A miner works in a new pit, about 20 feet deep, that he and his team have been digging for the past two weeks in Burkina Faso in 2012. When they strike a vein of gold, they make a tunnel. Matjaz Krivic …  Arzuma, from the village of Faman, pulls a bag full of stones from a hole 65 feet deep in July 2014. “Here the ground is solid, but sometimes the earth is very fragile. Cracks appear in the hole and that’s scary,” he said. Matjaz Krivic …  Girls, some as young as 8 years old, carry the ore from the top of the mountain in July 2014. Mr. Krivic said each girl carries a load weighing around 55 pounds for around a mile and half, down about 1,000 feet to the temporary working village of Djuga. Matjaz Krivic …  Children work mining gold in Burkina Faso. Thousands of young people live and work on these sites, many never attending school. Matjaz Krivic …  Nuru Haruna, 13, who works at the pulverizing machine, pictured in July 2014. He has never been to school. “Everything me and my brother earn, we take home to our parents," he said. Matjaz Krivic …  Sempore Haruna, bottom left, and Isa Boukare, top left in blue, lead a group of miners in a midday lunch in July 2014. Typically, lunch consists of rice with some oil and a bit of fish, eaten by hand from a communal cooking pot. Matjaz Krivic …  Miners handle mercury with their bare hands to extract gold from surrounding materials. Matjaz Krivic …  Abdul Haruna, 14, is one of hundreds of children working at the Djuga mines in Burkina Faso. Abdul uses the water to wash off the dust after a long day in July. Matjaz Krivic …  Yakuba is lowered into a mine to look for gold. Miners are sent spelunking into pits as many as 20 stories deep, many of them the width of a manhole, in hopes of finding gold. Matjaz Krivic …  Nobila Siogo crushes rocks at his hut in the processing camp at Djuga in January. He works in a 100-yard-deep pit digging ore three days a week; the other days, he works in a camp crushing and grinding rocks. Matjaz Krivic …  Nuru, 13, and Kongo, 15, who have been working since sunrise, lie down to sleep in the dirt beside the hole where they work. They share just one blanket and lie close to each other to keep warm during the night. Matjaz Krivic …  A group of young girls return home to Boure village after a long day of working at Djuga site in January. In the morning, they will return for another day of work. Matjaz Krivic …  In Africa, Child Miners Must Dig Deeper to Find Gold—Photos
Photographer Matjaž Krivic has documented the daily labor of youth gold miners in Bani, Burkina Faso for the past three years