CASE STUDIES

Ethical Gold: Human Rights Risk Assessment

The Project

Kumi completed a Human Rights Risk Assessment (HRRA) for a gold mining company operating in Africa. The company wanted to understand the extent to which its policies and procedures aligned with industry standards, have actionable recommendations to close identified gaps, and map and categorise risks across its sites.

Kumi benchmarked the company’s internal and external policies, procedures, and memorandums against ICMM Human Rights Due Diligence Matrix, UNGPs effectiveness criterion, and the IFC Performance Standards. We interviewed both corporate and site-based staff, alongside a thorough document review.

Our recommendations

Kumi’s report summarised potential human rights risks impacting stakeholders at the mine sites and surrounding communities, a detailed gap analysis against international good practice of the current state of the management system to manage these risks, and a set of actionable recommendations to address identified gaps. The recommendations included opportunities to enhance:

Responsibilities and accountabilities for human rights risks at the corporate level.
The integration of human rights risks into the company’s enterprise risk management.
The effectiveness of the company’s grievance mechanism so that all relevant stakeholders can raise and resolve complaints or grievances.
The company’s Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement standard.

The outcome

Implementation of the recommendations will deliver more robust and effective human rights due diligence, in line with international good practice. This proactive approach will help increase the company’s capacity to identify and address human rights risks and contribute significantly to protecting and promoting human rights within its sphere of influence.

Fiona Hutmacher

Manager

Contact Fiona