Child Gold Workers
This is highly depressing, but very informative. Forget offshore banking for the elite, Swiss companies and banks launder gold. Really though what alternatives do these kids have..yet at 4 years old? And working with raw mercury?
In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press visited six of these bush mines in three West African countries and interviewed more than 150 child miners. AP journalists watched as child-mined gold was bought by itinerant traders. And, through interviews and customs documents, The AP tracked gold from these mines on a 3,000-mile journey to Mali's capital city and then on to Switzerland, where it enters the world market.
Most bush mines are little more than holes in the ground, but there are thousands of them in Africa, South America and Asia. Together, they produce a fifth of the world's gold, according to United Nations reports. And wherever you find bush mines, these reports and mine experts say, you also find child labor.
Mercury attracts gold like a magnet. But it also attacks the brain and can cause tremors, speech impediments, retardation, kidney damage and blindness.
Saliou's tub of dirt yields a silvery ball the size of an M&M. He hands it to his boss, who lifts up his shades to eye it. The man heats the ball over a charcoal fire to make the mercury evaporate, leaving behind a fleck of gold.
Just handling mercury is treacherous; breathing its fumes is worse. The children don't know that. They crowd for a glimpse of the gold as its silvery husk slowly vaporizes.
At mealtime, Saliou rinses his hands in water from a muddy pool where the mercury run-off was dumped. He scoops a mouthful of rice and licks his hand clean.
"I am just a little guy," Morali said. "I buy some grams, some kilos, from here and there." Everyone buys from Ba, he said, and if other company names don't appear it's because some transactions are unrecorded.
Morali said he visited Ba's office in Bamako and "never saw a child working." However, he acknowledged, "I've never been to these mines."
If they employ children, he asked, where are the written work contracts? Primitive bush mines, of course, do not have work contracts.
"There's no work contract with any children? Voila!" Morali said, dismissing the matter.
"Home Depot can track every 2-by-4 to its forest of origin," said economist Michael Conroy, who has written a book on industry supply chains. "You can track every bag of coffee, every diamond to a specific diamond field. But for gold there's nothing."
Be well.
In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press visited six of these bush mines in three West African countries and interviewed more than 150 child miners. AP journalists watched as child-mined gold was bought by itinerant traders. And, through interviews and customs documents, The AP tracked gold from these mines on a 3,000-mile journey to Mali's capital city and then on to Switzerland, where it enters the world market.
Most bush mines are little more than holes in the ground, but there are thousands of them in Africa, South America and Asia. Together, they produce a fifth of the world's gold, according to United Nations reports. And wherever you find bush mines, these reports and mine experts say, you also find child labor.
Mercury attracts gold like a magnet. But it also attacks the brain and can cause tremors, speech impediments, retardation, kidney damage and blindness.
Saliou's tub of dirt yields a silvery ball the size of an M&M. He hands it to his boss, who lifts up his shades to eye it. The man heats the ball over a charcoal fire to make the mercury evaporate, leaving behind a fleck of gold.
Just handling mercury is treacherous; breathing its fumes is worse. The children don't know that. They crowd for a glimpse of the gold as its silvery husk slowly vaporizes.
At mealtime, Saliou rinses his hands in water from a muddy pool where the mercury run-off was dumped. He scoops a mouthful of rice and licks his hand clean.
"I am just a little guy," Morali said. "I buy some grams, some kilos, from here and there." Everyone buys from Ba, he said, and if other company names don't appear it's because some transactions are unrecorded.
Morali said he visited Ba's office in Bamako and "never saw a child working." However, he acknowledged, "I've never been to these mines."
If they employ children, he asked, where are the written work contracts? Primitive bush mines, of course, do not have work contracts.
"There's no work contract with any children? Voila!" Morali said, dismissing the matter.
"Home Depot can track every 2-by-4 to its forest of origin," said economist Michael Conroy, who has written a book on industry supply chains. "You can track every bag of coffee, every diamond to a specific diamond field. But for gold there's nothing."
Be well.