The Guinea-based subsidiary of mining giant AngloGold Ashanti, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies, has agreed to a financial settlement with families who were forcibly relocated to make way for its gold mine in Siguiri prefecture in late 2015 and 2016. A joint statement published today describes key elements of the confidential settlement agreement, which was signed in Coyah, Guinea on September 13, 2024. A portion of the total settlement amount will be provided directly to the affected families for individual compensation and the rest will be paid into a trust fund to support community-led development and livelihood restoration projects. The agreement concludes a six-year mediation process, during which a series of interim agreements were reached on a range of issues from access to water and schools to security and human rights.  

“We are overjoyed to have reached this agreement,” said Balla Camara, a community leader and former mayor of the local township. “When we began our struggle, nobody believed we would get one franc from this company and we were told to give up, but we persisted and today we can hold our heads high again.”

More than 360 families were driven from their land and homes in a cluster of villages that became known as “Area One” in Siguiri Prefecture—many of them artisanal miners, merchants and farmers whose ancestors have lived in the region for more than 800 years...

The settlement agreement announced today concludes a series of mediations between the company and the Area One community that began in July 2018 under the auspices of the World Bank Group’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO). The mediations were initiated after affected communities filed a complaint to the CAO regarding the IFC’s financial ties to the mine operator. 

The complaint, filed with the support of Guinean non-governmental organizations Mêmes Droits Pour Tous (MDT) and Centre du Commerce International pour le Développement (CECIDE), and the international human rights group Inclusive Development International, outlined how the IFC was linked to the Siguiri mine expansion through its client, Nedbank, which provided a general purpose loan to AngloGold Ashanti in 2015, the year the evictions began. The complaint described how the evictions were carried out in the context of violence, intimidation and arbitrary arrests by state security forces, and how the community was resettled into dire conditions, without access to water, schooling or healthcare and no effort to restore their livelihoods.

“The suffering endured by the Area One community cannot be undone. But this settlement will go a long way to helping the community rebuild the livelihoods they lost to the mine, said Aboubacar Diallo, Executive Director of CECIDE.

“This final agreement took a long time to obtain, but we must commend the leaders of AngloGold Ashanti for remaining engaged in the dialogue process all these years and finally delivering a satisfactory remedy to the families who were harmed by the expansion of the Siguiri mine,” said Fréderic Foromo Loua, Executive Director of MDT...

“This was a tremendous victory for the Area One community, which will be an inspiration to mining-affected communities around the world,” said David Pred, executive director of Inclusive Development International. “Sadly, comprehensive remedial outcomes like this are exceedingly rare for communities that file complaints to development finance accountability mechanisms, and this is the first time we’ve ever seen the IFC actively support a resolution in this way. We hope this case will be a harbinger of change and that we will start to see more examples of development banks supporting remediation efforts when their investments cause harm.”  

The CAO will monitor implementation of the global agreement for two years...