Zimbabwe is richly endowed with vast deposits of minerals with her economy and citizens’ livelihoods dependent on natural resources. However, the dividends of these productive assets are yet to be reaped by the public due to poor governance, lack of transparency in the sector, elite capture and politicization of economic opportunities in the mining sector, corruption and the limited public participation in environmental decision-making in this sector. To respond to this challenge, the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) is implementing a project with the support of Norwegian People’s Aid which seeks to promote a gender inclusive mining sector where economically independent women in mining communities have decent work, resource ownership with access to markets while promoting their effective participation in decision-making processes along mining value chains.

As part of the project, from the 19^th– 20^th of May 2021, ZELA managed to capacitate women miners on how they can implement responsible mining supply chains through adopting the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Due Diligence Guidelines on Responsible Mineral Supply Chains. The participants were drawn from Bubi, Filabusi, Plumtree, Kadoma, Zvishavane, Gweru and Kwekwe. The OECD five steps frameworks which women were capacitated on include, establishing strong business management systems, identifying, and assessing risks in the supply chain, designing, and implementing a strategy to respond to identified risks, carrying out independent third-party audit of supply chain due diligence and reporting annually on supply chain due diligence. OECD is an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives.

Whilst the women miners are doing better in terms of the first two steps through proper record keeping, observing environmental and labour rights, providing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to employees and remitting taxes to government including local authorities, they however foresee challenges implementing the other three steps related to the operational context. They cited the rising levels of criminality in the sector, proliferation of illegal gold buyers, unresolved mine claim disputes, farmer-miner conflicts, and corruption as hindrances to implementation of the OECD five Step Framework.

The discussions over the two days revealed challenges that may hinder the full implementation of the five-step framework. For instance:

• Women are still concentrated in the unsafe, largely informal, and lowest paying jobs along mining value chains resulting in the women being trapped in a financial poverty trap.
  • For instance, in the gold value chain, women process gold by handling mercury with their bare hands. They get two or three points a day which amounts to US$3-US$8 maximum depending on remoteness of location. They also mainly conduct panning along riverbeds for the same amount.  Women also carry water up the hill in places where the gold mining occurs in mountains and get paid US$1 for carrying five twenty-five litre containers uphill on their heads.
  • In the quarry mines, women work as crushers where they cut stones using 14-pound hammers with no screening and sell to those with machinery at a very low price- USD$2 per wheelbarrow and those with actual crushers simply crush and sell higher price. The crushers face risk of contracting silicosis and having nervous system complications, some of the women have visible scars on their bodies due to cuts from the ore chips and they risk getting eye problems as chips also get into their eyes. Young children often accompany their mothers to these work sites, and they are also exposed to health risks.
  • In the chrome value chain, women hand pick ‘fines’ from the rubble of large-scale miners and carry or using sacks to chrome wash plants.
• In most instances where their mining claims are in remote locations, women have no real access to real markets, and they largely end up selling gold to middle-men.
• Criminality and violence in the sector, sometimes perpetuated by machete wielding gangs forces the women to quickly dispose of ore at a lesser price as they cannot risk ferrying it to urban centres where they can fetch better prices.
• The handling of mercury is linked to health problems like neurological and behavioural disorders such as tremors, emotional instability, insomnia, memory loss, neuromuscular changes, and headaches. Mercury can also harm the kidneys and thyroid. High exposures also lead to deaths.

 The women miners proffered solutions as to how work in the mining sector can be made safer for them whilst increasing access to decent work for them as players in the mining sector. The work culture in the gold mining sector is based on gender stereotypes and cultural practices that inhibit women from escaping exploitation and there is a need to demystify these stereotypes and cultural practices.  The women miners reiterated the calls for formalization of the artisanal mining sector in the ongoing Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill legislative reforms.  This should be coupled with extensive awareness raising targeted at the women themselves on how to register claims and acquire mining licences and permits. The women vowed to design a decent work for women in the mining sector campaign with the support of civil society actors in line with Sustainable Development Goal Number Goal 8 that obligates governments to, “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”.

Overrally, the training session revealed that to end exploitative working conditions that women are being subjected to along mining value chains it is fundamental to improve access to secure land tenure for women.  They need to be trained on how they can also own land coupled with gender sensitive financial inclusion policies at financing institutions like banks. A candid assessment of why grassroots women fail to benefit from various loan schemes being offered for instance by the Women’s Empowerment Bank, Fidelity Printers, among others. There is also needed to reserve ASM to Zimbabwean citizens and set aside some land for Exclusive Prospecting Orders for women especially in the less labour-intensive gemstone mining sector. The gemstone mining must be coupled with polishing skills training so that raw gemstones are not exported. More direct employment for women in large scale mining sector can be enhanced if government prohibits export of raw minerals and enforces value addition/beneficiation in Zimbabwe. The women miners hope that since the government signed the Minamata Convention on ending the use of mercury there will be an extensive campaign raising awareness on harmful effects of mercury and migration to safer methods of ore extraction.