In Ghana, illegal mining is commonly known as “galamsey,” derived from the phrase “gather them and sell.” It is an informal and unregulated small-scale mining activity that provides alternative economic opportunities and immediate income to many Ghanaians. The sector also contributes to the development of Ghana’s mineral wealth.

Yet galamsey also has provoked a crisis with dire public health consequences for the country’s mining communities. Its effects take an especially terrible human toll on the children living close to this activity.

Galamsey has polluted about 60% of Ghana’s vital water bodies with heavy toxic metals such as mercury and chemicals like lead and cyanide, including the Pra, Ankobra, and Brim rivers. People who live in mining communities struggle to access clean water, leaving them compelled to drink contaminated water that increases the incidence of diarrheal diseases and other waterborne infections.

Worse yet, illegal mining is no longer only an environmental issue. Galamsey has become a human security problem that poisons and destroys the lives of children in mining areas. In their formative years, Ghanaian children in these regions face immediate health and long-term developmental issues that blight their present and imperil their future. And, at present, there is no effective plan to reverse this destructive tide.

Successive Ghanaian governments since 2006 have responded to galamsey with a similar playbook: focus on environmental restoration and enforcement, arrest illegal miners, and restore environmental integrity. These strategies have included Operation Halt, Operation Vanguard, Operation Flush Out, GalamStop, and (most recently) the National Anti-Illegal Mining Operations Secretariat (NAIMOS), launched in June 2025.

NAIMOS focuses on the advancement of key initiatives, including the Blue Water Guards, Tree for Life Restoration, and the decentralization of the mining licensing regime. Ghana’s fight against illegal mining has made some environmental gains through the arrest of illegal miners, the destruction of mining equipment, the dredging of contaminated rivers, and land reclamation.

Yet these responses to galamsey have focused narrowly on stopping environmental destruction and restoring Ghana’s water bodies. They do not address the long-term health, cognitive, and developmental injuries suffered by children exposed to toxic substances in mining communities. Indeed, while the suffering of children in mining areas is often invoked rhetorically by political actors to justify military action against illegal mining, it rarely translates into child-specific health protection.

Even a recently launched National Childhood Care and Development Policy (ECCD) administered by Ghana’s Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection in February 2026 offers only a broad roadmap to improve health, nutrition, early learning, and safety. It is a framework that lacks specific provisions focusing on children in mining communities, however.

The need for a specific strategy is clear when one examines the evidence. The impact of Ghana’s illegal mining extends far beyond the destruction of the environment. Children are not bystanders. They are the primary victims of practices which erode their health, development, and future, and are exposed to—and trapped in—places where they are exposed to conditions that cause chronic and irreversible diseases.  

Elements necessary to preserve life can be a threat. Children drink contaminated water, eat polluted food, and grow up in an environment that silently damages their bodies and minds. Oftentimes, this happens without them even noticing. In the Wassa Ayim mining community in Ghana’s Western Region, for instance, a thirsty four-year-old boy picked up a regular bottled water container and drank from it. He did not know that it contained mercury. Subsequent x-ray results revealed mercury pellets in both his intestine and rectum, yet no national policies exist to monitor such cases.

Medical experts agree that the chemicals used in illegal mining activities pose severe developmental delays, neurological disorders, and other chronic illnesses. The World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that children exposed to mercury can suffer from acrodynia, a condition characterized by red and painful extremities with local swelling and intense itching, sometimes accompanied by insomnia, irritability, and senility to light.

Immediate harm can be found in many of these communities, including reports of deaths from chemicals, inappropriate disposals, and disturbing press coverage of children falling into abandoned mining pits and their lifeless bodies later retrieved.  Even newborn babies are not spared; several babies in mining communities are now born with deformities such as cleft lip and palate and others with abdominal walls that are not properly formed. Officials also assert that some children in mining areas now require kidney dialysis.

Longer-term threats also loom large. The Pediatric Society of Ghana has recently warned that the continuous exposure of children to the toxins found in galamsey-affected communities leads to reduced academic performance, behavioral disorders, poor speech development, as well as an increased risk of chronic disease later in life.

Children in Ghana’s mining communities have fallen between the government’s broad anti-galamsey strategy (focused on the environment) and an equally broad child policy framework that does not address the many specific ills found in mining camps. These existing policies criminalize environmental destruction from illegal mining, but they do not address child vulnerability. It is an approach to risk that deepens insecurity rather than alleviating it.

What is needed now are specific policies to protect children in mining areas. One priority is an institutional response mechanism with a specific mandate for child health monitoring and emergency response. This institution would ensure environmental surveillance, child health monitoring, screening of children, emergency response, and child relocation programs within a coherent, responsive, and accountable system.

Gathering more information is also essential. A child mining impact registry with a secure database to track child exposure, clinical reports, and household vulnerabilities in mining areas, would be a foundation for such efforts. It would also identify communities that have been severely affected by illegal mining activities for emergency protective responses and relocation strategies to ensure the temporary or permanent relocation to nearby communities with clean water and routine medical care for affected families. Moreover, it would boost a general awareness campaign in mining communities with the aim of protecting and limiting children’s exposure to chemical substances and contaminated water bodies.

Illegal mining in Ghana is a human security issue that requires a deliberate response to protect children from its toxic effects. This is not only a moral imperative, but also a pragmatic intervention to protect the nation and its citizens. Ghana cannot claim to be fighting illegal mining while vulnerable members of mining communities are left without protection, care, or a future.

Alhassan Tahiru is a PhD Student in Global Governance and Human Security, UMass Boston. His research focuses on peace and conflict, human security,governanceand conflict dynamics in Africa.

Sources: Atmos; CNN; Ghana Broadcasting Corporation; Ghana News Agency; Ghana Web; Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ghana; Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, Ghana; MyJoy; National Commission for Civic Education, Ghana; Paediatric Society of Ghana; Parliament of Ghana; Science; WHO

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