Women's Voices

Female Empowerment for a Mercury-free Colombia

By planetGOLD

September 29^th, 2020

A mountain of stones on the Maravelez trail, a site located in the upper part of the municipality of Suárez in the department of Cauca, southern Colombia. This is the meeting place for several women who are waiting for a miner from the pit who gives them, by mutual agreement, two to four wheelbarrows loaded with rocks. The joy of the women turns into a commotion when the man swiftly turns over a wheelbarrow and drops its contents into that grayish heap.

The women begin to select from the rocks: they wash them, weigh them in their hands, look at them. Some even smell them. They use tools like the almocafre (a kind of hoe) to separate the material. They take a hammer and hit the rock until it becomes the desired shape, weight, and color. There, the precious mineral that sustains their lives is vaguely discovered. They collect their selected items and deposit them in buckets, sacks, or tows – as they are called in some areas of Colombia – to obtain three or four bundles per week.

In Colombia, women who carry out this activity call themselves mineral selectors or chatarreras, while in Ecuador they identify themselves as jancheras and in Peru they are known colloquially as pallaqueras. (1)

Sénides Lucumí Mina is a mineral selector in Colombia. A native of Suárez, Cauca, she has known about artisanal mining since she was 10 years old and describes it as her life:

"I am a proud miner, first because it is something I saw my parents practice and I like it, but also because it is the source of income for my household."

Once the bundles are collected, Sénides transports them on horseback, on traditional buses known as chivas, or in the small traditional cars of her region for 4,000 Colombian pesos (USD $1.50). She arrives at the ore processing center and asks the owner of the site for permission to process her selected rocks. The objective is that, after about four or five hours of crushing, washing, and processing them in ball mills at the plant, at least one or two grams of gold can be obtained. If she is lucky, she may get more.

Taking into account that she carries out an informal activity and that the sale of her material will depend on her negotiating capacity, Sénides will be able to sell her gold – but for a value even 40% lower than the international price. (2)

According to the Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy, 70% of women in San Roque (Antioquia) are dedicated to subsistence mining and 57% of them earn between half and one minimum wage (the minimum wage in Colombia is 877,803 pesos, or $268 USD, per month). Meanwhile, 72% of male subsistence miners in this municipality are paid more than one minimum wage. (3)

In addition, many of the women work in artisanal mining intermittently, dividing their time between domestic and care work, to which they invest 25 hours per week compared to the 5 hours spent by men on such work. (4)

This wide gender gap is also evident in women's access to employment in small-scale mining where, generally, many of them – like Sénides – must dedicate themselves to jobs such as mineral selection (selection of ore), gold panning or other independent, informal jobs with no social service coverage. (5)

Impacts of mercury on women in artisanal mining

One of the main sources of mercury emissions into the environment is artisanal and small-scale mining activity, representing about 35% of total mercury releases in the world. The men and women involved in this activity use mercury to form an amalgam with the ore that has gold in it, which is subsequently melted at high temperatures. In this process, the gold is separated out and the mercury is discarded into the soil, streams, or rivers.

When the amalgam is melted, mercury particles remain in the air and are then inhaled and absorbed into the lungs and skin, not only of the miners but also of infants, young people, adults, and elderly populations found in the communities near these activities.

Many of the women working in artisanal mining are of childbearing age – that is, they are between the ages of 15 and 49. (6) Pregnant women are more vulnerable and at greater risk of exposure to mercury because if they become contaminated with this toxic element, it can pass through the placenta to the fetus causing damage to the proper development of the neurological system. (7)

These vulnerabilities are among the fears of many women when they hear about the dangers of mercury use. When Sénides is asked to draw a picture about the use of mercury, she draws the figure of herself with a pan, the gold, and an illustration of the quicksilver as dark spots that change the expression on her face to a look of terror.

Drawing by Sénides Lucumí Mina about the impacts of mercury in her life. Empowerment Event for Women Miners. Cauca, 2020.

"I am a miner because it is something that is in my blood. It has been my family's tradition and it has become my life. I want the mining of my ancestors to be recovered, a clean mining, free of the mercury that has hurt our rivers, our land, and our own lives so much." – Sénides

Mercury is a chemical product that is obtained after cinnabar ore, of natural origin, is subjected to high temperatures and concentrations that give way to the silvery liquid that in some regions is also known as quicksilver. This toxic element, which has been used in various products such as old thermometers, fluorescent lamps, switches, batteries and dental amalgams, was the focus of the 2017 Minamata Convention on Mercury, an international treaty to protect human health and the environment from mercury.

In accordance with this Convention and in order to facilitate strategies that help improve the living conditions of small-scale miners, the Global Environment Facility-funded planetGOLD programme is currently underway in the following countries: Burkina Faso, Kenya, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mongolia, Guyana, Ecuador, Peru and Colombia. In the latter, the initiative is implemented by the United Nations Development Programme; it is executed with the Ministry of Mines and Energy, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and Social Protection and the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development.

Toward a mercury-free Colombia

In July 2018, Colombia officially banned the use of mercury in gold mining. A year later, the government ratified the Minamata Convention, affirming Colombia's commitment to regulating emissions and releases of mercury, and addressing its threats.

A decade away from meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and transforming the world, the planetGOLD project in Colombia will implement actions over the next four years aimed at overcoming several of the main challenges related to the environment, human health, and gender equality – supporting miners with technical assistance, technology transfer, public-private partnerships, access to financing for clean technologies, awareness raising, and communication strategies on the dangers of mercury use. All while integrating the gender dimension and a differentiated approach so that women like Sénides can be part of the collective task of achieving a mercury-free Colombia.

Learn more about the planetGOLD Colombia project

(1) Also known in some regions of Latin America as cocos, chanchas, molinos de bolas or quimbaletes(2) Minería informal aurífera en Colombia, Fededesarrollo, BID; February 2014 (3) Mining census conducted in the municipality of San Roque in the department of Antioquia. According to recent data, the municipality has a population of 17,958 inhabitants and the census was based on this figure. Document reference: Gender Guidelines for the Mining and Energy Sector (4) Lineamientos de género para el sector minero energéticos, Colombia Ministry of Mines and Energy, March 2020 (5) Alliance for Responsible Mining, 2018, cited by Colombian Ministry of Mines and Energy, 2020 (6) Política nacional de sexualidad y derechos sexuales y derechos reproductivos, Colombia Ministry of Health, 2012 (7) Mercury in women of child bearing -age in 25 countries, Global Report, BRI & IPEN, September 2017