Paper short abstract:

Participation in international peacekeeping operations has important consequences for domestic security of countries that sends troops and police officers. Yet, there is less scholarly attention on how peacekeeping experiences are incorporated into the fight against illegal mining in Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

Ghana may have successfully made a transition to multi-party politics and her role as a “peace-keeper” and “peace-maker” is well known. Yet internally, it is still struggling with a myriad of complex internal security challenges, especially the exploitation of gold by non-regulated small-scale miners (illegal mining), popularly known as galamsey, with grave social, economic, political, environmental and security consequences. Recent scholarship reveals that participation in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping has important consequences for domestic security of the countries that send troops and police officers such as Ghana. Considering the limited capacity and inability of local security actors to keep the peace and ensure security, the government has deployed a special taskforce codename Operation Vanguard, jointly comprising personnel of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) and the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), what is often referred to as “internal peacekeeping” or “peacekeeping at home” to deal with the galamsey issue. While deficiencies such as human rights abuses and perceived failure of operation vanguard are acknowledged and debated in the Ghanaian media, there is less scholarly attention on the extent to which international peacekeeping experiences are incorporated into such domestic security operations designed to fight against galamsey in Ghana. This study seeks to fill this gap by focusing on operation vanguard and the galamsey menace.