In their separate responses to RAID of March 2015, both Acacia Mining plc (formerly known as African Barrick Gold plc – ABG) and Barrick Gold Corporation state:
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The endorsement of the GPs in June 2011 was seen as an important milestone in the fight to ensure that rights are protected in the context of business operations. Whereas the VPSHR, which date from 2000, focus upon impacts arising from security arrangements, the GPs encompass the full range of human rights that companies can impact. Given the GPs’ over-arching status, increasingly there are calls to fully align the VPSHR with the GPs.
In March 2013 proceedings were brought in the High Court of England and Wales by the leading law firm Leigh Day against African Barrick Gold (ABG; now Acacia Mining) and its 100% owned subsidiary, North Mara Gold Mine (NMGML) on behalf of a group of Tanzanian villagers. The claim was that ABG and its subsidiary were liable, through complicity, for killing and injuring of locals at the North Mara mine by police guarding the mine. The companies denied the allegations.
RAID, Bread for All and Fastenopfer have released an update to their report PR or Progress? Glencore’s Corporate Responsibility in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, published in English in June 2014. On the eve of publication, Glencore attempted to delay the report’s release, claiming that it contained ‘significant factual errors’ and ‘detailed information and key findings’ which had not previously been put to the company – a breach, according to Glencore, of the Memorandum of Understanding agreed at the outset of the research.
News that African Barrick Gold (ABG) has changed its name to Acacia Mining comes as no surprise. The brand has become toxic and identified with human rights abuses. But can a leopard change its spots?
On the evening of 17 November 2014 Boniface Umpula Nyembo of Action Contre l’Impunité pour les Droits Humains (ACIDH) was released after a court hearing in Lubumbashi.
RAID is today issuing a call to action following the arbitrary arrest and detention of Boniface Umpula Nyembo, of the respected Congolese human rights organisation Action contre l’impunité pour les droits humains (ACIDH), a long-standing partner of RAID.
RAID wrote to several US public pension funds and the Transport for London pension fund over a year ago asking them about their investments with hedge fund Och-Ziff. A UK mining company had done a deal with the Zimbabwean regime to buy platinum assets using money from Och-Ziff, thereby financing President Mugabe’s violent campaign to subvert 2008 elections.
The UK security contractor G4S has been accused of failing to meet international standards and committing serious human rights violations in relation to the treatment of asylum seekers detained at an off-shore processing centre in Papua New Guinea, operated on behalf of the Australian Government.
RAID wrote to CalPERS back in July 2013, again in November 2013 and most recently in September 2014, asking the fund about its investments with hedge fund Och-Ziff, in the light of serious questions concerning the use of Och-Ziff money to back a mining deal in Zimbabwe that ultimately funded Mugabe’s violent subversion of 2008 elections (more details here).