Arjun Ishaan & Rakshita Khandelwal | April 17, 2026
For thousands of years, gold has symbolized wealth, prestige, and stability, especially during times of global economic uncertainty. In 2025, gold’s market value reached record highs, so one could reasonably expect it to bring economic stability and prosperity to the regions that produce it. However, that has not been the case in the Sahel region of West Africa. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger collectively produce 230 tons of gold each year, yet that same gold has become a driver of conflict. As the price of gold rises, so too does competition over mining sites, contributing to economic fragility. Instead of generating prosperity, the region’s gold industry funds foreign mercenaries and military juntas and perpetuates human rights abuses.
This analysis explores the dark side of the gold trade in the Sahel region, explains how it violates international principles, and suggests ways to break this vicious cycle of “gold and blood.”
The Gold Trade in West Africa: A Double-Edged Sword
Gold in the Sahel region has fuelled instability rather than development. Given the region’s immense production, gold could serve as a vital source of revenue for poor local communities. Instead, it has become intertwined with coups and terrorism funding as a result of weak governance and porous borders, because these conditions allow the wealth generated by gold to be diverted from the region itself to military juntas and armed groups. Furthermore, According to a 2023 UN Report, most of the gold mines in the region are artisanal, meaning these sites are smaller in scale, unorganized, and lack government oversight, which makes them ripe for competition between local military governments and foreign terrorist organizations seeking control. This conflict leads to the governments and terrorist organisations imposing exploitative measures on miners in order to dominate trade routes and fund terrorist campaigns.
The governments in these regions have exacerbated the problem by cutting shady deals for these mines with foreign mercenary groups, such as the Africa Corps, a proxy of Russia, who took over for the Wagner Group, in exchange for security assurances. These deals often come with bloodshed, mass killings, and forced unpaid labour to maximise profits for armed groups. Through proxy groups such as the Africa Corps, Russia has laundered exorbitant amounts of money to fund the war in Ukraine. Recently, Mali’s military leader laid the foundation for a gold refinery in which the Russian Conglomerate, the Yadran Group, owns a minority stake.
Additionally, once the gold slips across unsecured and weakly monitored borders into Ghana and Togo, it becomes indistinguishable from legally mined gold. This allows the gold to bypass safeguards such as place of origin (where the gold was mined and from which country it came from), labour protections, and revenue scrutiny that are meant to ensure mining benefits local communities before it reaches global gold hubs such as the UK and the UAE. While the London Bullion Market Association nominally requires gold refiners, who purify raw mined gold into a tradable commodity, to comply with guidelines related to due diligence, responsible sourcing, and human rights compliance, the lack of any legally binding compliance verification and traceability requirements leads to patchy enforcement, which ultimately makes the source of gold untraceable.
In short, rising gold revenues that could have funded development are instead currently being used to finance armed actors and foreign interests while making the region more dependent on armed groups to control and profit from its resources, reflecting corruption and wealth monopolization. Simultaneously, rising gold prices in the Sahal region have brought violence and forced labour to local impoverished communities.
Violation of International Law and Principles.
The Sahel’s gold trade has become a legal crisis that violates some of the basic principles of international law.
First, under International Humanitarian Law, the right to self-determination, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is undermined when indigenous people are deprived of control over their natural resources. In other words, when indigenous communities are excluded from decisions over mining and resource exploitation, their right to freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development is infringed upon, as they lose control over resources that are used for their economic independence and social development. The wealth acquired through gold trade is captured by juntas, foreign mercenaries, and jihadist groups instead of benefiting the local population.
Second, the interference of mercenary groups such as Wagner and Africa Corps directly breaches international law. The UN Mercenary Convention (1989) prohibits recruitment or financing of mercenary groups and obliges states to prosecute offenders, reflecting a clear international consensus against mercenaries. Moreover, while Article 23 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights doesn’t explicitly mention mercenaries, it guarantees the right to peace and security and mercenaries’ involvement in violence and exploitation directly violates the Charter’s principles. Similarly, OAU/African Union Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa (1977) defines mercenaryism as a crime against the peace of Africa, and requires state action to suppress it.
Third, under Article 7 of the ICESCR and Article 15 of the African Charter, workers are entitled to fair wages, healthy working conditions and dignity. However, over the years, stagnant wages and deplorable health conditions for miners in the Sahel region have been in clear violation of these guarantees.
Finally, Principal 17 of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights casts a duty on the companies to maintain human rights due diligence, including traceability and conflict risk assessments. It is mandatory for corporations to trace the origin of gold and ensure compliance with human rights obligations. Negligence enables conflict financing and infusing ‘blood gold’ into global markets without accountability. When corporations fail to trace the supply chains sourcing, they enable conflict financing and allow gold to enter global markets without accountability.
The Way Forward
Gold has escaped a strict international regulatory regime such as mandatory traceability requirements, independent third-party audits, and enforcement mechanisms. To avert a ‘blood gold’ crisis, the international community must enforce binding regulations, enforcing corporate accountability under the UN Guiding Principles, and regional oversight mechanisms. This can be addressed by introducing a Kimberley style certification scheme, a ‘Fair Gold’ labelling system, stricter enforcement of the UN Guiding Principles and a regional Sahel Gold Commission.
The crisis surrounding Sahel Gold parallels the Blood Diamonds Crisis which impacted countries like Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sierra Leone where diamonds mined in conflict zones were similarly used to finance violence, coups, and human rights violations. In response to the crisis, diamonds are now regulated under the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. The Kimberley Process required mandatory certification of origin and third-party monitoring, and now includes all major diamond exporting and importing states. As a result of the Kimberley Process, the trade of blood diamonds has been reduced from 15% of the global diamond trade to less than half-a-percent. A comparable framework for gold, backed by the African Union, or strict application of LBMA, could significantly curb smuggling of gold and political financing of conflicts in the Sahel region.
Another method of certifying gold could look something like the introduction of a ‘Fair Gold’ labelling system, similar to Fairtrade coffee. In practice, this would require independently audited standards, covering conflict-free sourcing and fair wages for miners, and compulsory disclosure in the luxury market which would generate consumer driven accountability. Labelling could help enforce mandated fair pricing, minimum wages, environmental accountability and traceability as it has in the case of fairtrade coffee. Certification would be visible to customers on the label, ensuring that refiners comply with ethical standards, reducing the flow of ‘blood gold’ into international markets.
Applying the UN Mercenary Conventions would authorize the states to punish the recruiter and financers of Wagner by sanctioning them and restricting its operations. Until now, it has failed due to weak enforcement, political reluctance and the protection these groups receive from states. This can be used to hold them accountable, stop the unauthorized gold trade, and reduce forced labour of inhabitants of the Sahel, thereby breaking the vicious cycle between gold, juntas and mercenaries
Properly invoking the UN Guiding Principles, which rests on three pillars: the state’s duty to protect rights companies to conduct human rights due diligence and the need to ensure accessibility to remedies for victims of abuses, will be essential for any reform to work since it will ensure compliance with the new regulations. Currently, weak domestic laws limit compliance with international obligations. But real enforcement can only occur through binding legislation, mandatory audits, and penalties for non-disclosure. Corporations in the gold business must be required to trace the gold back to its source and publicly disclose information related to the country of origin, labour conditions at the mining site, conflict risk assessments, and third-party audit reports. Finally, creating a ‘Sahel Gold Commission’ to monitor and formalise the artisanal and small-scale mining nature of gold industries would solve these problems. It could function like a regional mining regulator, such as the bodies that manage diamond trade, by registering miners, overseeing exports and ensuring profits obtained from the gold trade fund local development. This would monitor compliance and enable sanctions for proper enforcement.
Conclusion:
Gold’s sparkle results in a harsh reality of exploitation, forced labour, and violations of international law. In most countries, gold is seen as an asset that is immune to turbulence, yet behind this shiny facade lies a grim reality. In West Africa, gold has become a symbol of mercenaries, military dictatorships and terror networks, stripping citizens of the rightful wealth of their nation. To resolve another ‘diamond crisis’, the international community needs to act by introducing regulatory frameworks, enforcing corporate accountability under UN Guiding Principles (which mandates businesses to prevent and address human rights abuses), and chalking an oversight mechanism such as the Sahel Gold Commission. Through unified action by combining mandatory certification, transparency and enforcing international norms, gold can be transformed from a symbol of war into a source of development and dignity for the people of the Sahel.
Arjun Ishaan and Rakshita Khandelwal are law students with a shared interest in international law, intellectual property law, and constitutional law. Their work focuses on regulatory developments, rights-based frameworks, and emerging legal challenges across these areas.