Kabwe, around 150 kilometres (95 miles) north of the capital Lusaka, is known as one of the world's most polluted places from decades of lead and zinc mining.
More than 30 years after the mine's closure in 1994, residents are still exposed to extreme levels of toxic lead, found in the soil and dust around their homes, schools and roads.
Yet the government is still "facilitating hazardous mining and processing" in the area, HRW said in a 67-page report, citing licenses issued to South African, Chinese and local businesses.
It urged the government to revoke their permits and clean up the notorious pollution hazard.
Zambia's government did not respond to AFP's request for comment.
HRW said it interviewed residents and miners, conducted open-source research and analysed geo-spatial data.
"Companies are profiting in Kabwe from mining, removing, and processing lead waste at the expense of children's health," HRW's children's rights director Juliane Kippenberg said in the statement.
Highly-sought for industry, lead is nevertheless a particularly toxic metal that can cause severe health problems including brain damage and death, particularly in children, according to the World Health Organization.
More than 95 percent of children living near the Kabwe mine had elevated blood lead levels with about half requiring urgent treatment, the HRW report said.
- 'Sacrifice zone' -
Highly toxic waste had also been transported to various locations across the city, forming unfenced "piles of dark, sandy material, several metres high", the report said.
This had exposed up to 200,000 people in Kabwe to pollution, HRW said.
The concentration of lead in the soil had reached 60,000 milligrams per kilogram, according to the report, 300 times the threshold considered a hazard by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
In 2022, a UN expert listed Kabwe as being among so-called "sacrifice zones" where pollution and resultant health issues were the norm for nearby communities.
"The Zambian government should be protecting people from highly hazardous activities, not enabling them," said Kippenberg.
The Kabwe mine was part of mining company Anglo American from 1925 to 1974, during which experts say two-thirds of the lead currently in the local environment was likely to have been deposited.
It was then run by the Zambian government when the mining industry was nationalised, until its closure in 1994.
New Delhi vows to flatten monster garbage pile in Indian capital
New Delhi (AFP) Mar 5, 2025 -
India's capital New Delhi has vowed to clear one of its largest trash piles by next year as part of a plan to eradicate unsightly landfills dotting the megacity's skyline.
Around 32 million people live in greater Delhi, where a slipshod approach to waste management has left numerous landfills with garbage piled up to 60 metres (200 feet) high and visible from miles away.
Regular spot fires during the capital's long and intense summer see the trash mounds turn into toxic conflagrations spilling dangerous chemical fumes into nearby neighbourhoods.
Delhi environment minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa told reporters Tuesday that work was underway to process and dispose of waste at one of the city's biggest trash piles.
By the end of the year, waste at the Bhalswa dump on the city's northern outskirts "will be reduced to a point where it will no longer be visible" from a distance, he said.
"Our ultimate aim is to ensure that no new garbage mountains are formed," he added.
Local neighbourhoods around the Bhalswa landfill are home to thousands of Delhi's poorest residents who have migrated from grinding rural poverty in search of work.
Sirsa said the Bhalswa site would be cleared by March next year with similar remediation work to follow at Delhi's other two main garbage dumps.
According to last reported estimates from 2023, Delhi generates more than 11,000 tonnes of solid waste each day, according to official estimates in 2023.
More than four million tonnes of waste sit at the Bhalswa dump according to official estimates.
Untreated domestic waste burns in the landfills during the hot summer months, producing excess methane which further pollutes India's already smog-choked urban centres.
Environmentalists slam Albanian inaction on 'toxic waste' probe
Tirana (AFP) Mar 4, 2025 -
Environmental groups on Tuesday denounced what they called silence of the Albanian authorities and lack of progress in an investigation into suspected toxic waste unloaded in the Balkan country.
A total of 102 containers, believed to be filled with suspicious waste, were unloaded in the port of Durres from a Turkish-flagged container ship in November and taken to a "secure location", the authorities said.
At the time, the Durres prosecutor's office said it had launched an investigation into "smuggling of prohibited goods" and "abuse of power", in cooperation with the European Anti-Fraud Office OLAF.
The containers left Albania last July, and according to customs documents at that time, its cargo consisted of industrial waste, specifically "iron oxide", whose export is authorised.
But information passed on by a whistleblower to the Basel Action Network (BAN) suggested the cargo actually contained "hazardous waste pollution dust from secondary steel mills", according to a statement by BAN and environmental NGO Milieukontakt Albania obtained by AFP.
The two groups denounced the "complete silence from the government and the apparent lack of any progress on the case from the government of Albania and the Durres prosecutor's office".
It was planned that the contents of the containers be sampled and analysed by independent laboratories, the statement said.
But the groups said: "We are not even sure that the samples have been taken and the analysis begun."
Illegal trafficking in hazardous waste is a serious matter requiring criminal sanctions, the organisations added, urging the authorities to provide updates.
Contacted by AFP, the Durres prosecutor's office said their "investigations are continuing as a matter of priority", without elaborating.
Thailand rejected the cargo and it returned to Albania after several months at sea, with stopovers and ship changes in various countries including Spain, Portugal, Italy and Turkey.
According to environmentalists, so far all indications point the waste comes from the Kurum steel mills in Elbasan, central Albania.
The shipment of industrial waste from Western countries to be processed elsewhere in the developing world is a global business estimated to be worth between 44 billion and 70 billion euros ($46 billion to $74 billion) annually, according to environmental NGOs.
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