What does my smartphone have to do with the civil war in the Congo??

We buy fair trade more and more, whether chocolate, bananas or clothing. But how much do we know about the consumer goods that we use every day, many of us every hour? How fair is our cell phone??

We eat vegan, buy "fair" chocolate and think about green electricity. When eating our gluten-free organic whole grain toast, we eagerly tap and wipe the display of our smartphone. And they go unnoticed to support a war that costs 45,000 lives a month. Although ethical norms and social responsibility are increasingly permeating many of our areas of life, there is a taboo subject that is rarely or never discussed: how fair is the production of our cell phones?

In the human rights study "DR Congo: the war, women and our cell phones" Experts take stock of the dramatic situation from last year, which was and is partly due to the large cell phone manufacturers. The human rights organization too "Amnesty International" published today, Tuesday, a study that describes how large cell phone companies consciously accept child labor for the manufacture of their products.

the "Human Development Index" according to the United Nations, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the poorest countries in the world. The paradox: the main reason for this are the mineral resources that are available in large quantities. The valuable raw materials fueled conflicts, which have often existed since the colonial era, and have so far forced millions of people to flee from greedy warmongers.

How cell phones finance wars

A modern mobile phone consists of up to 60 different fabrics. At least 30 of them are metals. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the largest raw material suppliers worldwide. Tantalum, cobalt, tungsten, tin and gold are some of the raw materials needed to make a cell phone. All of them are funded primarily in the West African state. But a bloody civil war has raged in the populous country for years. 40 to 50 different armed groups control a large part of the 900 mines and finance their murderous lifestyle by selling the coveted cell phone raw materials.

People from the surrounding villages, including mostly children, are forced by the rebels to use their bare hands or simple shovels to remove the substances from the ground. The metals then arrive in Asia via several intermediaries, where they are processed and shipped to Europe. The absurd: The further the raw materials move from their original place of origin, the Congo, the higher the profit. In the end, a new smartphone in stores in Western Europe costs up to 700 euros. However, a worker in the Congo only gets a few cents for his contribution in the value chain.

"blood gold" for the smartphone

The debates about cell phone production in the DR Congo are often limited to the substances tantalum and in this context coltan. But there is a raw material that is also mined in the Congo and has recently become an important source of income for rebel groups: gold. It is not known exactly how much of the valuable raw material is mined, since it is mostly transported illegally and transported abroad. According to the United Nations, 98 percent of the gold extracted is smuggled abroad. Congolese officers have focused more on gold trading over the past year due to stricter international restrictions on conflict raw materials. Our cell phones contain more gold than tantalum.

Children work for our cell phones

Apple, Samsung and Sony have been criticized by Amnesty International in their latest report on cobalt mining in the DR Congo. Cobalt is required for the batteries in our cell phones. According to Amnesty, the companies don’t care whether there are children in their mines. Some of them are only seven years old.

"The high-end shops and innovative marketing campaigns of the technology companies are in stark contradiction to the image of children and miners dragging stones, who writhe through narrow hand-dug shafts and thereby ruin their lungs", says Mark Dummett, economist and human rights researcher at Amnesty International.

Half of the world’s cobalt is extracted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Traders buy in mines where inhumane working conditions prevail. The customer of the coveted raw material is the company Congo Dongfang Mining (CDM), a subsidiary of the Chinese raw material giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Ltd. After that, the cell phone raw material will be resold to China and South Korea. At the end of the chain are companies like Apple, Sony and Microsoft. At Amnesty International’s request, many manufacturers were unable to say whether they sourced cobalt from the Democratic Republic.

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