Child Labour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

1. By Heidi Stebnicki Child Labour in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

2. Geography It’s located in the western part of Central Africa. The capital of the Republic of the Congo is Brazzaville, located on the Congo river immediately across from Kinshasa, which is the capital of the Democratic republic of the Congo

3. Population The population is approximately 65.71 million.

4. Cultural Groups There are around 250 languages spoken in the Congo. The four main population groups include Pygmies, Bantus, Tutsi (possibly the tallest people in the world) and Kingwana (a Congolese dialect of Swahili). The main religions in Democratic Republic of the Congo are • Indigenous traditional beliefs: 11.5% • Catholic Christianity: 50% • Protestant Christianity: 20% • Indigenous Christianity: 13.5% • Other Christian denominations: 1% • Islam: 1.5%

5. Resources The Congo is immensely rich in natural resources. Democratic Republic of Congo is estimated to have $24 trillion worth of untapped deposits of raw mineral ores, including the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and significant quantities of the world’s diamonds, gold and copper. The major ores extracted throughout the DRC include cobalt, diamonds, gold and copper.

6. Child Labour Now in the Congo Children who live in the Congo have to wake up early to take a long walk which can last up to 2 hours or more to the mines where they spend up to 12 hours a day working. Some of their jobs include mining looking for copper or cobalt, they sift away the dirt from small nuggets of copper which can be very heavy work, they forage in the dirt, and stand waist deep in what is known as toxic water washing the mineral deposits. Children as young as 5-18 years are forced to work in the mines, on some cases it`s to help parents who mine, or to earn money for food to support the one daily meal they have at home, and some of the children's parents are dyeing of disease so they would have to earn money for their siblings and themselves. The children go 6 days a week.

7. Little girls go not only to mine, but also to sell their body for some extra money. Most of the kids working in the mines don’t find much after hours of searching. If it`s less than 1 kilo of what they find they don’t get paid a lot. They get a handful of food and hardly any money.

8. Where does all the stuff they find go? Up to 800 children mine copper and cobalt that goes into house hold electronic items (fridges, TV’s) and batteries for mobile phones. The copper and cobalt go to China and are used on products sold on world markets. Chances are what the kids find in the mines might end up in your homes.

9. Child Labour during the Industrial Revolution Children as young as four years old worked in factories for up to 19 hours a day and were often treated poorly by supervisors. They were small enough to crawl under machinery to tie up broken threads. The factory rules were harsh and if you broke these rules you would be fined or punished. A normal working day started at 6 am and ended at 7 pm, if you were 2 minutes late there would be wage deductions. Many accidents occurred injuring or killing the children on the job. Not until the factory act of 1833 did things to improve

10. Thank you