“In Congo’s mines, pregnant women and children are living dangerously”
Published by The Conversation on September 27, 2021
By: Valentin Migabo, affiliate researcher at the Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at McGill University
Migabo discusses the deleterious labor conditions encountered by women, including pregnant women and children who work in the gold mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to Migabo, despite the advances of the 2018 mining legislation, which prohibits pregnant women and children under the age of 18 from working in the mines, they continue to operate in resource extraction. Women and girls are disproportionately vulnerable to wage theft, mercury poisoning, and sexual exploitation.