How (Un)safe Is ASM? Counting and Contextualizing Fatality Frequency Rates
Excerpt from the 2020 State of the Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Sector
Focus Area: Improve Occupational Health and Safety
Case Study: How (Un)safe Is ASM? Counting and Contextualizing Fatality Frequency Rates
In February 2020, one of America’s largest newspapers, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), ran the article “Many Miners Die, and It Never Shows Up in Safety Data” (Macdonald and Pokharel 2020). Citing the Delve 2019 ASM employment figure of 40 million people (World Bank, 2019), the exposé highlighted the “widely acknowledged” issue of underreporting of accidents in ASM (ILO 1999a, p13). The authors report that in India the official death toll from mining in 2018 was 120 people but could reach as many as 20,000, and in DRC unofficial figures suggest up to 2,000 artisanal and small-scale miners die each year. But while these numbers are stark and highlight the challenges of reliable data and reporting, the scale and drivers of the health and safety issues in ASM remain unclear. As rightly pointed to in the WSJ article, the “lack of data” and underreporting of incidents “distorts mining’s safety record and makes it harder to detect and improve potential hazards” (Macdonald and Pokharel 2020, 1).
Additional Info
- Author(s)
- J McQuilken, D McFarlane
- Publication Year
- 2021
- Associated Partners
- Pact
- Language
- English
- Publishing Institution Webpage
- https://www.delvedatabase.org
- Data Source Classification
- Global Report
- Research Type
- Both
- Research Methodology
- Primary - OBSERVATION, Secondary - PREVIOUS RESEARCH, Secondary - OFFICIAL STATISTICS
- Thematic Tags
- Political, Formalization, Governance, Economic, Market Linkages, Social, Community, Employment, Health and Safety, Human Rights, Labor and Working Conditions, Livelihoods, 2020 State of Sector
- Last Updated
- July 1, 2021