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(Berlin, Cologne 23 June 2020): In Guinea, 13 municipalities are suing for forced relocation by a mining company that is expanding its bauxite mine with the support of the German government. The inhabitants of the 13 villages in the Boké region have filed a lawsuit with the World Bank against the mining company Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG). The background is the expansion of a mine, which is also financed by a loan guarantee ("Unbound Financial Credit Guarantees") of the Federal Government in the amount of 293 million US dollars. Those affected report forced relocations and the loss of their livelihoods.

“The Federal Government supports the mining group CBG with an Unbound Financial Credit Guarantee for the lender ING-DiBa, because it wants to ensure the supply of bauxite and aluminium to the German industry,” criticises Gertrud Falk of FIAN Deutschland. “At the same time, the German government is hiding behind the standards of the World Bank. However, it has its own responsibility. Due to the long history of the bauxite mining conflict and CBG’s lack of due diligence, it needs to act on its own,” Falk continued.

"Fundamental human rights violations are unfortunately not uncommon in mining," explains Michael Reckordt of PowerShift. “Reports of displacement, drinking water pollution or violence against activists in the raw materials sector are constantly coming back to us. These can be traced back to Germany along the supply chain. The Federal Government must finally fulfil its responsibility under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and adopt a supply chain law that obliges companies to identify and actively reduce risks in their supply chain.”

Contact:

FIAN, Gertrud Falk, Email: g.falk@fian.de, tel.: 0221 474 491 15

PowerShift, Michael Reckordt, Email: michael.reckordt@power-shift.de, 030 428 054 79 / 0163 633 63 72

Further information:

Translation of a PM of the US NGO Inclusive Development, which accompanies the lawsuit of the local population against the World Bank. The English original can be found here: https://www.inclusivedevelopment.net/world-bank-backed-rio-tinto-alcoa-joint-venture-relocates-guinean-village-during-covid-19-lockdown/

World Bank-backed bauxite mine in Guinea resettles local population during pandemic and violates basic human rights

(Conakry, 20 June 2020) – While the Government of Guinea imposed travel restrictions on all municipalities, the mining company Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) involuntarily relocated more than 100 families to make way for its expansion plans near the city of Sangaredi. CBG is owned by the multinational aluminium producers Alcoa and Rio Tinto and the Government of Guinea. The expansion of the Sangaredi bauxite mine is supported by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a subsidiary of the World Bank, and European donors, including the federal government with an Unbound Financial Credit Guarantee (UFK Guarantee). The inhabitants of the village of Hamdallaye in the Boké region of Lower Guinea have been demanding compensation from CBG for the loss of their ancestral farmland and livelihoods by its bauxite mine for several years. They are now complaining that the mining company has relocated them to an unprepared location that lacks basic infrastructure. This includes adequate access to water, farmland and completed residential and sanitary facilities. The surprising relocation took place before the start of a long-awaited World Bank-backed mediation between the municipality and CBG, which was scheduled for March 2020 but has been delayed due to, among other things, the COVID-19 pandemic.

A report released today by the Guinean organisations Centre du Commerce International pour le Developpement (CECIDE) and Association pour le développement rural et l'entraide mutuelle en Guinée (ADREMGUI) and the US-based Inclusive Development International documents how CBG's relocation of the village of Hamdallaye violates the environmental and social requirements of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank's private sector lending agency. The IFC financed CBG's expansion together with US, German and French public and private lenders.

Unlike their former village in the countryside, the resettlement area is located on a refilled waste heap, without trees or topsoil, which makes the land inhospitable and offers the displaced families no shade from the intense heat.

"Without cultivable land, economic activity has been virtually impossible since our expulsion," said Mamadou Lamarana Bah, a community representative from Hamdallaye. "The consequences of the loss of their land and livelihoods are catastrophic for the living conditions of the villagers. Most people run out of money. Some were forced to migrate to the surrounding villages... or to the border with Guinea-Bissau to extract coal.

The company violates international standards and its obligation to lenders to compensate residents with equivalent alternative farmland for the land it has taken from them in recent years. CBG appears to have earmarked a 56-hectare parcel near the relocation area for income-generating activities. However, an independent monitoring report commissioned by CBG’s financiers in 2019 found that this land parcel - as well as the relocation area - is an unrehabilitated former mining area unsuitable for agriculture. It is not nearly as large as the area taken from the mine by the municipality of Hamdallaye. Satellite images analyzed for the report show that CBG has taken more than 1000 hectares (10 square kilometers) of Hamdallaye's ancestral arable land since 2005.

"Relocating the Hamdallaye community under conditions that are guaranteed to worsen their lives during a global health emergency is the pinnacle of irresponsibility," said David Pred, Executive Director of Inclusive Development International. “The deplorable land and water acquisition practices and management of CBG are far from the standards that their main shareholders Rio Tinto and Alcoa claim to follow and that their lenders demand.”

CBG's relocation of the Hamdallaye families began on March 21, 2020, the same month that the World Bank subsidiary's Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) was due to begin a long-delayed conciliation process. The CBG had agreed to the dispute settlement procedure after residents of 13 villages filed a complaint accusing them of seizing their ancestral land, destroying their livelihoods and damaging the local environment. Concern about the proposed relocation of Hamdallaye was an essential part of the complaint. Conciliation was postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"It is deeply disappointing that CBG did not postpone the relocation of the municipality of Hamdallaye until the parties to the dispute agreed on fair relocation conditions in the conciliation procedure," says Pascal Tenguinao, CECIDE Managing Director. "We hope that the damage done to this community is not irreversible and will be remedied without further delay".

The organizations have urged CBG's funders to enforce the environmental and social requirements of the loan agreements and require the company to comply with the requirements immediately.

 

background

Since its inception in 1973, CBG has dismantled large swathes of land in the lush Boké region near the city of Sangaredi. For years, the joint venture has disregarded the customary land rights of local communities and expropriated their farmland without compensation or offering alternative land. This has seriously disrupted the traditional crop rotation system and led to soil degradation. CBG’s activities also had far-reaching environmental and social impacts: The most serious is drinking water pollution and preventing access to clean water. Opencast mining has a serious impact on biodiversity, including critical habitats for endangered chimpanzees. These impacts of the mine were the subject of the complaint submitted by residents of thirteen affected villages to the IFC Complaints Office (CAO) in 2019.

CBG is a joint venture between the Government of Guinea and three multinational mining companies: Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Dadco.

In 2016, IFC provided a $200 million loan to expand the Company's mining operations. The U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation (now known as the International Development Finance Corporation) granted an additional $150 million. Another 473 million $ provided by commercial banks: the French Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole and Natixis, the German subsidiary of ING-Bank, ING-DiBa, and two Guinean banks, the Société Générale de Banques en Guinée and the Banque Internationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie de la Guinée, a member of the BNP Paribas group. The German government guaranteed part of the financing through its untied loan guarantee programme.

Inclusive Development International has traced bauxite from CBG's mine to a number of refineries and smelters in North America and Europe, where it is processed into primary aluminum and sold to major brands that manufacture cars and aluminum packaging for food, beverage and other consumer goods. These include Coca-Cola, Campbell's Soup, Nespresso, Audi, BMW, Fiat-Chrysler, Ferrari, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Volvo, Honda and others.

For more information, please contact:

In Conakry (French): Saa Pascal Tenguiano ; +224 628 20 30 38; tenguipascal@gmail.com

In Asheville (English): David Pred; +1 917-280-2705; david@inclusivedevelopment.net; Twitter: @preddavid

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