In 2019, 13 Guinean villages lodged a formal complaint before the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO), the independent watchdog of the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The complaint filed with assistance from 11th Hour grantees — Centre du Commerce International pour le Développement (CECIDE), the Association pour le Développement Rural et l’Entraide Mutuelle de Guinée (ADREMGUI), and Inclusive Development International (IDI) — accuse the IFC of breaching its own standards and international law by financing the mining operations of La Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinée (CBG), which communities allege are responsible for a number of human rights impacts. CBG is a joint venture between the government and companies like Alcoa and Rio Tinto, and is Guinea’s second largest bauxite producer.
Guinea is home to over one third of the world’s bauxite reserves, which is the primary source of aluminum used by major consumer brands to make products like cars, beverage cans and technology. CBG has been exporting bauxite since 1973 and is now implementing a $1 billion expansion, with partial funding from the IFC, the private sector lending arm of the World Bank.
In the last five years, Guinea’s bauxite sector has seen rapid growth thanks mainly to the Société Minière de Boké (SMB), a consortium which includes a company belonging to China’s largest aluminum producer. This rapid expansion has come with significant unrest.
Growing protests are symptomatic of the government’s failure to use mining profits to further local development, and have been influenced by deep-rooted anger at the sector’s impacts on livelihoods, health, and the environment.
In 2017, several riots broke out in Boké “due to anger at inadequate local services, particularly a lack of water and electricity, resentment at the rapid expansion of mining and broader concerns about the impacts of mining on local communities,” noted a report from 11th Hour Project grantee Human Rights Watch (HRW). “The population sees the financial investment a company is making, they see taxes being collected, trucks taking bauxite from their farmland abroad [for export], they breathe the dust, and they ask, ‘what do we get out of it?’” a senior ministry of mines official told Human Rights Watch.
Bauxite mining is considered surface mining so its impacts on the land are incredibly vast. Bauxite typically sits in a 2 meter thick layer of earth beneath the topsoil which means that to extract Guinea’s huge reserves, countless farmers are losing their ancestral lands, most without adequate compensation or alternative sources of income. The construction of mining roads obstruct or block rivers and streams, and runoff from open mines, particularly during the rainy season, significantly affects the appearance of surface waters. The flow of sediment into rivers can bring with it aluminum and iron compounds and naturally occurring heavy metals that are dangerous at high concentrations. This disproportionately impacts women and girls, who are primarily responsible for finding and transporting water in rural communities.
By filing this complaint, local communities affected by CBG’s operations are taking the fight for their rights to corporate boardrooms around the world. The villagers, the IFC and the CBG mine owner are currently engaged in a mediation process that is being facilitated by the CAO. Obtaining redress for human rights impacts like the ones suffered by these 13 villages is difficult. This is why accountability mechanisms like the CAO provides a rare but important avenue for communities to air grievances, demand redress, and build pressure on companies and governments to change their practices in a more systemic way.
For more information on the case, click here. Read the HRW report on bauxite mining in Guinea.