The Ghana Coalition Against Illegal Mining has delivered a searing call to President John Dramani Mahama to act with urgency and courage in halting what it calls an “ecocidal genocide” devastating Ghana’s land, water and people.
The coalition, representing a broad alliance of civil society organisations, presented its statement to the President during a meeting with CSOs at the Jubilee House on Friday, October 3, 2025. Their message was clear: the galamsey menace has gone beyond being an environmental problem; it has become a full-blown public health emergency, a human rights violation and a national security threat.
Drawing on hard scientific evidence, the group cited findings from the Mercury and Heavy Metals Impact Assessment conducted by Pure Earth and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), alongside testimony by the UN Special Rapporteur on Toxic Substances in 2023.
These reports, they said, provide “an irrefutable and alarming body of evidence” that Ghana is poisoning itself through unchecked illegal mining.
The assessment revealed mercury concentrations in Konongo Zongo soil at 56.40 ppm — more than 560 percent above the safety threshold. Arsenic contamination in the same community hit 10,060 ppm, exceeding permissible playground limits by over 400 times.
Even more alarming, water sources in Konongo Odumase contained arsenic levels 330 times above Ghana’s national limit. “This is a nation poisoning its own life-support systems,” the coalition stated.
The consequences are already visible in human lives. The coalition highlighted children diagnosed with kidney disorders, mercury pellets lodged in their bodies, and research linking hundreds of spontaneous abortions to placental contamination.
Mercury’s neurotoxic effects, they warned, are impairing the cognitive development of Ghanaian children — a generational loss that cannot be undone.
The devastation extends to agriculture and food systems. Over 1.2 million hectares of farmland have been destroyed, displacing more than half a million farmers and undermining food security. “From kontomire to tubers, the very crops we grow are becoming vectors of toxic metals,” the coalition warned.
Meanwhile, rivers across five regions — Central, Western, Eastern, Ashanti, and Western North — are contaminated, forcing water treatment plants to shut down or deliver unsafe water to millions of Ghanaians.
In the face of this crisis, the coalition demanded not more dialogue, but decisive action. They challenged President Mahama to present a concrete roadmap for ending galamsey, complete with clear benchmarks, timelines, and measurable outcomes.
Among their pressing demands were answers to four questions: What benchmarks will compel the President to declare a state of emergency? What progress has been made in prosecuting galamsey kingpins, including politically exposed persons identified in the Frimpong Boateng report?
When will the promised fast-track courts be established? And what performance indicators have been set for MMDCEs and police commanders in galamsey endemic areas — and what penalties exist for failure?
The coalition further urged the President to provide protection for anti-galamsey activists facing persecution, confiscate and reclaim lands destroyed by illegal mining, and investigate chiefs complicit in the practice.
They also called for an end to the mass deportation of foreign suspects, insisting that offenders be tried in Ghana under the country’s mining laws.
On transparency, the group pressed for daily publication of water quality data, monthly reports on rivers and forests, and quarterly studies on food safety in mining-affected areas.
They proposed a monitoring and accountability committee, with civil society participation, to oversee the execution of these measures.
Warning against the lure of short-term economic benefits, the coalition stressed that the long-term damage to health, food, and forests outweighs any perceived gains.
“We either deal with this menace or we perish. Without clean water, air and sustainable forests, we are done as a people,” the statement declared.
The coalition told President Mahama: “Not to act decisively and energetically to bring this atrocity to an end is to be complicit in this wilful ecocidal genocide of monumental proportion. History, we dare say, will judge you — and this entire present generation — harshly if we allow this opportunity to restore a wholesome environment to pass us by.”
