WILL ZAMBIA PROTECT CHILDREN FROM KABWE’S TOXIC LEGACY?
UN children’s rights experts session, should push for full mine cleanup
“JANET” is a 4-year-old girl from Kabwe in Zambia’s Central Province who suffers from frequent headaches.
She is unusually small for her age and often has difficul ty remembering things. Re cent blood tests have shown that she has extremely high lead levels in her blood, which would be consistent with her symptoms.
Her mother is both worried about her daughter’s long- term health as well as angry, and says she wants to fight against the now closed lead and zinc mine that has made her daughter sick.
Kabwe is the site of a mine and smelter that polluted the environment with extremely high levels of toxic lead from 1904 to 1994.
The mine was original ly owned by British colonial companies, including Anglo American, and later national ized by Zambia. It was closed in 1994, but the mine’s waste was never cleaned up, and even now, open waste dumps continue to pollute near by residential areas such as Kasanda, Chowa, and Makululu.
As a result, tens of thou sands of children in these ar eas are at acute risk of severe illness and have some of the highest blood lead levels in the world.
Medical researchers es timate that over 95 percent of children living near the former mine have elevated blood-lead levels, and about half of them have blood lead levels past a threshold requir ing urgent medical intervention.
The United Nations Com mittee on the Rights of the Child, an international expert body, will examine the state of children’s rights in Zambia on 23 and 24 May.
The Committee’s session is part of its country review sys tem, checking how well the Zambian government puts into practice its duties under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it has ratified.
We have spoken to Kabwe residents about the devastat ing impact of the contamina tion on people’s lives. Parents in Kabwe’s affected neighbor hoods have told us that they are scared about their chil dren’s health and feel helpless because there is little govern ment support.
Their fears are not unfounded. Some parents have found that their children have serious difficulties concen trating and retaining informa tion in school—memory loss and lack of concentration are typical symptoms for lead exposure.
Lead can also cause hearing loss, vision loss, high blood pressure, developmental de lays, and even coma, convul sions, and death. Children are especially at risk.
A group of teenagers and young adults in Kabwe has decided to speak out on the problem of lead pollution and formed a youth group to push for change.
Janet’s mother has joined the group. They work with Zambian civil society groups and the Catholic Church to advocate for a full clean-up and restoration of people’s rights. Several Kabwe resi dents have also joined a class action lawsuit in South Africa against Anglo American.
Children are suffering seri ous violations of their rights to health and to a healthy en vironment in Kabwe. We hope that the situation in Kabwe will be a priority in the UN Committee’s deliberations.
The Zambian government should develop a plan for a comprehensive clean-up of the former mine site to re move or contain the toxic mine and smelter waste.
As a first step, the govern ment should commission a technical plan and budget that lays out what successful remediation would look like for Kabwe.
In addition, all affected res idential areas in Kabwe need to be cleaned up, all children in need should have access to quality affordable treat ment for lead poisoning, and ongoing small-scale mining in lead-contaminated waste piles poses a serious health hazard and should be prohibited.
Finally, those who have suf fered adverse impacts on their rights should have access to a remedy, including compensation.
The government of Zambia, with a World Bank loan, is cur rently undertaking some ef forts to address the problem. The Zambia Mining and Envi ronmental Remediation and Improvement Project is test ing and treating children—in cluding Janet—and cleaning up a small number of homes, a school, and a highly pol luted canal. While these are important steps, they do not tackle the source of the con tamination, the mine waste it self. As long as the waste is not cleaned up, other measures are not sustainable, and any progress made will quickly be reversed.
A strong recommendation from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child toward comprehensive remediation of the mine waste could help protect the future of children in Kabwe—including Janet.