Britain last week joined France in pledging to ban sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2040... [T]he road to a promised land of zero-emission vehicles is littered with speed bumps... Battery makers are struggling to secure supplies of key ingredients in these large power packs... Amnesty International has shone a light on the dark side of this dream. The human rights group says children as young as seven continue to work in perilous conditions in mines in the DRC. In 2014, according to Unicef, about 40,000 children were working in mines across southern DRC... A report by Amnesty and Afrewatch (African Resources Watch) published in January said corporations such as Apple, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft, Daimler and Volkswagen were failing to do basic checks to ensure that they did not use cobalt mined by child labourers in their products... It is high time the big brands took some responsibility for the mining of the raw materials that make their lucrative products. [also refers to BMW, Volvo, First Cobalt, Glencore, LG Chem, EnZinc, Teck Resources]

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre previously invited companies to respond to the report by Amnesty & Afrewatch. You can find their responses here.