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Care for Nature Zambia has called on African governments to respect the rights of children by ensuring that mines adopt child protection policies.
Nsama Musonda Kearn, Executive Director, Care for Nature Zambia said children have a right to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that was likely to affect their health.
Kearn said this at the Investing in African Mining Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa, where she presented a position paper on ‘Eliminating the worst forms of child labour in the mining sector.
“Our call is for African governments to respect the rights of children by ensuring that mines and corporations adopt child protection policies.
“If it is mined by children it’s illegal, and if illegal mining is encouraged then the transition is not just but unjust,” she said.
Kearn also said that apart from being protected from child labour, children have a right to education.
She noted that mining in Africa, which was done mostly by Artisanal and Small Scale sector had seen a rise in child labor in the past years with thousands of children being exposed to harm.
Kearn said in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) there are about 40, 000 children involved in cobalt mining and in Zambia thousands of children are exposed to lead poisoning , while in Luapula Province the number of children involved in mining, picking and sorting manganese was on the increase.
“As Africa embarks on an energy transition, demand for minerals needed to manufacture electric vehicle batteries will increase, and if measures are not put in place to protect children we are likely to see an uncomfortable situation where children will be highly exploited,” she said.
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