Guinea: Seeking redress for forced displacement from AngloGold Ashanti
In late 2015, an artisanal mining community in a remote part of the impoverished West African nation of Guinea was evicted at gunpoint and robbed of their land and livelihoods to make way for an open-pit gold mine owned by one of the world’s largest gold mining companies. Some four years later, through a concerted international advocacy strategy supported by Inclusive Development International and two Guinean NGOs, the community has been able to bring company executives to the negotiating table and secure a series of agreements to begin to redress the harms they’ve suffered.
CASE FILE
Location: Guinea, Siguiri region
Project: Gold Mine
Companies:AngloGold Ashanti
Key concerns:
Military-backed forced evictions and violence
Inadequate compensation
Loss of income and failure to provide livelihood assistance
Poor conditions at resettlement site, including inadequate access to water, sanitation, education and health care
Dust and other environmental hazards from the mine site
Community goals:
Adequate and accessible household water supply, schools, health facilities and market at resettlement site
Remedial compensation and livelihood assistance
Long-term benefit sharing and other economic development opportunities
Medical care for victims of 2015 violence and guarantees of non-repetition / compliance by AngloGold Ashanti with U.N. Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights
Key investors and financiers:
AngloGold Ashanti’s major lenders include the International Finance Corporation through its financial intermediary Nedbank, ANZ Banking Group, Bank of Montreal, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Barclays Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank Commerce, Citibank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Royal Bank of Canada, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs & Co, HSBC Bank, Jian Sing Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley Group, Scotiabank, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS, and Westpac Banking. Key shareholders as of 2019 include: BlackRock, VanEck, Vanguard, APG, PGGM, TIAA, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, California Government Employees’ State Retirement System, and Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec.
Our partners:
Centre du Commerce International pour le Développement (CECIDE) and Les Mêmes Droits Pour Tous (MDT)
One of these actors is the IFC, which, along with the African Development Bank, indirectly financed AngloGold Ashanti through a South African commercial bank, Nedbank. A number of large asset managers, including the U.S. giant BlackRock and nearly a dozen pension funds, hold equity stakes in AngloGold Ashanti. AngloGold Ashanti’s financiers also include large commercial banks, such as Citibank and Standard Chartered, with consumer-facing reputations to protect. Downstream, gold from AngloGold Ashanti’s mines is refined in South Africa and traded on the London Bullion Exchange, which has human rights standards for suppliers.
The CAO found the complaint admissible and began assessing whether it was suitable for mediation or if it should be transferred to its compliance unit for an investigation.
We also wrote to AngloGold Ashanti setting out the community’s desire to enter into mediations to remediate the harms they had suffered and to negotiate development benefits from the project. We also engaged with AngloGold Ashanti’s investors and financiers, including U.S. investment firm BlackRock, South African, European and U.S. pension funds, the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, and a number of major commercial banks that provide financial services to AngloGold. A number of these actors communicated their concerns to the company, which proved critical to getting them to the mediation table and leveling the playing field in a highly asymmetrical power relationship.
AngloGold Ashanti is the world’s third-largest gold mining company, with operations on three continents and revenue of $4.25 billion in 2016. Its largest shareholder is the U.S. asset manager BlackRock, whose CEO, Larry Fink, has committed the firm to place environmental and social considerations at the center of its investment decisions and to use its voice and vote at shareholder meetings to advance sustainability goals.
AngloGold Ashanti’s other shareholders include South Africa’s government pension fund, along with 11 North American, European and Asian pension funds, including PGGM, TIAA and APG. These pension funds claim to invest responsibly and have guidelines protecting people and the environment. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, also holds a significant stake in AngloGold Ashanti, despite its Ethics Council recommending in 2013 that the fund divest from the company due to serious environmental damage that it caused in Ghana.
Some of the world’s largest banks have financed AngloGold Ashanti. In 2014, 18 major commercial banks provided $1.47 billion in general-purpose loans to the gold company. These are ANZ Banking Group, Bank of Montreal, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Barclays Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank Commerce, Citibank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Dain Bosworth Inc. (now part of Royal Bank of Canada), Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs & Co, HSBC Bank, Jian Sing Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley Group, Scotiabank, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS, and Westpac Banking.
In 2015, Nedbank of South Africa provided a $105 million loan to AngloGold Ashanti in conjunction with another South African bank. The loan was for general purposes, meaning AngloGold Ashanti could use the money as it saw fit, including funding its mining operations in Guinea and around the world. This was relevant to the Area One community, because Nedbank was previously the recipient a $280 million loan from the IFC and the African Development Bank, which was designed to increase lending for “resource-extraction projects,” amongst other purposes, across the African continent.