A/HRC/41/54 labourers.95 The human rights violations in the mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo exemplify the violations experienced by extractive industry workers around the world. 96 Companies employ both adults and children as cobalt miners. 97 These miners typically work upwards of 12 hours a day and do so without gloves, face masks or other basic protective equipment. 98 Working under these conditions affects miners’ long-term health.99 In addition, the country’s cobalt miners also face a high risk of fatal accidents. 100 Such brutal working conditions are particularly detrimental to the rights of children. Children have the right to be protected from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral, or social development. 101 Labour-related human rights violations also exist beyond the African continent, and have been regularly documented in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific.102 58. The combination of the highly technical nature of the work and the small number of positions available in certain forms of extraction often leads to an oversupply of local labour and competition for jobs.103 Oil firms, for example, mostly employ expatriates and migrant contract workers. According to the AIDS and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa, half a million men travel across the Southern African region in order to work in mines in South Africa every year.104 Only a minority of skilled workers are typically drawn from local communities. In Nigeria, for example, expatriates and migrant contract workers receive better pay than the local workers, which, research has shown, fosters sharp ethnic and racial divisions between extremely wealthy foreign nationals and underpaid locals. 105 59. Among the most alarming human rights violations in the extractivism economy are killings and deaths, especially of human rights defenders fighting on behalf of indigenous and Afrodescendent communities.106 The assassinations of human rights defenders of racial and ethnic communities have been documented in territories of extraction all over the world. Just one example is Berta Cáceres, the Lenca human rights defender who was murdered following a lifetime of advocacy, including against extractivist projects that endangered the lives of many.107 In 2016, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders found that the most dangerous countries for environmental human rights defenders were Brazil, Cambodia, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mexico, Peru, the Philippines and Thailand. In these countries and elsewhere, the targeted communities and defenders are racially and ethnically specified because of the historical ties that ethnic and racial communities have with the territories that are the prime targets of extractivism. The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders found that, on the basis of the communications that he had received over a period of five years, the extractive 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/child-labour-behind-smart-phone-and-electric-carbatteries. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/10/22/450312266/gold-miners-breathe-the-dust-fall-illthey-did-not-give-me-nothing. “At least 80 artisanal miners died underground in southern DRC between September 2014 and December 2015 alone. The true figure is unknown as many accidents go unrecorded and bodies are left buried in the rubble.” See www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/child-labour-behind-smartphone-and-electric-car-batteries. Convention on the Rights of the Child, art. 32. See also the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 10 (3). See, e.g., www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID= 21888&LangID=E; www.hrw.org/report/2015/09/29/what-if-something-went-wrong/hazardous-childlabor-small-scale-gold-mining; www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/multimedia/video/video-newsreleases/WCMS_067902/lang--en/index.htm; and www.hrw.org/report/2012/09/10/striking-oil-strikingworkers/violations-labor-rights-kazakhstans-oil-sector. www.international-alert.org/sites/default/files/Uganda_GenderOilGas_EN_2014.pdf, p. 23. www.dw.com/en/south-africas-sick-miners-take-gold-mines-to-court/a-18777363. www.ghwatch.org/sites/www.ghwatch.org/files/c6.pdf, p. 176. www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/ExtractiveIndustries2016.pdf, para. 268. www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=17153&LangID=E. 17