The Human Cost of Gold | National Geographic Magazine: Illegal mining – 25 percent of the world’s gold | Child Labor | Ghana

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Illegal mining – 25 percent of the world’s gold | Child Labor | Ghana

Manpower at an improvised mine in Ghana includes a 13-year-old boy put to work sluicing for gold. Large mining firms control just 4 percent of Ghana’s territory, but a land grab by those firms evicted thousands of villagers from their homes, forcing many to survive by poaching gold. Illegal mining produces 25 percent of the world’s gold.

These Galamsay (illegal) miners in village of Dunkwa is where this 13-year-old child has to stand on a submerged log in water washing out mine tailings to sift gold.