For These Kids, Toiling in Illegal Mines Is 'Only Option'

Dressed in a faded pink dress, 6-year-old Juliet Samaniya squats under scorching skies to chip at a jagged white rock with a stone tool. Dust coats her tiny hands and her hair as she works hour after hour, for less than a dollar a day in Nasarawa, Nigeria. The landscape around her is dotted with active and abandoned mine shafts, farmland that may soon be cleared in search of more rich ore, and other mine workers—many of them children. Juliet should be in school, her mother, Abigail Samaniya, admits. Instead, Juliet spends her day mining lithium, a mineral critical for batteries needed in the global transition to clean energy, to earn money that helps sustain her family. "That is the only option," Abigail Samaniya tells the AP.

• Big estimate: The International Labor Organization estimates more than 1 million children work in mines and quarries worldwide, a problem particularly acute in Africa, where poverty, limited access to education, and weak regulations add to the problem. Children, working mostly in small-scale mines, work long hours at unsafe sites, crushing or sorting rocks, carrying heavy loads of ore, and exposing themselves to toxic dust that can cause respiratory problems and asthma.
• Lithium: The growing demand for lithium has created a new frontier for mining in mineral-rich Nigeria. But it has come with a steep cost, exploiting its poorest and most vulnerable: its children. Their work often provides material for Chinese businesses that dominate Nigeria's laxly regulated extractive industry and are often blamed for illegal mining and labor exploitation.

• In Nigeria: The nation has laws requiring basic education and prohibiting child labor, but enforcement is a challenge, with many illegal mines in hard-to-reach areas. Corruption among regulatory and law enforcement officials is also a problem. The government said it's pursuing reforms to toughen laws. Earlier this year, it also launched a "corps of mining marshals" to combat illegal mining, but activists say it's too soon to tell if that program is helping.
• Not so secret: Aliyu Ibrahim, a lithium merchant in Nasarawa, says he knows that children are working at his mines and others he buys from, but he said many of the children are orphans or poor. "It is dangerous, but the work helps them survive, while the government has abandoned poor people," he said. The Chinese Embassy says its government has a zero-tolerance policy toward any illegal mining activity or illegal labor by Chinese companies operating abroad.
• More here.

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