London gold body faces trial over Tanzania miners’ deaths

About a million people are involved in artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Tanzania, one of the main gold producers in Africa. AFP

The families of John and Peter – pseudonyms for two young Tanzanian artisanal miners killed while prospecting for gold at the North Mara Gold Mine – are pinning their hopes for justice and redress on the British legal system. It’s been almost five years since the two men were killed in separate incidents of alleged police violence at a mine supplying gold to a refinery that is part of the Switzerland-based MKS PAMP SA group.

The High Court in London is finally taking on their lawsuit against the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), alleging that it wrongfully certified gold from a Tanzanian mine as being free from serious human rights abuses. The LBMA oversees the world’s largest gold market and upholds responsible sourcing standards.

Swiss refineries rely on the LBMA stamp of approval for the international trading of gold and silver bars. The LBMA Good Delivery system includes measures to ensure the highest quality of precious metals bars enter the market as well as measures to combat money laundering, climate change and human rights abuses.

“The precedent that would be set by this case is huge,” says Glen Mpufane, the Geneva-based director of mining at IndustriALL Global Union. “What is important about this case is that it goes beyond the usual greenwashing, reputational risk of certification schemes and so on. It brings accountability, legal accountability… access to remedy for artisanal small-scale mining. The ripples of this case will go through the mining industry.”

British law firm Leigh Day filed the case in December 2022 on behalf of the families of the two artisanal miners killed in 2019 at the North Mara Gold Mine. The mine is majority-owned by Canadian multinational Barrick Gold Corporation, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies. Over the years, significant amounts of gold from that mine have been refined by Swiss refinery MKS PAMP and its India subsidiary MMTC-PAMP.

The LBMA initially objected to the case being heard in the UK and pushed for it to be heard in Tanzania instead. But on June 14 the association conceded the initial jurisdictional dispute, allowing for the case to be heard in Britain. In Tanzania, the families of artisanal miners would not be able to afford to engage lawyers, whereas in the UK a legal firm can take them on a no-win, no-fee basis, explains Leigh Day. This modality does not exist in Tanzania.

Stalling tactic

Anneke Van Woudenberg, a prominent human rights advocate and director of the NGO RAID, says such jurisdictional disputes are a common stalling tactic by multinationals. She says the UK trial for the LBMA will have consequences well beyond the gold industry.

“This is the first time a certification scheme is being challenged,” Van Woudenberg says. “What is important about that is that these kinds of certification schemes exist across different sectors. We have them for palm oil, critical minerals. […] These schemes are popping up on a very frequent basis, particularly in Europe. Often these are schemes run by companies. […] They mark their own homework.”

Unlike Switzerland, the UK is a jurisdiction where the powerless can hold companies accountable for human rights and environmental damage. Nigerians, for example, have been able to bring a lawsuit against oil giant Shell in the UK over the environmental damage done by oil spills in the Niger Delta. Swiss voters, however, rejected a Responsible Business Initiative that would have made such actions possible.

The core question in the Leigh Day case is whether certification bodies such as the LBMA are legally accountable for a certification process that is claimed to facilitate human rights abuses. The plaintiffs assert that the LBMA failed to uphold its “Responsible Gold” standards and enabled violence by Tanzanian police to continue by certifying gold from the North Mara mine as responsible.

Gunfire and tear gas

Ade clearly remembers the morning his brother John died. He explains how the siblings grew up together in the shadow of the North Mara mine, going to prospect for gold in waste rock, a common activity for the community. Waste rock is usually dumped by mine companies because they lack economically interesting amounts of mineral. For artisanal miners and their families, a small amount of gold makes the difference between buying school shoes or not.

“Knowing gold is not something you are taught – it’s a cultural thing we inherit from our family,” says Ade, who has been given a pseudonym by SWI swissinfo.ch in line with an anonymity order requested in the case to ensure the safety of plaintiffs and their relatives.  “My family has been surviving from gold for many years.”

Barrick’s North Mara mine wall and its boulder by local residences © 2022 RAID

That morning, like many others, started with the brothers and a small group of people going to search for gold after enjoying breakfast at a local café. They went to an area where the mine regularly allowed artisanal miners to search for rocks. Police sometimes allowed people, who were technically trespassing, to access mine waste rock.

That day in December 2019, however, ended with two police vehicles arriving on site and unleashing gunfire and tear gas on about 200 artisanal miners searching for gold. Ade took refuge behind a rock and watched the chaos unfold around him.

“The police were scaring people away by shooting and using tear gas,” Ade says over a video call with the help of a translator. He says he saw a female officer kneel, aim and fatally shoot his brother.

“I held onto his chest and found that he was still alive. “Brother, please help me,” Ade recounts with a steady voice. He says his brother died in his arms and police forcibly took the body away.

But it is not the police who Ade blames for this tragic incident. He blames the mining company, which has security arrangements with local police. “If the company had not come to our village and operated [the mine] the way it is operated, my brother would still be alive,” he says. And he blames the LBMA which issued certificates confirming that gold from that mine has been responsibly sourced.

“It would be responsible if the mine would share the gold with the local people,” says John’s mother Imani, who left her home and village due to this traumatic experience. “Sadly, when our children get access to gold, they get killed. It would have been better if they just stopped them from getting the gold without the killing. How can you say they are getting the gold responsibly when they are killing people?”

Serial abuses

John’s story is not a one-off. “You have 20 solid years of masses of evidence of serious abuses of human rights, and yet the LBMA has consistently certified this gold as good delivery gold,” says Dan Leader, senior partner at Leigh Day, in a video call with SWI swissinfo.ch.

Reports from NGOs have documented dozens of incidents of serious violence perpetrated by private and public security in and around the North Mara mine since Barrick acquired the mine in 2006. These reports have led to legal action against Barrick Gold in British and Canadian courts. “What we have here is a case of serial human rights abuse,” says Glen Mpufane. “It’s not the first time. It is serial.”

Riding along the mine wall from Kwimange to Nyangoto, North Mara, Tanzania © 2022 RAID

In November 2022, RAID publicly reported on 32 incidents of shootings, torture and other assaults of artisanal miners, resulting in six deaths since Barrick took operational control of the mine in September 2019. These incidents, together with those previously reported by RAID, brought the death toll at the North Mara mine to at least 77 killed and 304 wounded by police responsible for mine security.

North Mara remains Africa’s deadliest mine for security-related violence, according to RAID. “The human rights violations continue to be incredibly serious,” says Van Woudenberg.

There are about 150 police assigned to guard the North Mara mine. These are Tanzanian police who are there under a memorandum of understanding with the mine. Known as mine police locally, they perform no other function other than to provide security for the mine.  “They are paid per day by the mine, housed by the mine, equipped by the mine, fed by the mine,” she explains.

Local media reports suggest there have been at least three killings by police at or near the mine in May alone. Human Rights Watch (HRW) this month said that Tanzanian police guarding the mineExternal link had been linked to the killing of six people and the injury of several others since February 2024.

“Going to the mine now is very dangerous,” says Mosi, the cousin of the second miner in the legal case, who is now providing for 19 people, including the deceased’s wife and family along with his own. “I stopped going to the mine because I was once injured by police and a lot of people are dying.”

“When someone is missing, everybody gets worried that they have been shot by police and start searching in hospitals,” says Zuwena, Peter’s widow. Peter turned up at the Tarime morgue after failing to return home from the mine one night. She helps support the family now by selling vegetables, a much lower source of revenue than gold mining.

Causal responsibility

Alex Wessely, Leigh Day senior associate, lays out the different layers of responsibility for these violent incidents. First come the individual police officers who pull the trigger and the direct employer, the Tanzanian police. Then Barrick, as operators of the mine, which relies heavily on the violent Tanzanian police, may also have liability. Next up is the refinery that takes the gold and finally the LBMA, which is targeted as the causative actor by the case.

“If you keep going up the chain, the reason that that mine is profitable is because every year MMTC-PAMP gets a certificates [from the LBMA] saying that they are a Good Delivery gold company,” he says.

In order to get that certificate, the refiner is supposed to prove that the gold that it sells is a particular size, a particular purity, a particular weight, but also that it’s been sourced free from human rights abuses. “Our clients allege that’s just not true,” he says. “And that’s never been true at this mine.”

“If the LBMA had refused to give that certificate or challenged the responsible sourcing, then two things would happen,” he adds. “Either the mine would have stopped operating, or the financial risk to the mine of losing that certificate would have been enough for them to get to grips with that human rights problem because not every mine in the world has this level of alleged human rights abuse.”

If the LBMA had removed the certificate, which he argues it should have if it followed its own policies, it would have created the motivation for the other actors in this gold supply chain to finally sort out its human rights problem. “That’s why we say the LBMA is the causative actor here,” Wessely says.

Civil society groups, including RAID, Global Witness and SWISSAID, wrote a letter this year criticising (again) the LBMA’s responsible sourcing programme for failing to address human rights abuses and illicit gold in supply chains. The LBMA says it has taken steps to strengthen transparency of the gold supply chain over the past ten years.

In response to the Leigh Day case, the LBMA issued a statement noting that refiners on its Good Delivery List must implement its responsible guidance and obtain annual third-party audits to ensure compliance.  “Our role is to support raising standards around human rights in the supply chain,” it said. “LBMA will be defending the substance of the claim when we proceed to trial.”

LBMA Deputy CEO Sakhila Mirza told SWI swissinfo.ch that the LBMA is committed to bringing together all the necessary parties to drive positive change within the industry.  “Industry programmes play a vital role in driving responsible practices throughout the gold supply chain, but are also not the single answer in any given sector,” she noted.

MMTC-PAMP said it “performs enhanced due diligence on every supply chain” and “rigorously follows” the LBMA guidelines. It declined to share the full report of an audit conducted by Synergy in 2022 or comment on how much gold it continues to refine from the North Mara mine in Tanzania. Synergy’s executive summary assessed the risk as “high” on the issue of security forces management and potential human rights abuses, pointing to the problem of illegal intrusions.

Barrick, for its part, publicly states it “does not, nor cannot, control, direct or supervise a government institution that is designated to provide community law”. It recently told HRW itExternal link is dealing with rogue groups of armed individuals who invade the fenced mined site, and that the security contractors it has on site have no lethal arms.

Compensation

The relatives of the artisanal miners killed in 2019 today struggle to make ends meet. They say it is difficult to find an alternative form of livelihood in communities that have historically depended on gold to survive. Ade now does construction work while his mother fetches water and other goods for construction sites despite her many health problems.

“I don’t believe there ever will be justice for what happened to my brother,” says Ade. “We’ve lost him and there’s no way to recover him. The only thing that can be done for my family to get hope is to provide them with compensation. The compensation will not bring back my brother, but that compensation will at least give my family the hope of sustaining themselves.”

There are other efforts to bring justice to victims of police violence in North Mara. Twenty-one Tanzanians are suing Barrick in its home country, Canada, for complicity in alleged extrajudicial killings and beatings of residents by police assigned to the mine. Barrick settled this year a similar case brought forward in the UK.

The LBMA case could take years to reach a resolution. But many in the NGO world hope it will set the stage for greater accountability in the ever-growing universe of certification schemes. “Whichever way it goes, the case is groundbreaking,” Mpufane says. “It’s a wake-up call to do better in all supply chains due diligence.”

Edited by Virginie Mangin/ts