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Article

26 Jul 2017

Author:
Amnesty International

DRC: Child labourers must not pay the price for UK's shift to electric vehicles, says Amnesty Intl.

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Responding to the UK government’s commitment to ban all new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040, Mark Dummett, Business and Human Rights Researcher at Amnesty International, said: “This is good news for the environment and for air quality, but [...] our research shows that there is a significant risk of cobalt mined by children and adults in appalling conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo ending up in the batteries of electric cars. Workers in the DRC, earning as little as one dollar a day and at risk of fatal accidents and illness, must not pay the price for the UK’s shift to electric cars... [T]here is a worrying lack of transparency across the car manufacturing industry, with many leading names failing to disclose information about their cobalt supply chains... [W]e are calling on them to make public the steps they are taking to ensure that their supply chains are not tainted by human rights abuses...

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