"Treat the people at the bottom of your supply chains with the same dignity as those at corporate headquarters." – Siddharth Kara

Siddharth Kara is one of the world’s most renowned authors, researchers, and activists specialising in modern slavery and child labour. Over the past two decades, he has conducted field research in more than 50 countries, documenting the exploitation of vulnerable populations in global supply chains – from cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to garment factories in South Asia. His acclaimed work, including the Pulitzer Prize Finalist and New York Times bestseller “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives”, exposes the systemic abuses hidden within the production networks of everyday consumer goods.

Kara’s investigations have uncovered deep injustices and challenged the global business community to confront the true cost of profit and convenience. As scrutiny of human rights practices intensifies, companies are under growing pressure to take responsibility for how they source materials and labour, and for the human impact of their operations. For those navigating new frameworks such as the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), this is a pivotal moment that demands compliance, courage, and transparency.

In this conversation with Global Child Forum, Kara calls on business leaders to move beyond rhetoric and take decisive action to end exploitation in their supply chains.

You’ve spent over two decades investigating modern slavery and child labour around the world. What first led you to this work, and what continues to drive your commitment today?

Siddharth Kara: I first came across the issue of human trafficking when I was volunteering in a Bosnian refugee camp as a university student in 1994. As I went on with my life, this experience always stuck with me. I didn’t know how, but I knew I needed to try and make a positive contribution to understanding and tackling these issues.

This led me to embark on my first field research trip into modern slavery and child labour in the summer of 2000. I was overwhelmed by the stories I heard and the people I met. I had no idea that there was this shadowy underbelly to the global economic order in which millions of people were eking out a base existence akin to old-world slavery. After this first trip, I knew I needed to do more, and in time, this work became the primary focus of my life.

Of all the individuals you’ve met during your fieldwork, is there a particular encounter that shifted your perspective or deepened your resolve?

SK: I have met thousands of modern-day slaves and child labourers, so it is difficult to point to just one. Having said that, meeting children who toil in hazardous or slave-like conditions is always a heart-wrenching experience. Children should be in school, enjoying the innocence of childhood, not working for pennies in garment factories, brothels, or mineral mines.

Perhaps the experiences that haunt me the most have been those with parents who lost their children in a tunnel collapse while digging for cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The torment they experience is unimaginable. They are haunted by nightmares of their children’s final moments, crushed under rock and dirt as they took their last gasps of air…all to try and earn a Euro or two a day digging for cobalt that ends up in our rechargeable gadgets and electric vehicles. It is an unimaginable contrast that seems impossible to reconcile, how such extremes can be permitted to exist on the same planet. Children in Stockholm or London or New York City playing with an iPad while their parents drive to a beautiful green park in their electric vehicles, both devices powered by children in the Congo caked in toxic grit in a trench while their parents fill the next sack of cobalt in a landscape barren of trees or green of any kind.

Based on your extensive field research, what are the most common misconceptions companies have about the prevalence and locations of child labour in their supply chains?

SK: Many companies are making commendable efforts to improve conditions in their supply chains. One misconception they tend to make is to assume that if the audit of their tier one supplier is clean, then all is well in their supply chain. First, rarely are these audits objective. They are more often a work-for-hire designed to yield the result the company wants to hear. More importantly, the audits often fail to track the informal underbelly of local economies.

Take garment production in Bangladesh as an example. The tier one factory in Dhaka might have reasonable standards, although often they do not. However, this factory will inevitably outsource production to subcontractors who venture into home-based settings where women and children toil under duress, violence, and for wages of a Euro a day to ensure the supplier can meet production. Or, a consumer-facing technology or EV company may buy all its cobalt from ABC mining company in the DRC, where conditions are purported to be reasonable (believe me, they are not). Nevertheless, ABC mining company will inevitably buy thousands of tons of cobalt mined in wretched conditions by poor villagers and children to boost production for penny wages. It all gets mixed at the processing stage, after which it is impossible to know what the source was.

The misconception, therefore, is that supply chains end where the formal economy ends, and this is rarely the case.

In Cobalt Red, you detail the connection between the tech and clean energy sectors and child labour. What should business leaders in these and similar industries understand about their direct and indirect roles in such exploitation?

SK: Considering that in 2024, 76% of the world’s supply of cobalt was mined in the DRC, and that anyone reading this article cannot function for 24 hours without cobalt, it is not unreasonable to say that in the history of slavery, never has there been a more degrading exploitation of people, generating more profit at the top of the chain, that touches the lives of more people in the world.

Cobalt mining has unleashed incalculable violence on the people and environment of the DRC. Mining concessions the size of cities have ripped apart the earth, chopped down millions of trees, polluted lakes and rivers, and exploited the hazardous, penny wage labour of hundreds of thousands of some of the poorest people in the world…all so that we can pursue our gadget-driven lifestyles and a green energy transition. How can the global North pursue a greener future by wreaking havoc on the environment in Africa? How can we pass on a greener planet to our children by forfeiting the lives of African children?

To be honest, if business leaders in these sectors wanted to address these issues on their own, they would have done so by now. Rather, they seem more inclined to persuade us to upgrade our phones every year or to buy a new EV than to treat the people whose resources they need with respect and dignity. Most business leaders will probably have to be compelled to treat the people and environment of Africa with respect and dignity, and it will be up to consumers to compel them. Just because a company runs a commercial telling us to upgrade our phone every year, do we really need to do so? Just because a car company runs a commercial claiming its EV helps save the environment, whose environment are they talking about? Consumers will have to make personal decisions about their consumption, while agitating for change.

How do consumer demand and corporate cost-cutting contribute to the persistence of child labour, even when formal policies and audits are in place?

SK: I do not think consumers are the relevant force here. Yes, we all want to pay less for things, if possible, as most of us have limited disposable income and our own economic pressures to face. The driving force is the profit-hungry corporation that is focused on maximising shareholder value no matter the cost. Why did they go to a poorer country in search of cheap labour to begin with?

Labour is almost always the highest cost component to running any business, and if you want to maximise profit and remain price competitive, you have to reduce operating expenses, which starts with labour. For this reason, many companies are only too happy to take whatever clean audits they can pay for and look the other way while pursuing the next quarterly profit report. What needs to happen is a shift in the logic of the capitalist economic order, such that other factors become equally important, such as genuine respect for human rights, sustainability, and investment in the communities whose labour and resources are required to make the goods these companies sell. In essence, companies must forego some amount of profit to treat people with dignity, and that hardly seems like too much to ask. In some industries, this might mean we have to pay a little more because the margins are low, such as garments, for example. In other sectors, such as tech and EVs, the cost of decency would hardly be noticed.

What are the broader, long-term social consequences of business decisions made without full visibility into supply chain conditions?

SK: The long-term consequences are that we perpetuate the exploitative relationship between the global north and the global south that was initiated soon after the Age of Exploration. From the slave trade to colonialism to globalisation, the common thread remains the pillage of the resources and labour of the global south to facilitate our consumption and profit. The time is long overdue to re-order this relationship in a way that is more equitable and decent for all participants.

With the ESRS emphasising human rights reporting, what advice would you offer to European sustainability managers to ensure their disclosures on child labour are both truthful and impactful?

SK: Let’s start with a simple shift in approach: treat the people at the bottom of your supply chains with the same dignity and respect as the people at corporate headquarters. We wouldn’t send our children to scrounge in toxic pits for minerals, so why is it okay to send the children of Africa? We wouldn’t make our children exchange education for sewing buttons on shirts for fast fashion, so why is it okay to have children in Asia do so? Everything that needs to happen to ensure human rights standards are maintained in supply chains will follow if we simply treat those people over there with the same respect that we treat our people over here.

In addition, don’t just accept the superficial audit. Work with local communities to probe the informal economy, as it almost surely links into your supply chain to some degree, and this is where most of the most egregious human rights abuses are taking place. Listen to the voices on the ground. They hold the truth. Give bottom-of-chain workers a safe way of communicating with you, be it to express grievances or to let you know what is working well. Keep full-time teams on the ground with the task of serving as that bridge, probing the truth, and working to strengthen ties with local stakeholders. Allocate some portion of net profits to invest in the communities at the bottom of your supply chain. It is not acceptable to avail of their low-wage labour and walk away with the profits. Be stewards of a better model of doing business.

Some companies hesitate to delve deeply into their supply chains for fear of uncovering uncomfortable truths. What would you say to leaders who are reluctant to investigate thoroughly, and how can transparency be transformed into a strength rather than a liability?

SK: Ignorance of the truth does not mean the truth does not exist. It will emerge eventually, and it is better to find it proactively and work to address it. Yes, you may uncover horrible human rights abuses and violence against the environment linked to your supply chains, but you can make it a point of pride and a branding advantage to address these issues head-on when your competitors fail to do so. Many countries are also seeing new legislation around transparency and accountability in supply chains, so there is a growing risk associated with failing to address the issues. In the long term, there is much less to lose and so much more to gain.