How A Gold Mine Has Brought Only Misery In Liberia

The maths was merciless. Siah* had the equivalent of $5 in her pocket but needed $15 to treat her youngest son Joseph’s malaria.

- Emmanuel Freudenthal & Alloycious David

She had travelled an hour to the nearest clinic only to discover she couldn’t afford the medicine. Joseph died that day, as she cradled him in her arms.

Siah lives in Kinjor, a small town in the lush forests of western Liberia. Just a few steps from her home, Liberia’s largest commercial gold mine, New Liberty Gold, plans to dig out $1 billion-worth of the precious metal.

The Liberian government and its multilateral funding partners see commercial mining as a path to development in a country still recovering from the impact of 11 years of civil war.

Under the law, communities are obliged to give up their land rights and move, in return for compensation. But IRIN’s months-long investigation can reveal that financial reward isn’t always forthcoming from the foreign mining operations.

To make way for New Liberty Gold, 325 families in two villages, Kinjor and Larjor, had to abandon their homes, farms, and artisanal mines that had provided some income. In return for their move to a new village, also named Kinjor, and carved out of the forest near the mine, the company promised to make life better: new houses, a school, hand pumps – and what could have made all the difference to Joseph – a clinic.

Construction began on the mine in 2014, and the first gold sales came a year later. Even though the company describes the operation as a “key asset”, the promised better amenities are yet to materialise years later, and there has already been one major chemical spill that has polluted the environment.

New Liberty Gold has the backing of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), which since 2014 invested $19 million and became a key shareholder. That support was predicated on a 155-page Resettlement Action Plan by the company, which listed its planned $3.9 million investments in the new Kinjor.