By RFIPosted on 17-12-2019Changed on 17-12-2019 at 11:53

It is the dark side of Silicon Valley. A lawsuit has been filed in the United States against five of the largest technology companies for forced child labor in Africa.

With our correspondent in San Francisco, Éric de Salve

Tesla, Apple, Google, Dell and Microsoft are accused of complicity in forced child labor in the DRC's cobalt mines. Some of these children were killed and maimed to produce the cobalt used to make telephone batteries. The NGO International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) has filed a collective complaint before the United States federal justice on behalf of 14 Congolese families who are seeking compensation from these companies which are the richest in the tech industry in the United States.

In its complaint, the American NGO IRAdvocates does not mince words, accusing the giants of Silicon Valley of being accomplices of extreme abuse in the DRC where 60% of the world's cobalt is extracted, often by children. This mineral, the California tech giants import it to make rechargeable lithium batteries, used in all phones, computers and electric cars.

40,000 children work in Congolese mines

But in the DRC, according to the NGO, the extraction of this cobalt kills and mutilates children forced to work in appalling conditions for one or two dollars a day. The five best-known and richest firms in the "tech industry" are accused of having " encouraged child labor in the cobalt mines in the DRC ".

After months of investigation, this collective of lawyers, activists and researchers distributes photos of the children of these 14 families. Some are disfigured or amputated, six of them were killed in the collapse of tunnels in Congolese mines. " This cruelty must stop, " writes the NGO in its report, assuring that the Californian firms have not set up this system, but that they continue to profit from it by greed.

According to UNICEF, in 2014, 40,000 Congolese children worked in the cobalt mines in Katanga.

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