It was the eye of a slow-forming, powerful storm in one of West Africa’s most weathered places. In spring 2012, Bumbuna, a hamlet in a war-ravaged Sierra Leone notorious for its “blood diamonds,” witnessed a confrontation between police and workers protesting conditions at a project owned by U.K.-headquartered iron ore producer African Minerals Ltd. (AML).
Authorities said strikers tried torching an AML fuel depot and a police station, allegations disputed by human rights monitors. But the events ending April 18 were clear: After decimating the town market, police unleashed tear gas and live ammunition on the unarmed crowd—killing a female contractor while wounding eight non-employees; three officers were also injured. Sierra Leone’s independent Human Rights Commission called it a “war zone.”
Whether amid indifference, dismay or connivance—or all three—such episodes have haunted mining for generations. There’s certainly blame to circulate: Barrick Gold Corp., BHP Billiton, Freeport McMoRan and Rio Tinto—among countless others—have long been under fire. But in a world economy globalizing astride social media, bad news—fairly and unfairly—spreads quicker than ever. Consequently, environmental concerns, once at Corporate Social Responsibility’s (CSR) forefront, are taking a back seat to human rights issues—with some companies adapting quicker than others.
AML, Sierra Leone’s No. 1 employer, is hardly alone. The 2012 slaughter of 44 strikers by South African security forces at a Lonmin plc mine, for instance, drew far more publicity to Africa’s mining atrocities. AML differs, however, in its ongoing, if subdued, rapport with leading nongovernmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch (HRW) investigators focused on a country beset by near-unchecked land acquisition and a troubled mining sector.
Twelve years have ebbed since Sierra Leone’s decade-long civil conflict claimed 50,000 lives and displaced 2 million others. The equatorial nation remains a top-10, half-legitimate alluvial diamond producer also flush with gold, titanium ore and bauxite. Only now, however, is Freetown aggressively soliciting foreign investment—if too quickly for its own good. “Sierra Leone,” said HRW Deputy Africa Director Rona Peligal, “is a country in a hurry.”
As in wartime, mining is front and center. Unfortunately, “structures and institutions haven’t kept up,” noted Peligal, author of Whose Development? Human Rights Abuses in Sierra Leone’s Mining Boom; her 96-page report, issued February, encompasses 18 months of 100 on-the-ground interviews with residents and workers—and talks with high-level AML representatives.
They have grand ambitions: executives envision a Sierra Leone as Africa’s top iron ore exporter—doubling GDP. Nearly a decade after they began diamond mining in 1996, operations relocated atop one of Africa’s biggest, 12.8-billion-ton magnetite reserves in the Tonkolili district. Following an estimated $2 billion in direct investment, AML employed 6,850 workers in Q4 2013—80% Sierra Leone nationals.
An enterprising second-term President Ernest Koroma embraces firms like AML in his “Agenda for Prosperity”—boosted by World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) donors, which recorded Sierra Leone’s 21% economic expansion as helping lead the continent in 2012. Of this, says the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), mining represents 30% of GDP; Chinese money has further snapped up one-third of AML’s Tonkolili mine while constructing a 124-mile railway.
To most six million multi-ethnic Sierra Leonians, consistently U.N.-ranked among the world’s poorest people, though, this matters little. First colonized in the 1780s by British settlers and African Americans, 50% now subsist on less than $1.50 daily. Laboring under the world’s 10th highest infant mortality rates, more than one-third of children are malnourished; life in AML’s Tonkolili mining district is especially dire—more than 70% of inhabitants are food-insecure.
This is no accident, says the New York-based HRW, and AML fits within a larger picture. In Q1 2013, the EITI disqualified Sierra Leone’s membership bid, citing inconsistencies between reported revenues and company taxes and royalties. One disquieting factor was the Mining Ministry’s inability to produce a $1 million receipt for an AML license. Similar discrepancies by smaller municipalities supported last year’s Transparency International (TI) study calling Sierra Leone one of the world’s most bribery prone nations.
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