(Berlin, Cologne 23 June 2020): In Guinea, 13 municipalities are complaining about the forced relocation by a mining company that, with the support of the German government, is expanding its bauxite mine. The residents 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 Loan Guarantees" (UFK 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 is supporting 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 German industry," criticises Gertrud Falk of FIAN Deutschland. “At the same time, the federal government is hiding behind the standards of the World Bank. But she has her own responsibility. Due to the long history of the bauxite mining conflict and CBG's lack of due diligence, it has to act itself," Falk continued.
"Unfortunately, fundamental human rights violations are not uncommon in mining," explains Michael Reckordt of PowerShift. “We are constantly receiving reports of displacement, drinking water pollution or violence against activists in the extractive sector. These can be traced back to Germany along the supply chain. The Federal Government must finally fulfil its responsibilities under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and adopt a supply chain law obliging 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
For more information:
FIAN: Bauxite mining leads to environmental damage and human rights violations
PowerShift: Land grabbing for German cars
Translation of a PM of the US NGO Inclusive Development, which accompanies the complaint 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 had imposed travel restrictions on all municipalities, the mining company Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG) has involuntarily relocated more than a hundred 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 Loan 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 due to 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, arable land 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, scheduled for March 2020, but delayed due, among other things, to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A report published 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 lending body for the private sector. The IFC financed the expansion of CBG together with US, German and French public and private lenders.
Unlike its former village in the countryside, the resettlement area lies on a refilled waste dump, without trees or topsoil, making the land inhospitable and offering the displaced families no shade from the intense heat.
"Without a 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 disastrous for the living conditions of the villagers. Most people have 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 resettlement area for income-generating activities. However, an independent monitoring report commissioned by CBG’s financiers in 2019 found that this land parcel, like 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 analysed for the report show that CBG has taken over 1000 hectares (10 square kilometers) of Hamdallaye's ancestral farmland since 2005.
"Relocating the Hamdallaye community in conditions that are guaranteed to worsen their lives during a global health emergency is the height of irresponsibility," says David Pred, Executive Director of Inclusive Development International. ‘CBG’s deplorable land and water acquisition and management practices are far from the standards that its main shareholders Rio Tinto and Alcoa claim to follow and that its lenders demand.’
CBG's relocation of families from Hamdallaye began on 21 March 2020, the same month in which the World Bank subsidiary's Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) was scheduled to start a long-delayed conciliation. The CBG had agreed to the dispute settlement procedure after residents of 13 villages filed a complaint accusing them of grabbing 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. Mediations have been postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
"It is deeply disappointing that CBG has not postponed the relocation of the municipality of Hamdallaye until the parties to the dispute have agreed on fair relocation conditions as part of the conciliation process," says Pascal Tenguinao, CEO of CECIDE. “We hope that the damage done to this community will not be irreversible and will be remedied without further delay”.
The organisations have asked CBG's lenders to enforce the environmental and social requirements of the credit agreements and require the company to comply with the requirements without delay.
background
Since its inception in 1973, CBG has mined large tracts 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 arable land 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 effects of the mine were the subject of a complaint filed by residents of thirteen affected villages with the IFC Complaints Office (CAO) in 2019.
CBG is a joint venture between the Guinean government and three multinational mining companies: Rio Tinto, Alcoa and Dadco.
In 2016, the IFC provided a $200 million loan to expand the company's mining operations. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation granted the U.S. government (now known as the International Development Finance Corporation) another $150 million. Another 473 million $ have been 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, 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 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 produce cars and aluminum packaging for food, beverages and other consumer goods. These include Coca-Cola, Campbells 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
