The glitter victims: Indian children suffer for the mining of cosmetic material mica “We dug with our bare hands. We found my younger daughter who had clawed and dragged herself out of the […]

“We dug with our bare hands. We found my younger daughter who had clawed and dragged herself out of the soil despite her broken leg.

“But Laxmi was dead by the time we found her, she was not breathing. There was no life in her.”

Sitting outside their mud home in Duba village, in eastern India, Parwatiya Devi recounts the last moments she saw her 12-year-old daughter Laxmi Kurmari, who had died in a collapsed mine eight months ago.

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Her 10-year-old daughter who sits next to her, can still barely walk.

The girls weren’t playing in an abandoned mineshaft, they were working – searching for the once lowly mineral known as mica. The sparkly material is used to add glitter to everything from car paint to eyeshadow.

Fatal conditions

India is one of the largest producers of the silver-coloured material and many children like Laxmi have died each year working in horrendous conditions to mine it.

India’s mica industry once boasted more than 700 mines and over 20,000 workers. It was hit by legislation in the 1980s as the government moved to limit deforestation and the discovery of substitutes for natural mica forced most mines to close.

But renewed interest driven by China’s booming economy and a global craze for “natural” cosmetics saw illegal operators reopen abandoned mines, creating a lucrative black market.

In Jharkhand and Bihar states, some of the poorest regions of India, children as young as five are part of an opaque supply chain – beginning in Giridih’s decrepit mines and ending in London’s fragrant beauty stores.

Indian law forbids children below the age of 18 working in mines and other hazardous industries, but many families living in extreme poverty rely on children to boost household incomes which average around 200 rupees (£2.50) a day.

Campaigners estimate this illegal trade accounts for some 25 percent of the global production of mica and involves up to 50,000 child workers in India.

Holistic solutions

An initiative to end child labour in India’s mica industry by 2022 was established in January and backed by multi-billion pound companies. But it has failed to have any tangible effect on the ground, campaigners say.

Jos de Voogd, from Terre des Hommes, a children’s rights charity in the Netherlands, said: “It is really important to look at the problem in a holistic way if you want to solve this problem.

“Simply banning children from working is not a solution, you have to ensure that their parents are paid good wages so they can make a living and don’t have to send children to the mines. This is the government’s responsibility, although something that companies can obviously help with (and have responsibility for).”

The Responsible Mica Initiative (RMI) – whose 39 members include cosmetics firms Estee Lauder and L’Oreal, and German drugs and chemical group Merck KGaA – has raised little funds. Village activities to curb child labour have not yet started either.

“The RMI is an initiative with a lot of promise, yet it has in the last year failed to live up to that promise,” said Sushant Verma from Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF), a charity working to end child labour in mica mines for over a decade that initially supported the RMI.

“Could the companies have done more? The answer is yes. They had a year and yet there is little to show on the ground. Children are dying in these mines, but there is no sense of urgency to really tackle the problem.”

Slow progress

The Paris-based RMI, however, said its first year was a “preparation year” dedicated to setting up the organisation, enlisting members and raising funds. Projects to improve the lives of rural communities are expected to begin next year.

“When I compare many other initiatives, it’s incredible that already around 40 members have decided to join and take action altogether and have a five-year program with real impact,” said RMI’s Executive Director Fanny Fremont [accent on ‘e’].

“I don’t think it could have been done any quicker.”

But Laxmi’s family can take no solace from this and now their grief has turned to despair on realising promises by global companies to end child labour in the mines in eastern India have so far led to nothing.

“I don’t know about any company coming and helping here. I don’t even know what this mica is used for,” said Parwatiya.

“But even with the death of my child and three others in this village, people are still sending their children to collect mica. That’s all we have. There is nothing else.”

Hidden toll

The discovery that seven children had died in the region in two months alone prompted pledges by multinationals sourcing mica from India to clean up their supply chains, and state authorities vowed to accelerate plans to legalise and regulate the sector.

But campaigners fear the death toll is likely much higher than what is initially officially stated and the bodies of many victims are not recovered from the rubble, or are quickly and silently cremated in the forests by mine operators.

A Thomson Reuters Foundation’s investigation in 2016 found child workers not only suffer injuries and respiratory infections but they risked being killed and their deaths hushed-up.

In some cases, the victims’ families are threatened by mine operators or buyers not to report the deaths, or they are given “blood money” to keep silent so the illicit industry continues.

RMI founding member, cosmetics firm L’Oreal – which states over 99 percent of its mica comes from “legal gated mines” free of child workers – said companies will begin divulging supply chain details when the technology is piloted next year.

“Our ambition with our partners and the RMI is to achieve a compliant and fair mica sector in India over the next five years,” a L’Oreal spokesperson said.