Like with most battery based technology, it could be ethically sourced, but then you’ll have to pay $300 more per smartphone and arguably $20,000 more for an EV.
The problem is that companies, corporation and multi-nationals freely exploit authoritarian countries, a market precedent set in the 1950s, when western capitalists decided to rely on communist China for fabrication and manufacturing, because wage slavery.
You don’t need to rely on wage slavery like in the Congo, but you can still defile the lands and cause environmental damage - like they do in Chile.
Going back on this is incredibly hard, because if the consumer suddenly pays more, chances are that the extra money won’t be used to improve operations or to treat employees ethically, but to give bigger payouts to investors and bigger bonuses for executives.