A Poisonous Mix - Human Rights Watch

Methodology
Field research for this report was carried out between February and April 2011 in Bamako
and in the mining areas in Western and S0uthern Mali. Human Rights Watch researchers
visited three mining sites in Kéniéba circle, in the Kayes region of Western Mali — Baroya
(Sitakili commune), Tabakoto (Sitakili commune), and Sensoko (Kéniéba commune) — and
one mine in Worognan (Mena commune) in Kolondiéba circle, in the Sikasso region of
Southern Mali (see map).
Human Rights Watch interviewed over 150 people—including 41 children working in mining
areas (24 boys and 17 girls)—for this report. 1 Thirty-three of these children worked in gold
mining, and the other eight, among them seven girls, worked as child laborers in other
sectors such as childcare, domestic work, agriculture, or in small scale enterprises. Five of
the forty-one children were immigrants; two were from Burkina Faso, and three were from
Guinea. We also interviewed three young adults, ages eighteen and nineteen, two of whom
were working in a gold mine, and one as a sex worker at a mining site.
While the majority of the children interviewed lived with their parents, five lived with
relatives or other guardians, and seven were living on their own.
We also interviewed a wide range of other actors in mining areas, including parents and
guardians of child workers, adult miners, teachers and principals, health workers and health
experts, village chiefs, tombolomas (traditional mining chiefs), NGO activists, and sex
workers. In addition, Human Rights Watch researchers held meetings with gold traders in
mining areas and in Bamako, with representatives of UN agencies and donor governments.
We interviewed the Minister of Labor and Civil Service and his staff, as well as officials in the
Ministry of Mines, 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
also interviewed local government officials in Kéniéba and Kolondiéba circles.
1 Two local consultants carried out 16 of the 41 interviews with children. In this report, the word "child" refers to anyone
under the age of 18. The Convention on the Rights of the Child states, "For the purposes of the present Convention, a child
means every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained
earlier." Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted November 20, 1989, G.A. Res. 44/25, annex, 44 U.N. GAOR
Supp. (No. 49) at 167, U.N. Doc. A/44/49 (1989), entered into force September 2, 1990, ratified by Mali on September 20,
1990. When this report uses the term adolescents, it refers to older children.
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