The world’s largest technology companies are being sued by the families of children who died or were maimed while mining for cobalt in the world’s largest cobalt producing nation, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The federal class action lawsuit, filed in Washington DC by human rights firm International Rights Advocates, names Apple, Alphabet – the parent company of Google, Dell Technologies, Microsoft and Tesla as defendants.

It is understood other technology firms and automotive companies were also on the human rights firm’s radar and that additional entities could be added to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs are either guardians of children killed in tunnel or wall collapses, while mining cobalt in the DRC, or children who were maimed in such accidents.

The children and families claim that these technology companies knowingly benefited from and aiding and abetting the “cruel and brutal use of young children” to mine cobalt – a key component of the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries used in the devices that these companies manufacture.

“The young children mining defendants’ cobalt are not merely being forced to work full time, extremely dangerous mining jobs at the expense of their educations and futures, but they are [also] being regularly maimed and killed by tunnel collapses and other known hazards common to cobalt mining in the DRC.”

The lawsuit states that the plaintiffs are a representative group of children who were forced by extreme poverty to leave school and to become artisanal cobalt miners.

“They are officially referred to as ‘artisanal’ miners to dress up the fact that this means they are working in a large informal sector of people, including young children, who go to the areas where cobalt is found and use primitive tools to dig and tunnel for cobalt without any safety equipment and without any structural support for the tunnels. Major tunnel collapses are common.”

The plaintiffs claim that the technology companies benefit from and provide support to the artisanal mining system in the DRC.

In response to the news, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence pointed out on Monday that the vast majority of DRC cobalt did not come from artisanal sources and that less than 10% of mined cobalt came from artisanal miners.

“Artisanal does not necessary mean illegal: Only a fraction of artisanal cobalt is illegally extracted material or linked to human rights abuses,” the London-based advisory firm focusing on the lithium-ion battery and electric (EV) vehicle supply chain commented in a note.

“Cobalt can be artisanal, legal and safely mined,” Benchmark said, noting that artisanal labour was an important regional source of income to the DRC population on the extreme end of the poverty line.

The total cobalt market in 2019 will be 138 000 t, with 75% to be mined in the DRC.

The organisation stressed that, without the DRC cobalt, there would be no EV industry.