Public body

United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)

The United Nations agency for children. In the DRC's copper-cobalt provinces it runs TPS+, a model of para-social workers and community social contracts against child labour in mining, and reported 1,015 children removed from mines in 2024. It was named in November 2020 as sole administrator of a Global Battery Alliance fund for preventing child labour in mining communities in Lualaba and Haut-Katanga, and in August 2021 announced a technical cooperation with RCS Global on a child-rights toolkit for artisanal mining, within a UNICEF project financed by the German government's “We Stop Child Labor” fund. In June 2026 it announced a child-labour project with the Khalid bin Sultan Al Qasimi Humanitarian Foundation in the Kambove health zone of Haut-Katanga. UNICEF says its figure of 361,000 children refers to children in various hazardous work in Haut-Katanga and Lualaba; AFREWATCH, for Congolese civil society, has stated reservations about that figure. UNICEF also hosts a 2021 study of children in artisanal mining zones of Lualaba and South Kivu, published by the DRC's Ministry of Planning and funded by GIZ.

Sources support the description and the individual connections below. Publication and checking dates belong to the evidence: when it was published, and when this Hub last read it.

Documented relationships

Reported means the cited source describes the relationship at its evidence date. Historical relationships refer to an earlier period. Announced agreements may not have been implemented. None of these labels confirms that trade continues today.