Barrick Gold Corporation

Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world. (Human Rights Watch website)

Systemic Failures Underscore Need for Canadian Government Regulation

February 1, 2011

(Toronto) – Private security personnel employed at a gold mine in Papua New Guinea have been implicated in alleged gang rapes and other violent abuses, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Porgera mine has produced billions of dollars of gold in its twenty years of operation, and  is operated and 95 percent owned by Barrick Gold, a Canadian company that is the world’s largest gold producer.

The 94-page report, “Gold’s Costly Dividend: Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Gold Mine,” identifies systemic failures on the part of Toronto-based Barrick Gold that kept the company from recognizing the risk of abuses, and responding to allegations that abuses had occurred. The report examines the impact of Canada’s failure to regulate the overseas activities of its companies and also calls on Barrick to address environmental and health concerns around the mine with greater transparency.

“We interviewed women who described brutal gang rapes by security guards at Barrick’s mine,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, senior business and human rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The company should have acted long before Human Rights Watch conducted its research and prompted them into action”.

Human Rights Watch said that in response to its investigation, Barrick has taken meaningful steps to investigate past abuses and make it less likely for similar abuses to occur in future.

Most of the world’s mining and exploration companies are based in Canada.

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Barrick Gold Corporation [Barrick] is a leading international gold producer, with a portfolio of 26 operating mines and nine advanced exploration and development projects located on five continents, and large land positions on many prospective mineral trends.

The following viewpoint came from the Barrick Gold Corporation 2009 Responsibility Report

In 2010, Barrick is focused on meeting production and cost targets, completing projects on budget and on time, and maintaining our strong financial position. These are all very important priorities; however, how we achieve these goals will be just as important as reaching them.

Over the past year since joining Barrick, I have met with a host of stakeholders – investors, government officials, our own employees, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and suppliers. Listening to them has provided great insight into many of the broader trends that are affecting the mining industry.

We are seeing increasingly high public expectations of how companies should conduct themselves. There is also greater scrutiny of the mining sector by critics, NGOs, communities, governments, and other stakeholders, especially in developing countries. This is coupled with calls for more reporting, accountability, and legislative oversight of the mining sector. We see similar trends in project financing, where a major part of the discussion now focuses on social and environmental issues.

Mining, as an extractive industry, has a significant impact on the communities and environments where we operate. In order to mine, we must disturb land and use both energy and water. Our operations can also have a social impact on local communities, for example through resettlement or shifting social dynamics. I believe our efforts and innovative approaches in managing and mitigating these impacts are making all the difference, as we generate meaningful benefits for our host communities.

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 This article is from the April 2009 issue of Beyond Borders: A Barrick Gold Report on Responsible Mining.

Known as the people of the three rivers, the Wiradjuri have inhabited modern-day New South Wales, Australia for at least 40,000 years. At the time of European colonization, there were an estimated 3,000 Wiradjuri living in the region, representing the largest cultural footprint in the state. Their country extends from the Great Dividing Range in the east, and is bordered by the Macquarie, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee rivers. The Wiradjuri were a hunter-gatherer society, made up of small clans or family groups whose movements followed seasonal food gathering and ritual patterns. The decline of the Wiradjuri population in New South Wales was accelerated in the 1820s when indigenous people were forced off their traditional lands by an influx of European settlers. Today, major Wiradjuri populations can be found in the New South Wales towns of Condobolin, Peak Hill, Narrandera and Griffith. (With files from Bathurst Regional Council, New South Wales)

Five years ago, the Wiradjuri community of Condobolin decided to take their future into their own hands. In the words of one Elder, it was to be “a new beginning” for the long marginalized, oft en overlooked indigenous community in the heart of New South Wales, Australia.

 That hope for a better future and “a new beginning” was enshrined as the motto of the Wiradjuri Condobolin Corporation (WCC), an organization that is transforming the lives of local Wiradjuri people, creating new opportunities for the community that were unthinkable just a few years ago.

The WCC was created through a Native Title Agreement between the Wiradjuri people and Barrick, negotiated during the development of the company’s Cowal gold mine. That agreement included provisions and funding to ensure Wiradjuri share in the benefits of mining, empowering them to break the cycle of despair that had gripped their community for years. 

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This article is from the April 2009 issue of Beyond Borders: A Barrick Gold Report on Responsible Mining.

About Porgera Joint Venture, PNG

• Barrick is the operator (95 per cent interest), PNG government and landowners (5 per cent)
• 2, 500 employee and over 500 contractors
• Significant investments in health, education, skills training, infrastructure and local business development
• A partner in the “Restoring Justice Initiative”,  a government community effort to strengthen law and order, which encompasses issues such as violence against women

Women in Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Valley, home to the Porgera Joint Venture mine, are using resources provided by the company to pursue higher education, gain new skills and become financially independent.

Through its assistance programs, the Porgera mine is helping local Porgeran women become respected members and leaders in a society that has traditionally been male-dominated. In 1999, the company funded the establishment of the Porgera District
Women’s Association, a non-governmental organization that now has a membership of more than 2,000 women across 20 wards in PNG. With financial support from the mine, the group is providing local women with training in leadership and management skills, health and education, law and order, micro business and agriculture.

MICRO CREDIT SCHEME

One of the association’s most successful programs is the micro credit scheme project, which loans money to women for small-scale projects that generate income. The program has a very successful 99.9 per cent repayment rate. Since it commenced in 2000, it has enabled 181 women to become self-reliant.

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 This article is from the April 2010 issue of Beyond Borders: A Barrick Gold Report on Responsible Mining. The Lake Zone Health Initiative was established by Barrick to help combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis and improve access to health services for underserved populations. This collaborative effort involves the Tanzanian government, aid agencies and other partners.

They are called the Big Three. They are HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Together, they kill thousands of people each year in Tanzania.

These life-threatening diseases pose a serious risk to employees in the mining sector and communities near mining operations, resulting in soaring health care costs and a high rate of employee absenteeism.

Building on a long history of providing successful disease prevention programs in Tanzania, in 2008 Barrick launched the Lake Zone Health Initiative in an effort to improve health services to underserved populations in the Lake Zone region. Home to nine million residents, Tanzania’s Lake Zone wraps around Lake Victoria and spans seven regions, including the Mara and Kahama districts where the Bulyanhulu, Buzwagi and North Mara mines are located. While these mines are now operated by African Barrick Gold, the new public company created by Barrick earlier this year, the commitment to continue this flagship community health program remains as strong as ever.

The public-private sector health initiative is making it possible for companies, the government, health NGOs and donors like USAID to work collaboratively together to combat HIV, malaria and TB.

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