The government of the Philippines has not done nearly enough to protect children from the hazards of child labor in small-scale gold mining. Although the government has ratified treaties and enacted laws to combat the worst forms of child labor, it has largely failed to implement them: the government barely monitors child labor in mining and does not penalize employers or withdraw children from these dangerous work environments.
While the government has taken some important steps to ensure education for all, the number of out-of-school children working in gold mines remains a concern. Mining and environmental regulations for small-scale mines—including a March 2015 ban on mercury use and underwater mining—have gone unenforced, despite the government’s promise to reduce mercury and to make mining beneficial for the population.
Furthermore, while the Philippines has signed the 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury, it has not yet ratified the treaty.
The government’s lack of concrete action reflects not only insufficient staff and technical capacity, but also a lack of political will by national and local officials to take measures that will not be well-received by the local population in impoverished areas, or by mine owners and traders that rely on child labor.
The government should improve child labor monitoring and child protection systems, and do more to reach those who have dropped out of school. It should ensure that its programs to address the ill-effects of poverty, such as free school meals and social support programs, are reaching families in mining areas, who frequently depend on the labor of children for survival.
With regard to mining, the government should support the creation of a legal, regulated, child-labor-free, small-scale gold mining sector that helps rural families thrive. It should also ratify and implement the Minamata Convention, notably by introducing mercury-free processing methods and taking special steps to protect children from mercury.
Others, too, should act to end child labor in this sector. The country’s central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, buys gold from local traders and exports it, but has no process in place to check the conditions in which the gold has been mined. The central bank, as well as international gold trading and refining companies, should put in place robust safeguards to trace the gold back to the mines of origin, oblige their suppliers to source only child-labor-free gold, and monitor child labor.