Today is World Day Against Child Labour. At first glance, this picture fits only too well. Two exhausted looking boys, both still of school age. They stand behind a lore that is used to push gold bearing rock out of narrow mine shafts. They only wear plastic slippers, no protective clothing, no helmets. The Lore is pushed out of the dark hole, under strong physical exertion. The grinding of the rock takes place outside the tunnel, often with loud diesel pumps or even manually driven equipment. Only a few grams of gold are extracted from a tonne of rock. Recycling one tonne of e-waste in Germany would be more productive.In large-scale open-cast mining, the rest of the gold is usually industrially washed out with cyanide. Here in Mapisla, in the north of the Philippines, mercury is often still used. Even if it is officially banned. A small pan is heated, the mercury binds the gold. The rest is tipped behind the house, where pigs look for food and children play. Where the gold goes from here, we don't know. Maybe it ends up in the on-board electronics of a Volkswagen, maybe in a mobile phone that we buy in a Telekom shop or in the control of a Miele washing machine. German manufacturers often do not know themselves. She doesn't care. Raw materials must be available and cheap. The degradation conditions are secondary. Mapisla or other mining areas are usually far away. Almost 100 percent of the mined metals and minerals are extracted outside Germany. Many in countries of the Global South.
Industry reacts only when it's too late
German companies do not have to comply with any due diligence obligations. They don't have to worry about whether their suppliers are exploiting children, violating workers' rights or polluting the environment. Unless it is revealed. When local security forces shot 34 striking miners in Marikana, South Africa, in August 2012, BASF only became active when activists showed that most of the platinum gained by the men was exported to BASF in Germany. The fact that trade unionists and their families were threatened near the coal mines in Colombia was only of interest in Germany when civil society was able to prove that the coal was used for electricity in German power plants. The fact that cobalt from the DRC is partly extracted from children has been revealed by Amnesty International, not by the German government, the European Commission or by BMW, Daimler or Volkswagen, who use this cobalt.
Not only because of the kids, but also because of the kids.
A law is needed that obliges companies to comply with their duty of care. Companies must be held legally liable for infringements that they could have prevented if they had taken a closer look. Pictures like this, with children behind Loren, should no longer be created in the future.
Fake News vs. strong regulations
Or such images should only be created in certain contexts. Because what we see in the photo is not child labor. They are playing children. When I traveled to the Philippines in 2012 to deal with the negative aspects of mining, they jumped around me in the village of Mapisla. Her parents and grandparents live mainly from agriculture and remittances from family members from abroad. Although some of the people owned small tunnels, mining did not seem to be the main source of income for anyone in the village. The children had an elementary school, the elders' council of the village could even enforce rules here far away from state regulation and far away from large-scale open-cast mining. At first glance, a prime example of how small-scale miners and local value creation can be combined. These children posed – without me asking them – for these pictures. It's a nice sign. A world without exploitative child labour is possible. Let's finally make laws with politics to advance this vision so that child labour is a thing of the past everywhere.
Michael Reckordt
