A/HRC/18/30 10. Children are often treated by their employers as commodities – replaceable cheap labour to be thoroughly exploited. The 1926 Slavery Convention makes illegal any practice whereby “the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised”. Some of the children who work in artisanal mining and quarrying are also subjected to forced labour or debt bondage which are slavery-like practices that are expressly prohibited by international law. 11. Children working in this sector face particular, and in some cases a combination of, physical, psychological, economic and sexual exploitation not found in other areas where children work. This is prohibited by article 1 (d) of the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery which forbids “any institution or practice whereby a child or young person under the age of 18 years, is delivered by either or both of his natural parents or by his guardian to another person, whether for reward or not, with a view to the exploitation of the child or young person or of his labour”. The impact of these forms of abuses is not only immediate but has long-term harmful repercussions on the children. 12. Children, particularly unaccompanied children, working in artisanal mining and quarrying have no other choice but to work in this sector as they and their families are in desperate need of an income and have no or no better alternatives. 13. Employers also wield physical and psychological power over the children that they employ. Consequently, although unaccompanied children may be allowed to leave the mine or quarry, they are unlikely to leave their jobs as they have a real or imagined fear of the repercussions. The Special Rapporteur notes that the combined elements of coercion, fear, restriction on freedom of movement and complete dependence on the employer exhibit characteristics which amount to contemporary forms of slavery. 14. Large-scale mining companies undergo regular inspection and have unionized workers; however, child slavery in the mining and quarrying sector normally occurs in the small-scale (artisanal) mining and quarrying sector. The mining sector includes the extraction of minerals (such as coltan), precious metals (such as gold and silver), precious stones (such as diamonds and rubies) and semi-precious stones (such as tanzanite). Quarrying is extraction from an open pit in order to acquire stone or aggregate (sand, gravel or crushed rock) for the construction industry. 15. The mines and quarries in which children work are often informal and situated in remote areas of a country; they remain out of reach of the rule of law in communities commonly referred to as “frontier communities”, where traditional social structures of society and ethical value systems have broken down. These communities are often characterized by violence, crime and substance abuse. The people living in these communities are usually very poor and economically and socially marginalized. Children growing up in this type of community are vulnerable to various types of violations. 16. Small-scale mining and quarrying occurs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. As a result of the remoteness of mines and quarries and their informal and illegal nature, it is hard to provide exact statistics on the number of children working in this sector. Additionally, as in many other instances of contemporary forms of slavery, the victims are not visible. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that there are at least 1 million children working in mining and quarrying1 whereas, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that there are 1–2 million children 1 ILO, Minors out of mining! Partnership for global action against child labour in small-scale mining (Geneva, 2006), p. 1. 5