Apple, Microsoft, Samsung Linked To Child Mining In DRC, Says Amnesty International Report

Tech giants - Apple, Samsung and Microsoft among them - are under fire following the release of a new report that links the companies to the child mining of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

As portable electronics such as smartphones, tablets and laptops become more and more ubiquitous, the global demand for rechargeable batteries and in turn cobalt - a major component in lithium-ion batteries - continues to grow. According to estimates, the African country is responsible for more than 50% of the world's cobalt production, a portion of which is sourced from artisanal mines in the southern part of the country that the employ children, according to a new report by Amnesty International and the African Resources Watch (Afrewatch).

The report, which was released on Monday, alleges that more than a dozen consumer companies failed to conduct supply chain due diligence and are linked to mines that use child labor. The report levels that these companies did not follow guidelines from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that are purposed to "ensure that companies are not profiting from, or contributing to, serious human rights abuses in the mines that they source from, or anywhere else along their supply chains."

And yet Christian children are being beheaded, crucified, and raped all over the Middle East and no one cares. But Apple!...

An update from Jeff Williams on Supplier Responsibility at Apple.
We care deeply about every worker in Apple's global supply chain. To improve their lives, we continue to proactively tackle issues that are part of the broader challenges facing our world today -- human rights and equality, environmental protection, and education. We have long championed these causes, and 2014 was a year of tremendous progress.
This is our ninth annual supplier responsibility report. In it, you'll learn about how we work in our suppliers' facilities, day in and day out, to make sure they understand our Code of Conduct, to find and fix issues, and to prevent other issues before they arise. You'll also learn that we go well beyond auditing and corrective actions to tackle systemic problems.
You'll see that we address difficult issues like underage labor in a frank and open way. You'll also see that we consistently report suppliers' violations of our standards. People sometimes point to the discovery of problems as evidence that our process isn't working. Nothing could be further from the truth. Every violation we unearthed in the 633 supplier audits we conducted last year offered an opportunity to make concrete changes for the better.
Because of these audits, over US$3.96 million was repaid to foreign contract workers for excessive recruitment fees charged by labor brokers. And nearly US$900,000 was paid to workers for unpaid overtime. Underage workers were sent back to school with full tuition and salary. The number of mineral smelters in our supply chain verified as conflict-free doubled. Wastewater systems were upgraded. And much more.
While audits and corrective actions are essential, we believe the greatest opportunity for change comes from worker empowerment and education. In 2014, over 2.3 million workers were trained on our Code and their rights. We invested millions of dollars to expand our Supplier Employee Education and Development (SEED) program since it began. SEED now totals 48 classrooms in 23 facilities -- equipped with iMac computers, iPad devices, education software, video conferencing systems, and more. Since 2008, over 861,000 workers took courses, free of charge, for personal development, and some workers have received college degrees through the program. And to address a worldwide shortage of qualified safety and environmental professionals, we enrolled more factory managers, now totaling 632 participants representing nearly 900,000 workers, in our 18-month Apple Supplier Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) Academy. In the Academy, participants are learning best practices they can immediately apply in their facilities.
We are also vigorously enforcing our environmental standards -- which often go well beyond what's required by law -- across our supply chain. Whether itâ€™s saving half a billion gallons of freshwater through our Clean Water Program or educating managers through the EHS Academy, we are working diligently with our suppliers to preserve and protect the planet's precious resources for future generations.
Once again, we are publishing a list of our top 200 suppliers, the smelters that provide suppliers with minerals that go into our products, our Code and detailed Standards, and the aggregate scores of our supplier audits. And we continue to report monthly on working hours for over one million workers. We hope that our openness will inspire other companies. But more important, we believe the feedback that transparency invites makes us even better.
Around the globe, Apple employees are united in bringing equality, respect for human rights, and protection of the environment to the deepest levels of our supply chain. While we have made significant progress, gaps still exist, and there is more work to do. We know that workers are counting on us. We will not stop until every person in our supply chain is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.
Jeff Williams
Senior Vice President of Operations
Jeff Williamsis Apple's Senior Vice President of Operations reporting to CEO Tim Cook. Jeff leads a team of people around the world who are responsible for end-to-end supply chain management and dedicated to ensuring that Apple products meet the highest standards of quality.

From the report itself:

"Eliminating conflict minerals from the supply chain.
Tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold are called conflict minerals because, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and adjoining regions, their extraction may finance or benefit armed groups associated with human rights violations. Apple is dedicated to using only conflict-free minerals in our products.
The simplest path to calling Apple products conflict-free would be to redirect our demand through a small subset of smelters that are either conflict-free verifed, or aren't sourcing from Central Africa. But this approach would do little to influence the situation on the ground, something we care deeply about. Thatâ€™s why we have been working to expand the number of verifed sources in this region, so that more people can earn a good living, in better conditions.
Improvement through accountability.
In 2011, we began pushing smelters to comply with the Conflict-Free Smelter Program (CFSP) or equivalent independent third-party audit programs. To drive accountability and help stakeholders track our progress, we continue to publish a quarterly list of the names, countries, and CFSP participation status of the smelter and refiners in our supply chain.
Download the PDF ï€„
Preparing to be audited can take time, and we have been working with smelters extensively for the past three years to get them to take the necessary steps to become compliant with our conflict mineral standard. In early 2014, we imposed a deadline to existing smelters that they needed to be verified or in the process by the end of 2014. Otherwise, we would remove them from our supply chain.
,b>Making meaningful progress.
Our approach is working. We more than doubled the number of verified conflict-free smelters
to 135 in 2014, and another 64 are in the process of verification by the CFSP or an equivalent independent third-party audit program. Unfortunately, even after extensive encouragement, there were four smelters that were unwilling to commit to be audited by a third party, so Apple put these smelters on notice that they will be removed from our supply chain. All tantalum smelters known to be in our supply chain remained verified as conflict-free throughout 2014. And our list of approved tantalum smelters has also expanded.
Beyond verification, Apple provided funding to six programs working to drive further change and spur economic development in the DRC and neighboring countries. The results include successfully increasing the number of registered miners operating in, and selling their materials through, conflict-free channels, providing educational and health care support to mining communities, and improving methods for tracking materials from the mine to the smelter.

In addition, Apple is very aggressive about underage workers in their supply chain.

Ending underage labor.
Underage labor is never tolerated in our supply chain. If we find it, we put a stop to it. And suppliers found violating our zero tolerance policy are put on probation. Our Underage Labor Remediation Program requires that any supplier found hiring underage workers fund the worker's safe return home. Suppliers also have to fully finance the worker's education at a school chosen by the worker and his or her family, continue to pay the worker's wages, and offer the worker a job when he or she reaches the legal age. Of more than 1.6 million workers covered in 633 audits in 2014, 16 cases of underage labor were discovered at six facilities -- and all were successfully remediated. This means that underage labor now accounts for 0.001 percent of the total work population audited in our supply chain. Although this number is low, even one case of underage labor is unacceptable. So we won't stop until it's eliminated from our supply chain entirely.

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