Quick Take

Critical Minerals Stockpiling by Governments Risks Fueling Forced and Child Labor

Isabelle Glimcher & Dorothée Baumann-Pauly

March 24, 2026

The United States and European Union are racing to stockpile critical minerals essential to national security. In stockpiling these minerals, however, these countries risk fueling forced and child labor on a massive scale. While the US and EU countries have some safeguards built into their import and procurement laws, these regulations must be rigorously applied and coupled with on-the-ground collaboration to formalize mining and address the root causes of forced and child labor.

In the US, the National Defense Stockpile maintains a Materials of Interest List, which includes, among other things, cobalt, copper, nickel, lithium, and 16 rare earth elements. In 2025, the Department of Defense announced its intent to procure up to $1 billion in stockpile materials, and the One Big Beautiful Act appropriated $2 billion to the NDS Transaction Fund. This year, both houses of Congress have introduced proposals for creating a Strategic Resilience Reserve for critical minerals, while the Trump Administration announced a new initiative for a $12 billion critical minerals stockpile for the private sector.

In the EU, countries have started working together to create a joint stockpile to reduce the bloc’s dependence on Chinese exports. The EU plan includes a joint stockpile and export restrictions on reusable metal scrap and rare earth waste. The 2024 European Critical Raw Minerals Act also includes a requirement that no more that 65% of the EU’s annual consumption be from a single third country.

Some of these critical minerals, however, are being mined in informal and unregulated mines and are being mined or processed with forced labor. As the US Department of Labor (DOL) itself recognized, “[o]ur 2024 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor includes 12 critical materials that are at risk of being produced by child labor or forced labor.”

Take cobalt, for example. More than 70% of the global production of cobalt takes place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and 15% to 30% of that comes from artisanal and small-scale mines (ASM). The human rights concerns related to ASM of cobalt in the DRC have been well documented for at least a decade now, as has the role of child labor. Hand-dug mines are exceptionally dangerous and prone to collapse, and workers suffer severe injuries or worse. Notwithstanding these dangers, millions of people in the DRC rely on ASM for their livelihoods. Living in extreme poverty, these workers have no other means to support their families.

In addition, while some critical minerals are mined by major multinational companies, in many cases, the minerals are entirely cross-contaminated with those mined in artisanal mines because the production is consolidated at smelters and refiners in the DRC and in China, where most of the minerals are processed. This can make it impossible to guarantee that minerals entering a global supply chain are free of forced and child labor. No downstream company can assert in good faith that their products do not contain material mined by children.

Notwithstanding these conditions, the US and countries in the EU are eager to procure cobalt and other critical minerals as quickly as possible. But that goal is in tension with regulations that prohibit the purchasing of goods mined with forced or child labor. Or it should be.

The EU Forced Labor Regulation, for example, which will come into force at the end of 2027, prohibits entities from importing and making available in the Union market all products made with forced labor. This includes goods imported for government procurement. In addition to a forced labor import ban, the US has regulations meant to prevent federal government procurement of goods made or mined with forced or child labor. These regulations require some contractors to certify that they are not sourcing from certain high-risk countries, or that they have “made a good faith effort” to determine whether forced or indentured child labor was used and are “unaware of any such use of child labor.” But cross-contamination and traceability issues often make such a certification essentially impossible to make in good faith.

Given the tension between national security imperatives and forced- and child-labor bans, critical mineral purchasing will test our commitment to ethical procurement. Existing procurement laws could enable the US and EU governments to look the other way in favor of securing a stockpile as quickly as possible. Instead, these governments should take the opportunity to drive progress. The governments stockpiling these minerals must work in close consultation with industry, workers groups, and the governments of countries where the minerals can be extracted to (1) formalize ASM mining, (2) develop common standards to address mine safety, forced labor, and child labor, and (3) address the systemic poverty which drives families to resort to child and forced labor.

ASM formalization requires ongoing oversight by the buyer, long-term commitments, empowerment of local cooperatives, continuous monitoring, and investment to prepare and secure mining sites and equip them with basic infrastructure. While these and other necessary efforts require significant investments, they will strengthen and increase the resilience of these critical mineral supply chains for decades to come. In this way, the critical minerals race could help end forced and child labor in these supply chains. Otherwise, the stockpiling effort, funded by taxpayers, will fuel forced and child labor.