By Blessing Okoedion Survivor of human trafficking, researcher, and Executive Director of Weavers of Hope APS
I did not learn about the Rubaya mining disaster through a major breaking news headline. I did not see days of global media coverage. I did not hear world leaders speaking with urgency. Yet in January 2026, more than 400 people lost their lives when tunnels collapsed at the Rubaya coltan mining site in North Kivu, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Many of those killed were artisanal miners. Many were women. Many were children.¹
Rubaya is not a marginal site. It is one of the most important coltan mining areas in the world, producing an estimated fifteen percent of global supply.² Coltan is refined into tantalum, a mineral essential for the production of smartphones, laptops, and countless electronic devices used daily across the globe. This tragedy occurred at the very heart of the digital economy yet it was met with striking international silence.
As a survivor of human trafficking and as a researcher working alongside other survivors, I recognise this silence. I know what it means to exist inside an economic system that benefits from your suffering while pretending not to see you. What happened in Rubaya is not only a disaster. It is the visible consequence of a global model built on extraction, inequality, and expendability.
Across the Democratic Republic of Congo, tens of thousands of children work in artisanal mining. Conservative estimates indicate that around 40,000 children are involved in cobalt mining alone, with many more engaged in the extraction of coltan, gold, and tin.³ Some are as young as seven years old.They dig unstable tunnels. They carry heavy sacks of minerals. They breathe toxic dust usually without helmets, gloves, or masks. Mining is classified as one of the worst forms of child labour because of its extreme danger and long-term health consequences.⁴
Research further shows that child labour in Congolese mines is often not simply a matter of family poverty. It is connected to forced labour and trafficking. Studies of artisanal mining sites indicate that a significant percentage of workers, including children, are in situations of coercion, debt bondage, or trafficking. Armed groups and criminal networks play a role in recruitment and control.⁵ In conflict-affected eastern Congo, children who are displaced, orphaned, or separated from their families are particularly vulnerable. Some come from other regions. Others cross borders from neighbouring countries, drawn by false promises of work or forced through violence.
When tunnels collapse in places like Rubaya, these events are often described as accidents. But when the same types of collapses happen again and again, in sites known to be unsafe without inspections, without enforcement, without protective equipment these deaths are not accidents; they are predictable, they are tolerated and they are the outcome of a system that considers certain lives disposable.
The Democratic Republic of Congo holds some of the richest mineral reserves on earth, including more than half of the world’s known cobalt reserves.⁶ Yet the majority of Congolese people live in poverty, while multinational companies generate enormous profits from minerals extracted from their land. This is the reality of global inequality: wealth flows outward, while risk, death, and environmental destruction remain local.
At Weavers of Hope APS, we work alongside migrant women, survivors of trafficking, and people who have experienced severe exploitation. Our core mission is to promote freedom, dignity, empowerment, and social and economic inclusion through survivor-centred support, protection, advocacy, and access to rights. We see every day how global inequalities, racism, and exploitative economic systems push people into situations of vulnerability long before a trafficker appears. The mines in Congo are part of this same continuum of exploitation.
International conventions exist to protect children from economic exploitation. National laws in Congo prohibit child labour in hazardous sectors such as mining. Corporations publish ethical sourcing policies. Yet children remain underground. This gap between law and reality exposes a fundamental truth: voluntary commitments without enforcement do not save lives.
When we speak about human trafficking, we must widen our lens. Trafficking is not only about movement across borders or sexual exploitation. It is also about forced labour, coercion, abuse of vulnerability, and profit extracted from suffering. The children in Congo’s mines are part of the global trafficking economy, even when they never leave their country.
Every phone we hold, every laptop we use, carries a hidden history. Some of that history is written in the hands of children digging in darkness. We cannot continue to claim ignorance. Silence is not neutral. Silence protects exploitation. Silence makes these deaths possible.
Remembering Rubaya is not only about mourning the dead. It is about confronting the system that made their deaths inevitable. It is about demanding corporate accountability, binding supply-chain laws, living wages for adult miners, real alternatives for families, and free, accessible education for children.
The minerals in our hands should never be worth more than human life.
References
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Wikipedia, 2026 Rubaya Mine Collapse
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The Guardian, “More than 200 killed in coltan mine collapse in eastern DRC”
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Humanium, The Current State of Child Labour in Cobalt Mines in the DRC
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International Labour Organization (ILO), Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention
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Planet-Keeper, Child Labor in Cobalt Mining: Exploitation amid the Green Energy Boom in the DRC
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TIME Magazine, “The Dark Side of Clean Energy: Child Labor in Cobalt Mining”
