Porgera Joint Venture complaints mechanism for rape victims - MiningWatch concerns
In March 2013, MiningWatch Canada wrote to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights "to alert you to the fact that...Barrick Gold is abusing the use of a non-judicial grievance mechanism to request that female victims of rape by security guards at Barrick’s Porgera Joint Venture Mine (PJV) in Papua New Guinea sign away their right to legal recourse in return for remedy packages...[S]erious concerns with the remedy program...include: use by...staff of a language not commonly understood or spoken by local women;...remedy is not tailored to the harm...; remedy is not culturally appropriate; lack of understanding by women of the process...".
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited Barrick to respond. As its response, Barrick provided the nine-page letter it sent to the UN High Commissioner dated 22 March in response to MiningWatch's letter, denying that the mechanism requires the rape victims to sign away their rights and providing details about the mechanism.
MiningWatch responded to Barrick's letter with an eight-page letter to the High Commissioner, dated 2 April 2013. MiningWatch noted "Insofar as the information submitted by Barrick in its letter is now newly public this is a positive development", but also cited the grievance mechanism's continuing "lack of compliance with 'effectiveness criteria' for project-level grievance mechanisms, as set out in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights".
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre again invited Barrick to respond. It sent the following materials in response:
- "Barrick corrects further false claims concerning Remediation Program at Porgera", Barrick Gold, 16 Apr 2013
- Letter from Dame Carol Anne Kidu, member of the review panel for the Porgera Remediation Program, to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 24 Mar 2013
- Letter from Arvind Ganesan, Human Rights Watch, re: "Inaccuracy in MiningWatch Canada letter on Barrick Gold's Porgera Gold Mine", to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 5 Apr 2013
- Letter from Ume Wainetti, National Convenor of Papua New Guinea Family And Sexual Violence Action Committee, to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (undated)