Has published a trilogy on modern slavery and a study of mineral extraction that underpins lithium battery production.
Siddharth Kara @ wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddharth_Kara
> Siddharth Kara is an American author. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a British Academy Global Professor, and an associate professor at the University of Nottingham. He is best known for his book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (2023). He has also published a trilogy on modern slavery: Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery (2009), Bonded Labor: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia (2012), and Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective (2017).
--- From XR Global newsletter July 2025
# 2025 - Cobalt Red > A book that all rebels should read. Travelling deep into the land of cobalt and lithium, Siddharth Kara gives us a disturbing account of the mining practices and working conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
> Cobalt is an essential component in the lithium-ion batteries many of us have come to rely on, and the popularity of electric vehicles is only driving demand for cobalt higher and higher. Global business interests are all scrambling for a piece of the pie. The Congolese mine workers, who have once again been sold out by their government to foreign business interests, suffer inhumane, exploitative conditions for only a few cents a day.
> With great difficulty, Kara managed to gather harrowing testimonies from miners, including ‘artisanal’ miners, who describe grueling hours spent in hand-dug tunnels, meager pay for heavy sacks of cobalt, and the ever-present threat of injury, collapse, or death. His resulting account uncovers the dirty truth: that there is no such thing as an ‘ethical’ supply chain in the mining industry in the DRC.
> This investigative report highlights the critical need to engage with developments in the DRC, as they bear direct relevance to global systems and shared responsibilities of us all.
--- Within the seven Rs of activist commitment, Siddarth Kara's investigations of modern slavery and violence in the extractive supply chain of post-Fordism can be enbraced as an instance of #resistance and #reporting.
Here we introduce 'Resistance', one of seven Rs of activist commitment in the mutual sector, concerned with territory, defences and 'digging where we stand'.
Here we introduce 'Reorting', one of seven Rs of activist commitment in the mutual sector, concerned with News from Elsewhere:. Includes recording: making historical and navigational records (maps).