In a bid to protect vulnerable mining communities from environmental destruction and rights violations, a team of women and youth leaders across the mining regions in Ghana have been empowered as frontline paralegals to demand accountability and equitable benefits from mining companies in their localities.
The three-day intensive paralegal training workshop organized by Wacam, an advocacy organization in collaboration with A Rocha Ghana and Nature and Development Foundation, aims to equip community leaders with basic legal knowledge and skills to identify and address instances of injustice and abuse. It also aims to strengthen community leaders’ knowledge base, enabling them to serve as focal persons, providing legal advice and assistance to their community members.
Held at the Tyco City Hotel in Sunyani, the paralegal workshop funded by the European Union (EU) under the Building Resilient and Active Communities in Extractive Landscapes in Ghana (BRACE) project, forms part of efforts to ensure that communities affected by mining are no longer left powerless in the face of environmental degradation, displacement and social injustice. According to Wacam, mining communities must no longer suffer in silence while their lands, water bodies and livelihoods are sacrificed to irresponsible mining.
Mr. Kwaku Afari, Technical Director of Wacam and Mr. Augustine Niber of the Centre for Public Interest Law (CEPIL) took the participants through key provisions of Ghana’s legal framework governing mining, as well as human, economic, social and cultural rights especially under Ghana’s Constitution.
Article 36(9) of the 1992 Constitution obliges the State to safeguard the national environment for present and future generations, while Article 41(k) places a duty on every citizen to protect and preserve the environment. The Minerals and Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703), as amended, also provides for compensation to landowners and lawful occupants for disturbances to surface rights and requires mining companies to comply with environmental and social obligations. However, the facilitators noted that the enforcement gap and limited awareness at the community level often weaken the effectiveness of these legal rights and protections.
It is against this backdrop that the workshop is designed to focus on equipping participants with practical legal tools to identify, document and address injustices associated with mineral exploitation.
Ghana is richly endowed with minerals including gold, manganese, bauxite, lithium, diamond, limestone, silica and salt. However, the proliferation of illegal mining, also known as galamsey, alongside large-scale operations by companies such as Gold Fields Ghana Limited, Newmont Goldcorp, Ghana Manganese Company and AngloGold Iduapriem Mine has further increased environmental destruction and heightened suffering within affected communities.
Host communities often bear the brunt of polluted rivers, degraded farmlands, cracked buildings from blasting activities, negative social impacts and the erosion of traditional livelihoods.
Wacam and its partners are of the view that “human dignity has been frequently sacrificed in the pursuit of mineral wealth, with rural communities lacking the technical and legal capacity to effectively engage mining corporations or challenge the various violations”. It is their expectation that the new paralegal initiative will enable community groups to monitor, document, and report on rights violations and environmental injustices in their communities, promoting informed advocacy and action, and by extension - organising community engagement and pursuing alternative dispute resolution where necessary.
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