Women and Youth Can Stand Up to Mining Companies When United

Women and youth are able to marshal sufficient energy to counteract the power of mining companies when they come together, the Associate Executive Director of Wacam, Mrs Hannah Owusu-Koranteng, has stated.

“Community-women and youth are the backbones for the organisation if an organisation aspires to be sustained,” she said.

Mrs Owusu-Koranteng made the statement while addressing Wacam women and youth conference in a presentation on Mining and community rights—Role of women and youth” on Monday, September 6, 2021, at the GNAT Hall in Ejisu Abankro near Kumasi in the Ashanti Region.

The event was part of a three-day Wacam 6th Annual Conference dubbed: “Celebrating Wacam’s Mining Advocacy Achievements: The Role of Mining Communities.”     

It brought together Wacam community groups across the country who participated in the women and youth conference and also witnessed the elections of new women and youth executives.

According to her, women and the youth are weak as individuals and can, therefore, not match the resources of powerful multinational mining companies, adding that “Communities get mobilised to build strong organisations that work to protect their interest.” 

Mrs Owusu-Koranteng indicated that mining companies are always happy when they see their host communities divided and unorganised.

She noted that this paves way for mining companies to manipulate the people and have their way. 

“Industries can succeed in getting traditional institutions such as the chieftaincy institution and government regulators on their side.” In many rural areas in Ghana, communities are organised around their chiefs who play key roles in decision-making” 

"Once the traditional authority becomes part of the industries’ lobby, the communities, especially women and youth, lose their vital organisational tools and their defences crumble,” she said.

It is against the backdrop of the above that the Wacam associate executive stated that her organisation’s mining advocacy centres around mobilising mining communities around issues of critical concern.

This, she explained, is to build a strong organisation of mining communities that will defend their rights. 

“Mobilisation and organisation provide knowledge on rights thus mobilise around the fundamental human rights of people,” she said.
 
Touching on tools to use in mobilising community women and youth, she encouraged the user to resort to legal provisions in the 1992 Constitution such as the Public Order Act.

She also stated that conflicts can be used to rally women and youth in a community to achieve a positive result. 

“Conflicts are not always bad, sometimes out of the conflicts, emerge the opportunity for change. Learn to use conflict situations in a positive way to advance the course of the struggle against rights violations,” Mrs Owusu-Koranteng urged.

 Freeman Koryekpor Awlesu, Ejisu-Abankro, Ashanti Region