News
Burkina Faso’s government has threatened to close any artisanal gold site where a child is found working, after children appeared among the gold miners sent back from Guinea.
Mines Minister Yacouba Zabré Gouba delivered the warning on Tuesday 10 November at a meeting in Ouagadougou with the federations that represent small-scale gold miners, the Burkinabè news agency AIB reported on 11 November. “Whenever we see a child, a single child, we will close the sites outright,” he said. A child’s presence on a site, he argued, necessarily means someone brought him or her there, so the ministry will search for those responsible and apply the law to them. The mining code already bans children from such sites; the minister called the policy “zero tolerance”. AIB
The meeting came, AIB said, as Burkinabè miners—people from Burkina Faso—were being turned back from Guinea, among them children whose presence on mining sites caused a shock among the public and the authorities. Guinea began a crackdown on illegal gold-panning on 2 November. By 7 November Mali’s civil-protection ministry said more than 100,000 people expelled from Guinea had reached the Bamako area, RFI reported, with Burkinabè believed to be by far the largest group. RFI
The minister’s message to the miners’ federations paired enforcement with a choice about work. “These children must have a possible future,” Gouba said. “These children must be in classrooms. These children must learn a trade.” He urged the federations to warn their members and families of the dangers of gold-panning for children, to form cooperatives, obtain the required authorisations and accept technical supervision under the mining code, and to turn to other sectors—agriculture in particular—to reduce dependence on gold. AIB
On the returnees, Gouba said the return “must not be a starting point towards other destinations” and that the state must help those who came back take up other activities, according to the ministry’s communications office as published by Espoir Info. Communication Minister Pingdwendé Gilbert Ouédraogo pointed to construction of the Ouagadougou–Bobo-Dioulasso motorway and the government’s agriculture, forestry and livestock drive as work for young people. Gouba also described the state-linked body Faso Sanu as the institution that will list illegal sites, recover disputed ones for public benefit and carry out surprise pollution checks. Espoir Info
Arnauld Ouédraogo, head of the national office for securing mining sites, framed unregulated gold-panning as a threat to security, education, health and the environment. According to AIB, he said artisanal sites indirectly help armed groups obtain fuel and explosives, and he cited school dropout, damage to farmland and the use of cyanide and mercury. AIB