In February 2023, eighteen community leaders and civil society advocates from Guinea’s mining regions travelled to South Africa to learn from communities that have spent more than a century organizing against the harms of industrial mining. Hosted by GroundWorkand local partners, the visit revealed a powerful truth: real change begins when communities themselves organize to defend their rights.

Despite its mineral wealth, South Africa remains deeply unequal. More than half the population lives in poverty, and many mining-affected communities still lack clean water and sanitation. In Mpumalanga and other mining zones, residents described severe air and water pollution from coal-fired power plants and industrial waste. One of the most important lessons was how people mobilize to confront problems.

Watch the video : Community Organizing for Clean Air – Guinean activists visit South Africa on a learning exchange

When Communities Resist division and Lead Their Own Movements

Facing poverty, pollution and social injustice, South African leaders warned Guinean visitors about a pattern they know too well: mining companies creating divisions through selective recruitment and false promises. Molebohena Mathafena from Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance, stated “people want to work, but the opportunities are given in a way that creates conflicts between community members. For them, it is a tactic to divide and conquer, so that mining continues peacefully”. For this reason, amongst others, they stressed unity is essential. When leadership is shared, communities cannot be easily manipulated, and even “If one person is compromised, you still have 99 people to carry the struggle”, as Thomas Mnguni, Coal campaigner at GroundWork in South Africa said.

In 2012, 34 striking workers were killed in Marikana, a village in South Africa’s North West province, located halfway between the towns of Brits and Rustenburg, along the railway line connecting the two. Hosts reminded the delegation that activism in mining areas carries real risks. Yet communities continue to organize despite threats and intimidation.

Promise Mabilo, a VEM leader stressed it is important to “sit down so that it’s a community thing so that even if they come it back doors, the community stands firm and say we are fighting for our rights”

Women leaders, youth groups, and movements like VEM showed how door-to-door education, documenting illnesses, and challenging company practices can build collective power.

A simple but transformative tool stood out: the community bucket monitoring system, which allows residents to measure air pollution themselves. Collecting their own data has helped South Africans prove pollution levels and push for enforcement of environmental laws, a model Guinean villages can adapt for dust, water quality, and blasting impacts.

South Africans are not only resisting mining abuses — they are creating alternatives. Community-run solar installations, gardens, and youth-led climate initiatives show that a just transition is already taking shape from the ground up.

Key Lessons for Guinean Communities

The South African experience shows that real change starts when communities themselves lead the fight for their rights, sharing knowledge widely so that every villager, not just a few leaders, understands the laws, the risks, and the stakes. It also demonstrates that unity is a source of protection, while division opens the door to corporate manipulation. By documenting pollution, broken promises, and daily harms, communities build the evidence they need for strong advocacy. And perhaps most importantly, South African activists remind us that alternatives do exist: futures rooted in community-controlled resources, clean energy, and regenerative livelihoods are not only imaginable but achievable.

The message was clear: when communities organize themselves, they become powerful agents of change.

Amadou Bah from ActionMines Guinée knows change will not come overnight, as “social barriers in Guinea must be broken down gradually so citizens understand they shape political governance.” Still, the hope inspired by the South African experience strengthens the delegation’s resolve to support communities and empower them to stand up for their rights, because, as the VEJA Coordinator, Samson Mokoena, reminded everyone, “we have to rethink about development as Africans. What kind of a development do you want.”

This learning exchange was coordinated by Lien De Brouckere of the 11^th Hour Project, who helped define the objectives, prepare the participants, and support them in compiling the main lessons. She later produced a film of the learning exchange, supported by Director of Photography Tom Laffay and editor Kate Linhardt shaping the narrative, script, and core messages. Dubbed in French and the three primary local languages in Guinea (Malinke, Pular and Sousou), the primary purpose of the film is to share the learnings with local communities and civil society organizations in Guinea.

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AngloGold Ashanti has agreed to pay damages to the communities of Area One who were forcibly evicted from their land for the gold mine’s expansion in 2015. This is the first such victory in Guinea.

In the wake of the violence, local and international civil society organizations mobilized to support the communities who had been violently forced to move from their land in 2015 for the expansion of the Siguiri gold mine project, operated by a Guinea-based subsidiary of AngloGold Ashanti.

Watch the video : Securing Justice for Forced Displacement from the Siguiri Gold Mine

A minefield journey since the eviction

When we began our struggle, nobody believed we would get anything from this company and we were told to give up, but we persisted and today we can hold our heads high again”, said Balla Camara, the courageous community leader of Area One who dared to call for accountability.

Guinea is a politically unstable country with a hostile environment for human rights defenders, and a repressive government most often opting to protect the interests of mining companies, such as AngloGold Ashanti, the country’s leading gold producer, rather than the people.

Established in the Siguiri region for more than 800 years, these 365 families – artisanal miners, traders and farmers – were violently evicted and arbitrarily arrested by the State security forces. They were then made to seek temporary lodging elsewhere for years, and finally resettled while still seeing their health, education and livelihoods in danger. Many other violations of national and international law occurred, but little hope for justice were provided. Avenues for legal recourse in Guinea are nearly nonexistent with a poorly functioning judiciary in a country rife with corruption.

Following the money and tireless community solidarity, keys to victory

The evicted communities sought the advice of local NGO Commerce International pour le Développement (CECIDE), who had long been supporting the human rights of communities in the Siguiri area.

CECIDE mobilized its network including local lawyers at Mêmes Droits Pour Tous (MDT) and international partners, including Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) and The 11^th Hour Project. With little possibility of legal redress in Guinea, Inclusive Development International (IDI) was brought in to follow the money that paid for the gold mine’s expansion: AngloGold Ashanti received a loan from the South African bank Nedbank, which in turn had received financing from the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Watch the video : Beneath the Surface: Leveraging the Power of Investors

This meant the IFC’s environmental and social performance standards applied to the Siguiri mine’s expansion. It opened the door for the affected communities, with support from CECIDE, MDT and IDI, to file a complaint in April 2017 to the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) of the World Bank Group. The CAO is the independent accountability mechanism for projects supported by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA).

The community’s complaint to the CAO led to a six-year long mediation process among the company and affected communities, with support from the NGOs, leading to a series of incremental wins and now a final settlement agreement.

This struggle for accountability is the product of years of hard work, dedication and persistence by local human rights defenders, continuously strengthening community solidarity, working to mobilize for rights in a hostile environment.

A victory that restores hope

Guinea is well known for its abundance of natural resources. The country has one of the world’s largest reserves of bauxite. This is the main material used to produce aluminum, a transition mineral important to moving away from fossil fuels. Mega mining projects are being initiated with the aim of boosting the country’s economy, such as the Simandou project for its so-called green steel. However, the promises of development often fail to be realized for the thousands of people living from the land’s resources sacrificed for these projects. Communities are very often forced to leave their homes either because they are forced out by the authorities, without any real resettlement or compensation, or driven away because the pollution caused by the projects threatens their health and livelihoods.

The Area One settlement agreement is an exceptional victory and a source of hope for the thousands of people who suffer the damages of investment projects in Guinea every day. Community tenacity over many years – despite threats and intimidation from government and the company – made this possible,” said Lien De Brouckere, advisor with The 11^th Hour Project since the start of this campaign, including the fact-finding mission in 2016 that laid the basis for the CAO complaint.

A part of the agreement’s significant financial settlement amount will be directly given to the affected families as individual compensation, and another part will be used to set up a fund to finance development and livelihood restoration projects implemented by the affected families.

The post Guinea: Long awaited justice for communities forcibly evicted for the Siguiri gold mine first appeared on Communities First.

Nestled in the beautiful mountains of Guinea, West Africa is Simandou, the world’s largest untapped high-grade iron ore deposit, coveted by mining companies for decades. Simandou project developers including Winning Consortium Simandou (WCS) and Australian mining giant Rio Tinto – both backed by China’s largest steel maker, Baowu – are moving ahead quickly under intense pressure from the ruling military junta in Guinea to develop and start construction for the continent’s largest combined mining and infrastructure project. While the Simandou project is said to hold great promise of economic growth for this impoverished country under its third military regime, many significant human and environmental rights impacts have been documented since development started. In my work with The 11th Hour Project’s Human Rights program, we support several organizations to hold the government and project developers accountable and to demand compliance with their human and environmental rights obligations.

As part of this advocacy work, last month I accompanied a group of local community leaders impacted by the Simandou project corridor and staff from the NGO Action Mines Guinée on a learning exchange to Brazil. We visited Brazil’s key mining areas of Minas Gerais in the Southeast to learn about the devastating tailings dams failures and community organizing. We then headed north to Pará and Maranhão in the Amazon to participate in a regional meeting of communities impacted by mining. We witnessed first-hand the impacts of the Carajás railway corridor and its open-pit iron ore mines in beautiful protected areas, a massive rail line carrying ore and commodities and the epic challenges of resettling impacted villages.

1. Demanding accountability of Simandou project developers for their human rights impacts

Although the project only broke ground in early 2021, national and international organizations have already documented the devastating harms of the Simandou project at this early stage of its development on local communities’ precious water resources, biodiverse forests, agricultural lands and food security. Groups are also denouncing risks the project poses for the climate. With support from Action Mines Guinée, local monitoring committees in Simandou are documenting the wide gap between rhetoric and action by WCS and Rio Tinto when it comes to respect for community rights with unremediated damage to water resources, fisheries, agricultural lands, cracks in houses from blasting, dust and air pollution and more. These reports read like a “déjà vu” for one of the project developers WCS in Guinea: a bauxite mining project that was hastily developed in Boké — the country’s current mining epicenter — leaving widespread unremediated harms on local communities’ water, agricultural lands and livelihoods, as documented extensively in a 2018 Human Rights Watch report and a 2023 Natural Justice community audit.

Despite promises of local employment benefits from the Simandou construction projects, these opportunities have yet to materialize for the surrounding communities. Local protests demanding fair and equitable access to these jobs have been met with swift and violent repression by the military government. Most recently, on July 17, 2024 security forces used tear gas and live ammunition to quell demonstrations in Beyla, leaving three people dead and many more severely wounded, followed by arrests.

2. Learning from local communities in Brazil about iron ore mining impacts and community organizing

High risks of mine waste (tailings) dams failures

Mining is effectively an exercise in creating and managing the mountains of overburden and waste (also called tailings) that must be moved to reach the high-value minerals or metals. In 2015, the massive collapse of tailings dams at the Samarco iron mine in Mariana, owned by Vale and BHP Billiton, killed 19 people. We walked through the ghost town of Bento Rodrigues, hearing from victims about the continued impunity of the company and resettlement benefits that have still failed to materialize.

We also visited Brumadinho where in 2019, the collapse of the tailings dam at Vale’s mine claimed 272 lives, predominantly workers, and dumped nearly 10 million cubic meters of toxic mine tailings polluting the riverways and spreading devastation over a large territory. We listened to community members as they described their struggle to rebuild their lives with meager remedies from the companies.

We were also inspired by the prevailing women’s leadership in communities and within the social movement Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB). We were especially moved by their successful campaign to make urgent aid payments directly to women, rather than to men “on behalf of women and children’. This resulted not only in far greater food security and socio-economic stability in disaster-affected communities, but this ad hoc initiative was formalized as public policy. Aid payments must now be made to individuals directly instead of only to the head of household.

Little information is available today in the public domain about tailings management in the Simandou project, and we left Minas Gerais with many questions for the project developers: questions about the type of mining technology to be used, to the particular type of wet or dry mine waste management, and disclosure of the tailings dam break studies. For example, in the thousands of pages in the WCS environmental and social impact assessments (ESIAs) that our partners went to great lengths to obtain and comb through, only about three pages vaguely address tailings management without the requisite detail that global industry standards now require in the wake of the Mariana and Brumadinho dam failures. Our partners continue to comb through the Rio Tinto ESIAs that only recently, have become partially available to them. None of the Simandou ESIAs from WCS and Rio Tinto are available to the general public (whether in electronic format, on a website, or otherwise), and for those that have been obtained by local NGOs, key annexes are often not attached and not provided when requested.

Social movements, organizing and popular education

In the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, we were hosted by MAB to visit two sites that have experienced devastating tailings dam failures. We learned about MAB’s decentralized and non-hierarchical organizing strategies from the local to the national level and back down to the local, built on shared values and philosophy.

“A única luta que se perde, é aquela que se abandona.” (“The only fight you lose is the one you abandon.”) – Carlos Marighella, MST

From Minas Gerais, we flew to the northern Amazonian state of Pará, where we were hosted by the Comissão Pastoral da Terra (CPT) and Justiça nos Trilhos (JnT) to take part in the 13th annual Regional Meeting of People Affected by Mining in the Carajás Corridor, in Portuguese: Encontro Regional das Atingidas e dos Atingidos pela Mineração (ERAM). This meeting demonstrated the power of collective organizing bringing together around a hundred participants from various communities, including farmers, Afro-descendants and indigenous communities, with academics, youth and LGBTQ leaders, fisherfolk organizations, networks and social movements. Participants spoke of the violence of capitalism on lands, communities and women, and discussed collective strategies of popular education, resistance, no-go zones, the value of women’s leadership and the decades-long nature of the struggle.

During the ERAM, we visited one of the encampments central to the broad push for rural agricultural land reform led by Latin America’s largest social movement, the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). An exceptional moment was the mística ceremony welcoming us to the country’s largest encampment, “Terra e Liberdade” with 7,000 families most in a situation of extreme poverty squatting since November 20, 2023 (Black Awareness Day) in a rural, exceptionally rich territory in Pará with mining activities about 30 km away in all directions. The poems, songs and ceremony celebrating land, tools, seeds, education and children shared a powerful message of solidarity and a positive collective vision for a better future by those who have been brutalized and harmed by the prevailing capitalist-industrial complex.

National forests, multi-use railroads and energy infrastructure benefiting corporate elite, not ordinary people

On our last day in Pará, we visited Vale’s iron ore mining pits operating deep in the Carajás National Forest. The operation has expropriated indigenous communities such as the Xikrin with little to no remediation. Today the company closely controls access to the National Forest and requires approved visitors to have a guide accompanying them in order to limit their movements. The visit demonstrated how, yet again, corporate interests prevail over environmental and biodiversity protection, and the lives and well-being of traditional and indigenous communities.

In neighboring Maranhão state, we saw the railroads used to transport ore and commodities such as soy from the interior to the deepwater port at São Luís. Said to be “multi-use”, the railroad transports ore and commodities every 8 minutes, 24 hours a day, and has passenger trains only three times per week. Communities living along the rail corridor endure constant loud noise from the trains passing, the vibrations affecting their bodies and homes, and safety risks for people and animals crossing the tracks. Finally, the energy infrastructure powering the steel industry includes blast furnaces, power plants and cement plants primarily benefits industry, leaving households to pay some of the highest prices for electricity in the country.

On the last days, we visited the community of Piquiá de Baixo, located in the shadow of the steel industry, which has made the air and water quality toxic for humans there. The community has been demanding resettlement and twenty years later, the families have yet to receive the keys to their new homes at the resettlement site at Piquiá de Conquista.

3. Onward with positive inspiration and solidarity

Our last day in São Paulo was spent filming exit interviews capturing the rich and deep lessons learned by the Guinea participants.

We heard positive and inspiring lessons on women’s leadership and economic empowerment, on decentralized collective organizing at many levels and centered on a shared set of values, made possible with popular education and community listening tools. And we heard warnings of the many broken promises of mining companies and elite capture of benefits, the dizzying cumulative negative impacts from rail, mining, energy and infrastructure projects, most especially the irreversible impacts of disasters such as tailings dam failures, destruction of national forests and biodiversity, traditional villages and indigenous cultural sites.

Filmmaker Tom Laffay accompanied us on the tour. We are working on a short documentary highlighting key lessons to share with communities and civil society in Guinea for broader uptake.

This learning exchange was made possible by funding from and facilitation by The 11th Hour Project. I’m grateful to SAGE Fund who introduced us to their local partners in Brazil, providing contacts with allied host organizations that made these exceptional experiences possible. Our duo of French-Portuguese interpreters made communication possible, and we all appreciated the infinite patience of our fixer to make sure everyone was comfortable. We also extend our thanks to the many others who provided us with advice on planning this exchange, including American Jewish World Service (AJWS), Ford Foundation, Earthworks, Environmental Defender Law Center (EDLC), Instituto Cordilheira and Grupo de Pesquisa e Extensão Política, Economia, Mineração Ambiente e Sociedade (PoEMAS).

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CONAKRY (March 21, 2019) – A group of civil society organizations in Guinea Conakry today asked the Guinean government to implement radical changes to the text of a proposed policy for relocating and compensating communities affected by major development projects, including hydroelectric dams and mines in a country thought to hold more than half the world’s supply of bauxite.

According to an analysis released today by the civil society group, the proposal developed by the South African consulting firm SRK, with funding from the German Agency for International Cooperation for Development (GIZ), has no grounding in Guinean law and fails to respect the economic and cultural needs of the communities in the path of the development projects. And rather than protecting local people, as envisioned by Guinean political leaders and German funders, the new policy could violate the human rights of more than 100,000 rural Guineans.

“The goal of this policy is to limit the devastating impacts of hydroelectric dams and mining projects in particular,” said Houdy Bah, mayor of the rural commune of Sangarédi. “As written, however, far from leading to fair and equitable compensation, the policy risks exacerbating the tensions and conflicts that are already occurring.” In its current form, according to the civil society analysis, the policy would prevent even GIZ from adhering to its own human rights policy.

Presented today by civil society organizations at a press briefing in Conakry, the analysis reports that the proposed policy is flawed, but it shows as well that that the government has presented the text of the policy on relocation and compensation to only 12 people outside of Conakry – and that in a country of more than 12 million people. The analysis notes that the government did not consult local authorities, elected officials and experts, such as mayors, traditional leaders, rural planners, agricultural engineers, environmental technical staff and sociologists, even though they should be key–not only to establish such a policy, but to implement it. Finally, the analysis charges that local communities, although they are at the heart of this process and will be the first ones impacted by it, have not had the chance to comment on this text and few know it is being developed. 

“Guinean rural communities are essentially dependent on access to land and natural resources for their survival, and therefore must be consulted on decisions affecting their access to these resources, in line with international human rights standards,” explains Mamady Koivogui, from the national NGO Association Mines Sans Pauvreté.

Civil society organizations are requesting a minimum period of six months to allow the Government’s Inter-ministerial Committee to conduct wide consultations in rural areas where the policy will be implemented.

In addition to these consultations, civil society organizations report that the current text of the policy does not respect several human rights. Among other things, it does not prohibit forced evictions of local communities nor does it ensure a last resort to resettlement when it is in the public interest. It also lacks mechanisms to secure the legitimate land rights of local communities, to allow them access to justice, and to ensure free consultation and the sharing of detailed information with communities.

A country rich in mining resources

Guinea’s massive stores of bauxite—an estimated 25 billion tons—and its potential for hydroelectric power, have captured the interest of investors from China, Russia, France, the United Arab Emirates, and the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation. The country also recently was selected to host the African Center for Mineral Development, which aims to support a strong role for minerals in ensuring the continent’s economic future. 

“The exploitation of bauxite is extremely invasive,” said Mamadou Maladho Diallo, from the NGO Convergence Globale des Luttes pour la Terre et l’Eau–Afrique de l’Ouest. “Land has been laid bare on surfaces of considerable magnitude and at an impressive speed, without any assessment of the long-term impact of these mines on local communities.”

Threats of displacement of thousands of rural villagers to make way for large development projects, particularly mining and hydroelectric dams, are increasing. In 2015, for example, about 380 families were forcibly evicted from their ancestral landsin Kintinian commune to expand an open-pit gold mine controlled by the mining giant, AngloGold Ashanti and supported by Nedbank (South Africa), an International Finance Corporation (IFC) lender. More recently, residents of 13 villages in western Guinea formally filed a complaint with the IFCfor financing the extension of a harmful bauxite mine. The 540 complainants allege that the project seized their land, destroyed their livelihoods and damaged the local environment.

“After years of hesitation, the Guinean government has demonstrated unprecedented political will to regulate the compensation and resettlement of communities affected by development projects,” said the Honorable Saikou Yaya Barry, National Assembly deputy. “But the government will be judged by its actions and not by its intentions. Its commitment to sustainable development will be revealed as a fraud if the government adopts this policy as it is now and fails to align it with the laws of Guinea and the will of its people.”

“The fact that a country like Guinea, with the world’s largest known reserves of bauxite, has no national policy to protect people or the environment is very concerning,” added Saa Pascal Tenguiano, Executive Director of the NGO Centre de Commerce International pour le Développement. “That’s why this process cannot fail. Absolutely all mining countries need such standards. Not just for us, but for everyone. We are here to help the government to do this right.”

Analysis is available at:

https://communitiesfirst.net/analysis-of-guinea-resettlement-reference-document_201903/

Annex to the analysis, including a technical note and proposed law is available (in French only) at:

https://communitiesfirst.net/note-technique-du-collectif-reinstallation-guinee_201903/

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(March 8, 2019 – Conakry) – Residents of 13 villages in western Guinea have filed a formal complaint against the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector arm, for funding the expansion of a harmful bauxite mine. The 540 complainants allege that the IFC-financed project, Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée, has grabbed their land, destroyed their livelihoods and damaged the local environment.

The complaint, filed with the IFC’s independent watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, details violations of the IFC’s environmental and social Performance Standards and international law. Most of the world’s development banks have established such grievance mechanisms to monitor compliance with their environmental and social policies and address complaints from impacted communities.

The complainants are seeking full and fair redress for the harms they have suffered, along with protection from future violations. They have asked the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman to facilitate mediations with the IFC and Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée to address their grievances.

“The lands on which we and our ancestors have lived and farmed for centuries have been almost totally consumed by CBG,” said Mamadou Lamarana Bah, one of the complainants.  “With no more land, no more forests, no more water, how are we going to survive?

The villagers have lost agricultural land, which has led to a significant decline in their incomes and quality of life, and access to their water resources, which have been polluted, among other harmful impacts. The situation is especially perilous for the residents of Hamdallaye village, who have been told by the company that they will be imminently resettled, without their consent, in a former mining area that was not properly rehabilitated.

The complainants are being represented by two Guinean organizations, Centre du Commerce International pour le Developpement (CECIDE) and Association pour le développement rural et l’entraide mutuelle en Guinée (ADREMGUI), and the U.S. human rights organization Inclusive Development International.

The impoverished nation of Guinea is home to the world’s largest bauxite reserves. Mining companies have flooded the country in recent years, despite serious social and environmental concerns raised by Human Rights Watch and others. Bauxite mined by Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée is processed into aluminum that is used by major consumer brands to make cars, beverage cans and technology. Yet few Guineans benefit from such projects.

“International mining companies have been making a fortune off of Guinea’s rich mineral resources, while the communities impacted by mining have quite literally been left in the dust,” said Mathilde Chiffert, West Africa Legal Coordinator for Inclusive Development International.  “It’s high time for local communities to get a fair share of the benefits from mineral extraction.”

Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée is a joint venture between the Guinean government; the U.S. aluminum corporation Alcoa; the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto; and the Guernsey-registered Dadco. In 2016, the IFC provided a $200 million loan to expand the venture’s mining operations, with the U.S. government’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation providing an additional $150 million.

A further $473 million came from a syndicate of commercial banks: France’s Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Natixis; the German affiliate of ING bank, ING-DiBa; and two Guinean banks, Société Générale de Banques en Guinée and Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l’Industrie de la Guinée, a member of the BNP Paribas group.

The German government guaranteed a portion of the financing through its Untied Loan Guarantees program.

Since it began operations in 1973, Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée has mined large areas of land in the area surrounding the town of Sangaredi, located in the lush Boké region. For years, the joint venture has denied the land rights of local communities, creating immense frustration among the population.

“We look forward to engaging in an equitable dialogue process with CBG, facilitated by an independent mediator to resolve the long-standing grievances of the complainants,” said Tenguiano Pascal, Executive Director of CECIDE.

The complaint is available at:

In English: https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CBG_CAO-Request-for-Mediation_FINAL-EN.pdf

In French: https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CBG_CAO_Request-for-Mediation_FINAL-FRE.pdf

For further reading, see:

“What Do We Get Out of It?” The Human Rights Impact of Bauxite Mining in Guinea, Human Rights Watch, October 2018

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Forced Relocation of Community Through Violence, Intimidation, and Exclusion at AngloGold Ashanti’s Mine in Kintinian, Guinea

Conakry, January 31, 2017 – South African gold-mining giant AngloGold Ashanti acquired land to extend its open pit gold mine in Guinea through violence, intimidation, and other unethical behavior, according to a report released by Guinean civil society organizations today.

The report examines a multi-year effort by AngloGold and its Guinean subsidiary, SAG, to evict approximately one thousand residents of “Area One” – a part of the village of Kintinian II in the northeastern corner of the country – to make way for a new open-pit mine. Through interviews with nearly one hundred affected villagers, government officials, and company representatives, the authors show that the community was excluded from consultation over the fate of the land, brutally repressed when they organized protests, and coerced into signing relocation agreements that they did not understand and that do not meet international standards.

In March 2015, SAG announced to the Guinean government that it would need to end its existing operations around Kintinian unless it was able to gain access to Area One by May 2016. In the wake of SAG’s threat – which was only too credible in a country from which at least two major mining companies have withdrawn their investments in the last few years – the company and the government were willing to go to great lengths to secure access to the land. “The mining sector in Guinea has been plagued by land grabs, labor violations, broken promises, and even massacres, and AngloGold has perpetuated this pattern at Kintinian,” said Aboubacar Diallo, Program Director for CECIDE, one of the Guinean organizations that authored the report.

The report documents a wide range of abuses against Area One residents, including:

• Physical violence. When negotiations between Kintinian residents and SAG over the terms of relocation broke down, the Guinean government sent security forces, including the “Red Berets,” a group of special forces with well documented links to gross human rights abuses, to force locals to relinquish their land.

These heavily armed personnel brutally repressed peaceful protests, treating the local population as if they were military targets – “as if we were rebels,” in the words of one resident. “They stormed the village to force us to sign the documents and cede our houses,” explained another. Many were injured, including a young girl who was hit by a bullet in her chest and neck, and whose parents just managed to save her life.

The security forces also damaged and stole property in the course of armed attacks on civilians. “The military started to beat us, they stole our telephones, they smashed doors to perpetrate thefts” said one witness. “They broke into my young brother’s shop. They took his money and his merchandise after beating up his shopkeeper,” recalled another.

• Intimidation to achieve relocation goals. Immediately after the suppression of the protest, armed soldiers accompanied SAG’s agents to survey residents’ household assets and pressured them to sign the inventories. “They surrounded the village and they sought out the inhabitants one by one to go to be inventoried by force,” recalled one resident. Residents describe having been “encircled” during the inventory by the military at a distance of “zero meters with hateful faces.” “The soldiers carried weapons and they threatened us to sign,” said one. “The soldiers were present and everyone was afraid.”
• Lack of transparency. AngloGold Ashanti ascribes to international norms on involuntary displacement, which require consultation with the affected population on relocation plans, and that all information should be shared in a language that they can understand. However, the consultant SAG hired to develop its resettlement plan did not consult with residents of Kintinian II. Moreover, villagers were pressured to sign documents in French – which very few can understand – without the opportunity to learn about their rights and options. The agreements they signed may be null and void under Guinean law.
• Exclusion of the vulnerable, including women and children. SAG agents’ meetings with Area One residents were almost entirely with adult men; women and children were largely excluded. Many women testified that they knew nothing of the inventory or relocation process, which was instead managed by their son or husband. As a result, many wives, mothers, and children lost their land, completely without warning.

“We called on SAG last summer to suspend the evictions, but they went ahead with their illegal actions,” said Fréderic Foromo Loua, President of MDT, one of the report’s authors. Residents were forced to leave their homes in May of last year; since then they have been left to their own devices to find temporary accommodations. Most of the affected people continue to hold out for the company to revisit the practices that have caused them harm, while only a few have just recently accepted the keys to the resettlement homes that the company has built for them.

The authors conclude that the actions of AngloGold Ashanti, SAG, and the Guinean security forces violate Guinean law and international standards for involuntary relocation. They therefore:

• Call on the Guinean government to repair the damage caused by its defense and security forces and ensure respect for human rights;
• Demand that SAG and its parent company AngloGold Ashanti carry out a public audit to assess and remedy the involuntary resettlement procedure for Area One; and
• Counsel the Kintinian community to act peacefully in defense of its interests and avoid social division.

Download here:

• Press release in English in PDF
• Press release in French in PDF
• Fact-Finding Mission Report in English
• Fact-Finding Mission Report in French

Media contacts: 

Centre de Commerce International pour le Développement (CECIDE) – CECIDE promotes and defends the social, economic and cultural rights of Guinean communities, and their involvement in the design and implementation of public policies for development.

Les Mêmes Droits pour Tous (MDT) – MDT focuses on the defense and promotion of human rights; it was founded by Guinean lawyers and young professionals in the legal industry to fight human rights violations in Guinea.

MDT and CECIDE have been accompanying the residents of Kintinian since 2010 on issues such as the promotion and defense of rights and obligations, prevention and conflict management, and capacity building for legal experts and local government.

Communities First – A small business working in the area of international development consulting, Communities First LLC provides technical program and advisory services to civil society and government actors on human rights-based development in the context of extractive industries, corporate accountability and natural resource governance.

Communities First is supporting CECIDE and MDT in their work on behalf of the displaced population of Kintinian, as well as other communities in Guinea.

Advocates for Community Alternatives (ACA) – ACA helps West African communities that are threatened by the destructive impacts of extractives-led development to take control of their own futures. ACA works directly with communities to design their own sustainable development plans and advocate to achieve those plans, and it builds and supports networks of lawyers and other professionals that will serve communities in need.

ACA is providing strategic legal support to CECIDE and MDT as part of their participation in the Public Interest Lawyering Network for West Africa (PILIWA), which ACA coordinates.

The post Violence, Intimidation, Exclusion – NGOs report on resettlement at AngloGold Ashanti’s mine in Guinea first appeared on Communities First.

This translation completes the existing set of publications of this Guide, which includes the original French full-length version, a summary in French, and a summary in English. More information about this publication is available here.

The post Now available! English translation of the Guinea Guide first appeared on Communities First.

How does a community keep a sense of hope alive in the face of the grinding poverty, recurring intimidation, and house-shaking explosions that accompany life next to a gigantic open-pit gold mine? I asked myself this question again and again last week, over the course of a five-day fact-finding mission to investigate allegations of abusive resettlement in Kintinian in Upper Guinea.

The people of Kintinian have long had a poor relationship with Société AngloGold Ashanti de Guinée S.A. (SAG) – the Guinean subsidiary of South African mining giant AngloGold Ashanti – thanks to environmental degradation, unmet demand for local jobs, compensation disputes, favoritism, broken promises, and an overall perceived failure of industrial mining to bring tangible benefits to affected communities. In this context, the company’s decision to relocate about a thousand residents in order to expand into a new zone – called “Area One” – has been highly contentious.

As the Executive Director of Advocates for Community Alternatives, I was asked to join this fact-finding mission by Lien De Brouckere of Communities First, to provide strategic public interest litigation support to two Guinean NGOs: CECIDE and Même Droits pour Tous (MDT). As they publicly affirmed in late August, these two groups are trying to ensure that SAG and the Guinean government respect the communities’ legal rights as the company expands its operational footprint and relocates the residents of Area One. Our fact-finding team also included Guinean journalists and environmentalists, and we were ably supported by a group of courageous local professionals facing tremendous corporate and government pressure. While we have yet to compile and analyze the survey results of the nearly 100 resident property owners our team surveyed, I can say that our anecdotal findings definitely give cause for concern.

First, SAG and the Guinean military worked in concert to carry out an inventory of household assets in Area One in the immediate aftermath of the military’s violent repression of a protest against that very inventory. Military misconduct and violence (including by the bérets rouge – who were involved in the egregious human rights abuses during the stadium massacre of 28 September) were especially high in the days immediately preceding the inventory. This included arrests, threatening to fire on people, burning down huts, destroying homes, shooting tear gas inside people’s homes, widespread looting and more. Suffice it to say that this made people feel intimidated and led them to accept inventories that they deemed incomplete and inadequate. As one of the elders told us: “the gun made us cede our lands.” This raises a number of concerns, including an expectation under the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights to try to prevent public security forces with a track record of human rights violations (such as the bérets rouges) from providing any security services at its sites.

Second, almost no one we surveyed in Area One had heard of, let alone understood the purpose or content of, SAG’s Resettlement Action Plan (RAP), most especially the compensation matrix that determines the values at which SAG will compensate different types of assets. This public document must be developed with the full participation of affected communities, according to international standards on resettlement that AngloGold claims to follow. (In fact, the RAP itself states that affected communities were excluded from consultations to develop it.) In particular, most women surveyed were completely in the dark about the procedure for resettlement and the terms of compensation that were offered to their families, despite a requirement that special care should be taken to ensure that vulnerable and excluded segments of the populations are informed and consulted during resettlement.

Finally, while our analysis will certainly show more cause for concern, I’ll end here by noting that SAG repeatedly tried to pressure community members into leaving their temporary accommodations (their homes having been destroyed since June) and moving to the relocation site, even though construction was not yet finished and the relocation homes had no provision for kitchens, water, electricity, or flood control – a contradiction of SAG’s own Resettlement Action Plan. One such attempt was made the day before our fact-finding mission arrived, in an apparent attempt to ensure that our group would arrive only to discover that the process was finished and that there were no facts to be found.

We’ve asked SAG and AngloGold Ashanti for their responses to a number of these issues and will confront them with the full results of the survey once they’ve been processed. With luck, this intervention can help support non-violence, and guarantee that the people of Kintinian receive the benefit of all the rights and protections of the laws and international standards that AngloGold Ashanti professes to respect.

« Le fusil a fait que nous avons cédé notre terre. » – Réinstallation abusive pour l’expansion d’une mine d’or en Haute Guinée

Comment une communauté peut-elle garder un sentiment d’espoir face à l’extrême pauvreté, l’intimidation récurrente, et les dynamitages qui font trembler les maisons – le tout faisant partie de la vie à côté d’une mine d’or gigantesque à ciel ouvert ? Je me suis posé cette question maintes fois la semaine dernière, au cours d’une mission d’enquête de cinq jours qui avait pour but d’établir les faits à la base des revendications concernant la réinstallation abusive à Kintinian en Haute Guinée.

Les habitants de Kintinian souffre depuis longtemps de mauvaises relations avec la Société AngloGold Ashanti de Guinée S.A. (la SAG) – la filiale guinéenne du géant minier sud-africain AngloGold Ashanti – grâce à la dégradation environnementale, la demande non satisfaite pour les emplois locaux, les conflits autour de la compensation, le favoritisme, les promesses non tenues, et la perception d’un échec global de l’exploitation minière industrielle d’apporter de vrais avantages aux communautés affectées. Dans ce contexte, la décision de la société de délocaliser environ un millier d’habitants afin d’étendre ses opérations dans une nouvelle zone – appelée « Area One » – a été très controversée.

En tant que Directeur Exécutif de l’ONG « Advocates for Community Alternatives », Lien De Brouckere de Communities First m’a demandé de participer à cette mission d’enquête, afin de fournir un appui dans le domaine des litiges stratégiques d’intérêt public à deux ONG guinéennes: le Centre de Commerce International pour le Développement (CECIDE) et Mêmes Droits pour Tous (MDT). Tout comme ils l’ont affirmé publiquement fin août, ces deux structures ont pour objectif dans ce cadre de faire en sorte que la SAG et le gouvernement guinéen respectent les droits légaux des communautés pendant que la société étend son empreinte opérationnelle et déplace les habitants d’Area One. Notre équipe d’enquête comprenait également des journalistes et des écologistes guinéens, et nous avons été bien soutenu par un groupe de professionnels locaux courageux face à la pression énorme des entreprises et du gouvernement. Alors que nous n’avons pas encore compilé et analysé de près les résultats du sondage d’environ 100 propriétaires résidents interrogé par notre équipe, je peux dire que nos résultats anecdotiques sont certainement sources de préoccupation.

Tout d’abord, la SAG et le militaire guinéen ont collaboré pour réaliser un recensement des actifs des ménages d’Area One tout de suite après la répression violente par les militaires d’une manifestation contre le recensement-même. L’inconduite militaire et la violence (y compris par les bérets rouges – qui ont été impliqués dans les violations flagrantes des droits humains lors du massacre du 28 septembre) étaient particulièrement élevés dans les jours précédant immédiatement le recensement. Cela comprend les arrestations, les menaces de tirer sur les personnes, mettre le feu aux cases, détruire les maisons, lancer le gaz lacrymogène à l’intérieur des maisons, le pillage largement répandu, etc. Il va sans dire que cela avait pour effet d’intimider les populations et leur a fait consentir un recensement que les habitants estiment être incomplet et inadéquat. Tout comme l’un des sages nous a dit : «  Le fusil a fait que nous avons céder notre terre. » Ces évènements soulèvent un certain nombre de préoccupations, y compris le non-respect d’une exigence découlant des Principes Volontaires concernant la Sécurité et les Droits Humains d’empêcher la participation des forces de sécurité publique avec des antécédents des violations des droits humains (tels que les bérets rouges) aux services de sécurité sur les sites.

Deuxièmement, presque personne parmi ceux que nous avons interrogé dans la zone « Area One » avait entendu parler – sans parler de comprendre le but ou contenu même – du Plan d’Action de Réinstallation et de Compensation (PARC) de la SAG, surtout son matrice d’indemnisation qui détermine les valeurs auxquelles la SAG compensera différents types d’actifs. Ce document public doit être élaboré avec la pleine participation des communautés affectées, selon les normes internationales en matière de réinstallation qu’AngloGold Ashanti prétend suivre. (En fait, selon le texte du PARC, les communautés affectées ont été exclues des consultations pour son élaboration.) De plus, la plupart des femmes interrogées se trouvait complètement dans le noir concernant la procédure de réinstallation et les modalités d’indemnisation qui ont été offerts à leurs familles, en dépit d’une exigence que des précautions particulières doivent être prises pour assurer que les groupes vulnérables et exclus des populations soient informés et consultés lors de la réinstallation.

Enfin, alors que notre analyse montrera certainement davantage des sources d’inquiétude, je vais me contenter de finir ici en notant que la SAG a tenté à plusieurs reprises d’exercer une pression sur les membres de la communauté pour quitter leur logement temporaire (leurs maisons étant déjà détruites depuis juin) et se déplacer vers le site de réinstallation, alors que la construction n’est pas encore terminé, ils n’ont aucune disposition pour les cuisines, suffisamment d’eau, d’électricité ou de contrôle des inondations – une contradiction au PARC de la SAG. Une telle tentative a été faite la veille de l’arrivé de notre mission d’enquête ; une tentative apparente de faire en sorte que notre groupe de missionnaires n’arriverait que pour découvrir que le processus a été terminé et qu’il n’y avait plus de faits à rechercher.

Nous avons demandé à la SAG et AngloGold Ashanti de répondre à un certain nombre de ces questions et nous allons les confronter avec les résultats complets de l’enquête une fois qu’ils ont été traités. Avec de la chance, cette intervention peut aider à soutenir la non-violence à Kintinian, et de garantir que les habitants d’Area One reçoivent le bénéfice de tous les droits et protections des lois et des normes internationales qu’AngloGold Ashanti professe à respecter.

The post “The gun made us cede our lands” – Abusive resettlement for a gold mine expansion in Upper Guinea first appeared on Communities First.

This story comes from a training workshop I facilitated with local authorities and civil society groups in the country’s forest region – rich in iron ore – for the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative on its industrial mining toolkit which I led the development of. This video story was recorded during my participation in the IFC Sustainability Exchange in Washington, DC in late May 2016; it is available along with others on its video stories website.

The post Talking about grievance mechanisms in Guinea at the IFC Sustainability Exchange first appeared on Communities First.