Conakry, Guinea, June 19, 2020// – While communities across Guinea were under Covid-19 shelter-in-place orders, a joint venture owned by mining giants Alcoa and Rio Tinto relocated more than a hundred families to expand its sprawling bauxite mine.
A report released today by Guinean organizations 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 resettlement of Hamdallaye village violates the environmental and social requirements of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private sector lending arm.
According to the report the dust and dynamite blasting from CBG’s mining activities had made living conditions at the community’s former two-hundred-year-old village unbearable and gave the residents little choice but to accept relocation.
Unlike their lush former village, the resettlement site is situated on a previously mined hilltop, without trees or topsoil, rendering the land non-arable and devoid of shade to shelter the displaced families from the intense heat.
“Without cultivable land, economic activities are almost non-existent since our displacement, said Mamadou Lamarana Bah, a community representative from Hamdallaye.
The Rio Tinto-Alcoa joint venture has failed to meet international standards and its commitment to its lenders to provide the community with alternative “equivalent” farmland to compensate them for the land that it has taken in recent years.
“Resettlement of the Hamdallaye community into conditions that are guaranteed to make their lives worse off during a global public health emergency is the height of irresponsibility,” said David Pred, Executive Director of Inclusive Development International.
CBG’s physical relocation of Hamdallaye families began on March 21, 2020, the same month that a long-delayed mediation was set to begin through the IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO).
“It is deeply disappointing that CBG did not delay the relocation of the Hamdallaye community until they had a reached an agreement on fair resettlement terms through the mediation process,” said Pascal Tenguinao, Executive Director of CECIDE. “We hope that the damage that has been done to this community is not irreversible and will be rectified without further delay.”
The organizations have called upon CBG’s financiers to enforce the environmental and social requirements in the loan covenants and demand that the company immediately bring the project into compliance.
The report is available at: https://www.