Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

by Siddharth Kara

The markers of wealth and consumption appear violent. Most of it was built, after all, on violence, neatly tucked away in history books that tend to sanitize the truth.

Morel and Casement met in England and formed the Congo Reform Association (CRA) in March 1904 to bring down Leopold’s colonial regime. The CRA became the first international human rights organization of the twentieth century, driven by the power of data (Morel) and survivor testimonies (Casement). Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, and Booker T. Washington were among the many supporters of the CRA. By

The depravity and indifference unleashed on the children working at Tilwezembe is a direct consequence of a global economic order that preys on the poverty, vulnerability, and devalued humanity of the people who toil at the bottom of global supply chains. Declarations by multinational corporations that the rights and dignity of every worker in their supply chains are protected and preserved seem more disingenuous than ever.

“Please tell the people in your country, a child in the Congo dies every day so that they can plug in their phones.”

“Every day people are dying because of the cobalt. Describing this will not change anything.”

The consumers of these devices, were they to stand next to Elodie, would appear like aliens from another dimension. Nothing in form or circumstance would bind them to the same planet, aside from the cobalt that flowed from one to the other.

Artisanal mining techniques can yield up to ten or fifteen times a higher grade of cobalt per ton than industrial mining can.