executing on
it). Though I'm not entirely clear what the Fairphone solution is, as the blog
post & video seem to be at the fact finding stage. I assume it was through
deploying extra on-site inspectors, setting up a union & paying more for the
cobalt?

The other issue is that Fairphone has produced 60,000 phones, but Apple has
made 700 Million. Can the Fairphone solution scale 10,000x? How does the co-
ordination of inspections & unions change if you increase it by 10,000?

------
twoodfin
Reading the comments here, I'm surprised at how broadly the terrible situation
in the Congo is being generalized. This is not one immorally-sourced component
among many, it's a massive outlier: A rare element with its richest mineral
source in one of the poorest, most chaotic and war-torn nations on the planet.

It's correspondingly an incredibly hard problem to solve. At an extreme, Apple
probably has the cash to buy its own mines for cobalt but how can they ensure
that their suppliers use it exclusively? It's a fungible commodity, after all.

If anyone has any ideas that don't revolve around armed 'humanitarian'
intervention in the DRC, I'd love to hear them.

Also, I'd be interested to hear what problem #2 is if this one could be
eliminated. My suspicion is that its degree of horribleness would be a
significant drop-off.

------
T-zex
Apple, Samsung, etc. are incredibly wealthy companies, making massive purchase
orders. They are capable of impacting entire industries. They must ensure they
have clean and ethical supply chains with no excuses. They could also force
their competitors to do the same shifting focus away from the patent crap.

------
Shivetya
Instead of vilifying the corporate interest involved this needs to be resolved
by trade restrictions at the national level.

Why is it that we only seek to shame the companies who buy goods produced in
these countries but never our politicians who don't do anything to get the
country involved to improve? Trade sanctions, freezing assets, and more, can
get a country's leadership to act appropriately.

~~~
TeMPOraL
My pet theory is that we all implicitly know politicians won't do it. I'm yet
to see a sanction that was _actually_ about human rights, and not about some
political or economical goal. The world leaders seem to care about human
rights violations even less than the evil megacorps.

------
at-fates-hands
The most ironic thing here is that the current CEO of Apple is the guy who was
so focused on the bottom line at Apple while Jobs was the running company, he
forced many of the suppliers to guarantee certain production goals at insanely
low labor rates to maximize profits.

If you want someone to demonize, you don't have to look very far.

------
davidgerard
Misleading title. Actual title is "Tech Giants Accused by Amnesty of Using
Cobalt Dug by Children", and companies named are Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and
SDI, because they buy from one dodgy Chinese cobalt company.

------
kbart
Apple, as other companies of such _huge_ size with extremely complex supply
chain, don't go too deep to inspect what their contractors do. They turn a
blind eye, because it's all down to the matter if you can come up with an
excuse and remain clean: "we don't know and physically can't check what all
our sub-sub-contractors do, but we will no longer deal with them until they
fix it" etc. Unless we have laws that hold _all_ involved parties accountable,
such practice will prevail.

~~~
thirdsun
In my opinion Apple seems to be going to reasonable lengths to keep its supply
chain clean. I think you underestimate the challenge of making sure that
suppliers 2, 3 or 4 levels apart from you play by the rules. I work at a small
company that uses, among other things, fabrics in their supply chain and even
at the second level it's very hard to confirm simple specifications that are
much less interesting or scandalous than the topic at hand. I wouldn't want to
imagine how difficult it is to do the same thing when it comes to scandals and
issues that the supplier of your supplier 3 levels deep actually really,
really wants to hide.

~~~
kbart
I agree that it's a very hard problem and the change of the whole industry is
required to fix it. But I believe, with enough resources and _will_ it would
be possible. The problem is, that nobody actually cares -- it's all about PR
now only. For example, let's take food industry where regulations are enforced
on all levels and restaurant, after poisoning their clients, can't simply say:
"Sorry, we didn't mean that, we had no idea these mushrooms came from
Chernobyl, but rest assured we won't deal with this supplier again".

------
bigbugbag
There's an interesting 2010 documentary "Blood in the Mobile" about the issue
of conflict minerals from Congo in mobile phone.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_in_the_Mobile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_in_the_Mobile)

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1763194/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1763194/)

------
Polarity
do we really need new devices every year/month?

~~~
BillyParadise
I keep dropping my phone, so for me, yes.

~~~
vmateixeira
Just buy a damn 3310!

~~~
froo
Oh man, my Nokia 8910 (the one with the titanium casing) was damn near
indestructible. I'd dropped it more times than I can count (once off a 2nd
story in a nightclub into a dance floor where it was promptly trampled),
backed over it accidentally because it fell out of my pocket as I got into the
car and left it in my pocket and washed it 3 times (it stayed on the whole
time). The 4th washing was the one that finally killed it.

~~~
r3bl
We played football in the classroom with my Sony Ericsson K700i when I was in
high school. I still have holes in my wall because I kept throwing it every
time some game annoyed me.

My charger died, so I disassembled it and put the wires directly on the
battery. Finally, I accidentally crossed the wires and the phone died after
burning for like 2-3 minutes.

------
jacquesm
There isn't a complex consumer good that does not have at least one part of it
that somehow was produced in circumstances that are abhorrent. This is
something that is a societal - and even a global - issue, not one limited to
specific brands, though there are brands that are more directly involved in
these horrors.

------
ommunist
And we all consist of sizeable chunk of carbon released from industrial age
pollution, when slavery was an ordinary thing. So - how should I pay Amnesty
International, or Greenpeace for acknowledging that my internal chemistry uses
immoral carbon atoms?

------
daemonk
How far removed from the purchasing chain is someone/organization deemed
"morally clean"?

------
trhway
worldwide enforced minimal labor and environmental standards is the only way
to go. And like with war crimes and crimes against humanity such standards
should be enforceable by any nation anywhere in the world.

------
dogma1138
Sigh. Why are people even surprised? This won't change and can't change until
we stop yelling "think of the children!" and only demanding for the suppliers
to do a better job.

Yes some suppliers might be able to do a better job but many cases they also
simply can't it's just the nature of doing business with under-developed
countries.

Similar processes like the Kimberly process that was supposed to stop the
trade in conflict diamonds have utterly failed and this is an industry that is
built around artificial scarcity which just was dying for an excuse to further
limit the production of diamonds to jack up the price.

There is very little any supplier can do to actually address this problem,
this isn't some large scale mining operation that uses children this is for
the most part unofficial mining. Unofficial mining (AKA the official past time
of small scale African warlords) is pretty much a bunch of people taking over
abandoned mining sites, dump sites for mining waste, sites that were deemed to
be uneconomical to develop or just being down stream from the actual mine.

While it's true that these sites are often taken over by some gang of former
child soldiers and their master (we all liked Beasts of No Nation) more often
than not these days unofficial mining is conducted by communities, villages,
and individuals who do not hold any one at gun point.

These unofficial mining operations do not produce any substantial amount of
note (individually, however there could be 1000's of small scale mining
operations vs only a handful of large scale official ones which means that
anywhere between 10-50% of a given product might be mined unofficially) but
they do produce enough to say feed a village (or to buy the wanna be warlord a
BMW from the 80's even diamonds are sold for not even cents on the dollar,
every 1$ in uncut stones that ends up in the hands of the miner is inflated to
1000 to 10000 by the time it ends up at tiffany's).

Those unofficial mining operations are getting mixed with what the big actual
mining operation produce and end up in the supply chain, this can happen at so
many points that there is no way to enforce any process which will guarantee
that the supply is clean of conflict, child labor or any other social decree.

Even if you take out the child labor part which while horrid is by far not the
worse part that can happen to a child in Africa, the conditions in the
official mining operations for registered adult miners are also appalling and
so far beyond what most of us could even imagine human beings being able to
withstand on a daily basis.

So instead of yelling that we should vote with our wallets until those supply
chains will be clean we need to realize that they will never be clean as long
as you are dealing with a region such as the Congo. Instead of making another
pointless process which will just going to be circumvented at all levels while
jacking up the price for the end consumer (which every one in the supply
chain, especially as it gets closer to the source will just pocket the
difference). Companies should put the money that consumers would end up paying
into programs that might actually work and not into the endless pit of bribes
that any certification process would turn out to be when facing the unmovable
object which is reality.

Apple can switch a supplier and it will, but it won't find a clean one as no
such supplier exists even if they'll find the most expensive one with the best
intentions. Because the local population which runs these operations will
always have the upper hand and as long as the conditions exist that make it
more likely for children to end up digging up rare earths for your smartphone
or diamonds for your tennis bracelet this won't change.

I hope the day would come where a company like Apple could be brave enough to
come out and say look we can't buy Cobalt which wasn't mined by kids, but we
made a calculation that if we could it would be 17% more expensive so we are
jacking our own prices by 17% and transferring the difference to X Y and Z in
hopes that in 20 years we could buy Cobalt which was not only not mined by
children but also mined by miners with life expectancy which is longer than
our yearly product cycle.

But as long as people would keep on yelling boycott this and boycott that it
will never happen and the only thing Apple can do is to continue to play the
pass the hot potato game with it's suppliers (which will continue to
restructure and change names to be put back into that list) and maybe have Tim
Cook do an apologetic we are the world cover...

------
lez
Nope. It's me and you who actually give money for gadgets manufactured on far-
east, exploiting the hell out of ppl.

------
randyrand
Devils advocate:

Schooling is expensive and not every country can afford it. Before schooling,
children used to work year round as soon as they were able. In fact big
families were primarily for the labor. Isn't this better than families being
poor and dying from starvation? This is part of the growing pains of being a
developing country.

------
ilostmykeys
Apple is evil to the core (pun pun pun)

------
acd
Phones must be a 100% recyclable so that we can reuse their materials or earth
will become a giant wastedump.

------
yomism
Think different?

No, exploit the same.

~~~
valleyer
You really don't think this is a sin of omission? The abuse is happening
multiple suppliers away from the companies in question. And Apple, Microsoft,
and Samsung are reportedly implicated. I'm not pessimistic enough to think
they are conspiring to keep Congolese children abused.

None of this excuses it, and now that is brought to light I expect at the very
least that these particular vendors are dropped. But comments like yours seem
either intentionally inflammatory or very naive.

~~~
realusername
It's just that Apple (unlike Microsoft and Samsung) brands itself as a company
with human values so obviously people are paying more attention to this aspect
for Apple. But yes, I agree indeed.

~~~
stinos
_brands itself as a company with human values_

How so? (never got that impression, but I'm also a fervent ad/commercial
skipper)

Anyway I really doubt any of the electronic devices any of us have is
completely clean (wrt this topic). Not sure if such a thing even exist. At
least with clothing or so you can get alternatives if you want.

~~~
zimpenfish
Apple do go to (what seems to me, your mileage may vary) reasonable lengths to
produce supplier chain responsibility reports and manage such accordingly.
Which I guess is the "branding" mentioned above but I'd also guess the
intended (snarky) meaning was "empty branding" rather than "branding by doing"
which seems to be the case.

[edit: minor tweak for clarification]

------
Khaine
It's the same in all industries.

Look at airlines. People aren't willing to spend $x to have actual legroom.
Everyone only every buys the lowest cost.

Or clothing.

And modern supply chains are so complex thats its impossible to ensure that
100% of the time policies are complied with.

And are the people in these places better off with that job, then without? (i
honestly don't know, but surely this is a factor)

~~~
eitally
You're the second person I've seen post this about airlines in the past two
days (I believe the first was on Reddit). I have thought about it and don't
actually believe it's 100% true. People buy what's cheap _at the time they
need the ticket_. The problem is price variability/gaming by the airlines. You
can very easily see >100% variability in the price of the same ticket from one
day to the next, and it has nothing to do with objective variables. It's pure
price manipulation, just like everything else airlines do (baggage, food,
boarding order, upgrades, elite lounges, free drinks, point bonuses).

~~~
Khaine
I'm not sure what airlines are like in America, but in general (where I am)
people only look at price and then complain about it.

See
[http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/12/chea...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2014/12/cheap_airlines_why_americans_will_suffer_worse_service_on_flights_in_order.html)

