Helping People
Child labor associated
with gold mining
This U.S. Department of Labor’s report documents at least seventeen countries determined to be mining gold produced with child labor: Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ghana, Guinea, Indonesia, Mali, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Niger, North Korea, Peru, Philippines, Senegal, and Tanzania. Child gold miners in the Sahel region of Africa gold mining are exposed to mercury-poisoning related to gold extraction. High poverty levels in the region forces families to send children under 18 to work in the mines, making up 30 to 50% of the entire gold-mining workforce.
These children work with heavy and primitive equipment to break rocks and transport them to washing, crushing and mineral processing. Children often work underground in narrow shafts and galleries.
Gold mining’s indigenous
rights violations worldwide
About half of the gold mined worldwide is taken from indigenous peoples’ lands in Peru, Indonesia, and Native American lands in Nevada. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes, suffered severe health problems, lost their livelihoods, and suffered human rights violations resulting from gold mining operations. Mining covers more than 20% of Indigenous territory in the Amazon. In Uganda the Karamojong indigenous community are directly affected by illegal gold mining.
The use of mercury to extract gold has been described as a "death sentence", as it contaminates the water, impacting on health and killing livestock.
Africa’s curse of gold
Violence in Africa’s goldfields has led to over sixty thousand dead and a continuing humanitarian crisis. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), home to one of Africa’s richest goldfields, competition to control the gold mines and trading routes has spurred a bloody conflict that has gripped this area since the start of the Congolese war in 1998. Soldiers and armed groups seek control of the gold mines as a way to money, guns, and power, fighting each other ruthlessly, often targeting civilians in the process. Combatants carry out widespread ethnic slaughter, executions, torture, rape, and arbitrary arrest, all grave human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law.
Rather than bringing prosperity to the people of northeastern Congo, gold has been a curse to those with the misfortune to live there.
Switzerland’s Glencore $1.47 billion giant mine contaminates water in Peru
Indigenous Peruvians living near a vast mining complex in one of the Ande’s poorest regions report toxic metal contamination in their water supply, reportedly making people severely ill and killing herd animals. The complex, located approximately 4100 meters above sea level, extracts gold, silver, and copper. Blood and urine samples from test participants in 11 communities and water samples taken near the mines found elevated levels of metals, including arsenic, manganese, cadmium, lead, and mercury. Exposure to the toxic substances creates health risks to the local population and may cause headaches, nausea, organ damage, kidney disease, lung and brain damage, and even death. The metals are also harmful to animal health.