This year’s World Day Against Child Labour was celebrated with a “Week of Action against Child Labour”, marked from 3-12 June 2022. Africa is the most afflicted region in the world, with 92 million girls and boys in child labor, that is one in every five children.
Various mining locales, found mainly within the Eastern locales of the DRC (North Kivu and Katanga), allegedly employ a large number of child laborers. In truth, the information on Katanga and Copperbelt for the most part serves as an example of child labor exploitation in small-scale mining projects across mineral-rich African countries. It is reported that 40% of all laborers within Katanga region mines’ are children under 18.
According to UNICEF, an average of 40,000 underage boys and girls are utilized for perilous mining exercises in the cobalt mines of Southern DRC.
