The Wassa Association of Communities Affected by Mining (WACAM) has called for the inclusion and effective participation of women in policy development and implementation in mining communities.
Mrs Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, the Associate Executive Director of WACAM, who made the call, said women were more vulnerable in mining communities, hence the need for their active participation in developing regulatory frameworks to protect their wellbeing and that of the children.
Speaking at the 2024 International Women’s Day celebration at Bibiani in the Western North Region, she said it was sad that no concrete provisions had been made in regulatory frameworks in the mining sector to protect women.
The programme was organised by SOKODEVI- Ghana, a non-profit organisation, in partnership with A Rocha Ghana and the Friedrick-Ebert-Stiftung (FES).
It aims to discuss and advance women inclusive safeguarding for sustainable environment and mineral governance.
Some of the topics discussed were how to address women vulnerabilities to unregulated mining in Ghana, the role of stakeholders, livelihood sustainability and environmental nexus: exploring strategies for mitigating vulnerabilities and enhancing environmental safeguards.
Mrs Owusu-Koranteng said it was an undeniable fact that the challenges that women faced in the mining communities were vastly different from the challenges of men.
It was, therefore, important that the need for women to be included in such discussions to address their challenges was elucidated.
On the regulatory structures on mining, Mrs Owusu Koranteng pointed out that Ghana had a very weak framework and stressed the need to strengthen measures to back those regulations.
“You see, people acquire licenses but when it comes to respecting the rights of citizens and respecting the rights of laws, they do not do so and go about harassing community people instead of negotiating and paying compensation,” she said.
“The regulators are not on top of their businesses, if they had been up to their task, we would not have such huge environmental issues in the country.”
Mrs Owusu-Koranteng said it was, therefore, important that citizens understood issues on mining laws and regulations to help them to demand proper accountability from the state.
Ms Martha Mensah, the Lead, SOKODEVI Together Project, said looking at mining communities the organisation operated in, galamsey had had a negative impact, particularly on women.
“Water bodies have been destroyed, cocoa farms have been cut down for illegal mining activities and the repercussions have been that women have to walk long distances to get water.”
The other thing was the prevalence of diseases with some women giving birth to abnormal babies, she said.
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