January 30, 2012
Ministère des Mines
M. Amadou Cissé
Bamako - Mali
Dear Minister,
We are writing to welcome your Ministry’s initiative to organize a government mission to investigate the prevalence of child labor in Mali’s artisanal gold mines.
The Malian government and the International Labor Organization have estimated that there are approximately 100,000 to 200,000 individuals who work in artisanal gold mines in Mali, among whom an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 are children. Many of these children perform hazardous child labor, in contravention of Malian labor law. While artisanal mining represents an important source of income and livelihood for adults, there are serious health risks for children who dig pits, work underground, carry, pan, and crush ore, and use mercury to extract gold. As you know, the use of mercury in mining is highly toxic, particularly to children. Our research found that children in Mali start working as young as six years old. Many child laborers are denied an education or drop out of school. Some children come to the mines without their parents and suffer economic or sexual exploitation.
We are encouraged by your actions to address these problems by conducting visits to artisanal mining sites. We believe that the planned government mission can be an important starting point for concerted action to improve the situation of these children.
We recommend that the mission include representatives of Ministries that should be involved in the development of strategies to address the suffering of these children, namely: the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Labor and Civil Service, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Environment and Sanitation, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Promotion of Women, Child, and Family Affairs. We would also like to recommend that the mission include relevant UN agencies, such as UNICEF and the International Labor Organization, and international and/or national Malian NGOs that have expertise on this issue.
We welcome your plan to make the results of this mission public, and look forward hearing about it.
Sincerely,
Juliane Kippenberg Arvind Ganesan
Senior Researcher Director
Children’s Rights Division Business and Human Rights
Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch
kippenj@hrw.org arvind.ganesan@hrw.org
CC: Prime Minister’s Office
