"‘Babies here are born sick’: are Bolivia’s gold mines poisoning its indigenous people?" 12 January 2022

...Bolivia has long been criticised for using mercury in small-scale gold mining, and growing evidence shows that mercury contamination is causing illnesses in poor communities. Mercury is used across the country, in mining projects in the cordilleras of the Andes and on dredgers extracting gold from the sediment at the bottom of waterways. The uncontrolled disposal of mercury waste creates toxic flows in Bolivia’s river systems...

...researchers have found fish to be heavily contaminated with mercury, and believe fish-based diets in mining areas are causing increased mercury levels in indigenous people. This could explain some of the illnesses in Eyiyo Quibo...

...a study by the International Pollutants Elimination Network (Ipen) to evaluate levels of mercury in people living near small mines in four Latin American countries....Published in June 2021 ...found that women from the Esse Ejja communities, the only participants not living near a mine, had by far the highest levels of mercury – on average almost eight times the accepted threshold...The results suggested a correlation between mercury in the body and fish consumed.

...In September, the UN special rapporteurs on toxics and human rights and on the rights of indigenous peoples, Dr Marcos Orellana and José Francisco Cali Tzay, submitted a letter to the Bolivian government calling out Bolivia’s inaction on the regulation, use, and trade of mercury, with a focus on small-scale gold mining...

Orellana’s main issue was the Bolivian government’s lack of engagement with the Minamata Convention on Mercury, an agreement of 128 countries to curb or eliminate almost all uses of mercury, including in small-scale gold mining, which came into force in 2017. Bolivia ratified the agreement in 2015, committing to develop and execute plans to reduce and control mercury markets and protect vulnerable populations from contamination.

...Orellana received a response from the attorney general of Bolivia. The letter highlighted state pilot programmes working with miners to promote new technologies to reduce mercury use, and reiterated the laws and Bolivian constitution that call for the protection of the rights and health of indigenous people. Importantly, the document referred to a two-year project to develop a national action plan to address mercury contamination under the Minamata agreement, and another to accelerate the meeting of the commitments of the convention through a multimillion-dollar regional project with its neighbours...

For now, the importation, sale, use and re-exportation of mercury in Bolivia remains uncontrolled and the Beni River continues to be poisoned by gold mining activity...