Communities Are Not Disposable

Statement of Solidarity with Waste Pickers Affected by Demolitions in Ghana

The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP) stands in solidarity with waste picker communities in Ghana who have recently lost their homes, belongings, and stability after violent demolitions linked to land disputes and development processes.

Among those affected are waste pickers Jerry Johnson Doe and Divine Dekonor, two workers who spent years building homes for their families through exhausting labor, only to see everything destroyed within minutes.

Johnson Doe said:

“My house was destroyed completely. Not by war, not by rainstorm, not by earthquake, but by a court order.”

Today, he is homeless and surviving through the support of friends after losing property worth more than 20,000 USD.

Divine Dekonor described the emotional devastation of watching years of sacrifice disappear in front of his eyes:

“It took us a lot of time to put up a building to accommodate our family… and you just lose it in a minute.”

These are not just random communities being displaced.

These are communities of workers who sustain cities every single day. Workers who recover waste before it reaches rivers and oceans. Workers who reduce pollution, protect public health, and stand on the very frontlines of environmental protection and circular economies.

Waste pickers do work that governments and corporations constantly praise in speeches about sustainability and climate action, yet the people carrying out this labor are too often abandoned, displaced, criminalized, or treated as disposable when their lives become inconvenient to powerful interests.

To destroy the homes of waste pickers is not only an attack on poor communities. It is an attack on some of the most important environmental workers keeping our planet alive.

A home is not just concrete and metal sheets.
It is years of work. Years of survival. Years of trying to build some form of stability in a world that constantly denies waste pickers dignity.

To destroy a home like this is not only material violence. It is psychological violence. Social violence. A message that some lives are considered easier to erase than others.

As a global alliance representing more than 500,000 waste pickers across 38 countries, we are calling on allies, movements, organizations, and individuals to stand with the affected families in Ghana and help them rebuild their lives.

This is an emergency.

👉 Support the emergency fundraising campaign:

https://www.mchanga.africa/fundraiser/137941