How soon can Rio Tinto ensure the current, government-led grievance process meets international standards?
Protesters returned to the streets this week around the Rio Tinto’s QMM Mine in Madagascar as the company’s compensation process falters and villagers express doubts the company will deliver on its promises.
The community recently gave an ultimatum to QMM, according to local sources: if landowners’ claims for compensation are not recognised and met, the community will once again take to the streets in protest.
The compensation was agreed by QMM’s during negotiations established through a local commission, set up in May 2022 to end conflict and protests, including and road blocks.
Fisherfolk
The unrest began after two tailings dam failures at the QMM mine and also the release of a million cubic metres of mine basin water saw hundreds of dead fish appear in downstream waterways and a fishing ban put in place.
Villagers had suffered months of food insecurity and livelihoods losses as a result of the fishing ban, leading to protests and eventual negotiations with QMM.
The government commendably extended the agreement to encompass not only the period of the fishing ban, but also for losses from the start of the mine operations.
For some villagers the presence of the mine has resulted in a 45 per cent reduction in income, according to recent studies.
There are approximately 15,000 people living in three communes around QMM’s Mandena site, the majority of whom are subsistence farmer and fisherfolk living in multidimensional poverty.
In July, the company announced they had received 8,778 complaint claims from affected villagers.
Flaws
Months later, QMM declared the lists of fisherfolk and usufructuary claimants had been finalised and 5431 cases had been accepted under agreed criteria.
On 20 October 2022, a joint letter from NGOs and across civil society was submitted to Rio Tinto raising questions and critiquing the grievance process against international standards, including lack of transparency.
On the 15 November 2022, Rio Tinto responded, claiming that the process is not part of the Rio Tinto/QMM grievance process but is separate and “relates exclusively to the May agreement reached between these parties” - ie, the community, the local authorities and QMM.
How soon can Rio Tinto ensure the current, government-led grievance process meets international standards?
Stating that this process was led by the Minister of Fisheries and Blue Economy, the company observed: “QMM had limited influence over it and is aware that it has flaws.”
Standards
As QMM starts to review individual claims, Rio Tinto explains that “efforts are focused on recalibrating and reorienting this process and dialogue to better align with the key principles of the international standards [you] reference and ensuring the preservation of communities’ rights.”
The implicit admission that the process does not yet meet international standards is compounded by Rio Tinto as it goes on to say that QMM needs to review its normal grievance mechanism to “ensure compliance with international best practice” and “will complete this process during the course of 2023”.
Essentially, this has increased concerns that after almost two decades and throughout recent troubles, a grievance process meeting international standards has not yet been established at QMM.
QMM was neither dealing well with existing complaints, nor ready to meet outstanding as well as new claims emerging from the conflict earlier this year. The company has promised multiple times to do its best to help the communities.
Questions
Thankfully, Rio Tinto agrees that independent adjudication should form an essential part of the current complaints process, together with absolute transparency.
It is not clear when and which adjudicators are expected to be involved. Moreover, if this current process is not QMM’s, who and what will decide its final outcomes?
Rio Tinto explains that the criteria for compensation were drawn up through “numerous multistakeholder meetings and discussions” and were based on specific agreements, laws and Mining Code.
Why the company did not insist on applying their international standards at this stage is not clear. It is also unclear whether the communities have had access to legal assistance or accompaniment in the process.
Apparently, the registers and record of the grievance process will be held by the environmental regulator, the National Office for the Environment (ONE).
The ONE is paid at least $30,000 to $40,000 a year by QMM for its monitoring services to QMM, and is yet to demonstrate sufficient transparency to convince stakeholders it is not compromised in its relationship with the mine.
Importantly, facing renewed unrest, the question arises as to why land owners have been excluded from compensation.
Contestation
Land compensation in Anosy has been a source of conflict since 2005-6, when QMM displaced hundreds of villagers to build the port and infrastructure they required.
A decade ago, a liaison committee to Rio Tinto, convened between NGOs, international researchers and the company, heard Rio Tinto admit that both the process and communications had been flawed.
Notable features were poor communications, blame on the government for villagers being significantly underpaid the value of their lands, and the “disappearance’ of all paperwork that could evidence payments.
Given the efforts to that committee by civil society, principally to explain to Rio Tinto where QMM had gone wrong in order to avoid similar failures in future, there was little excuse when subsequent land compensation claims led to more unrest in 2013 and 2016, with many claims still unresolved.
For example, community members from Mandromondromotra commune who pressed for land claims were threatened and taken to court by QMM, fined and quelled from advancing further contestation.
In light of previous failures and conflicts, and following serious unrest this year, one could expect Rio Tinto to pull out all the stops to get this latest grievance process right.
Repression
The current contestations are occurring when people have been waiting months for resolution – some for more than a decade - to have redress for their losses.
Falling within an election campaign year, when the Government of Madagascar has announced it will not tolerate any “perturbation” - the risk to villagers who take to the streets to claim their rights has escalated above the normal levels of danger.
Civil society has already received a chilling message with the recent persecution of Ketakandriana Rafitoson, the director of Transparency International Initiative Madagascar, for calling out potential corruption in the country’s lychee trade.
All human rights defenders in Madagascar are at risk while there remains no ratified law to protect whistleblowers. Who will be next?
If dissenting villagers in Anosy take to the streets in this in this febrile, pre-election atmosphere, there is appreciable concern their protests would be met with the threat of military force.
The question being asked is, what measures can be taken to avoid the politicisation of the situation in Anosy ahead of the electoral year?
Licence
To what extent will Rio Tinto defer its own responsibilities to the Malagasy government is uncertain, especially while at the same time it is advancing its own interests to secure QMM’s new lease agreement.
In the mine joint venture, ultimately both parties carry responsibilities. Rio Tinto/QMM for its part is obligated to apply its own and international standards if those within the country they work are less exigent.
However, civil society observes that QMM frequently firewalls requests for technical information and reports, such as the external evaluation of the mine tailings dam failures, behind the Malagasy regulator.
QMM has also enjoyed impunity for illegally breaching an environmental buffer zone when it placed mine tailings on the bed of Lake Besaroy, thanks to the regulator’s technically unsupported conclusion of “no significant impact”.
Not forgetting that, over a decade ago, Rio Tinto passed the blame for its first compensation failures on to the government’s regional process.
The principal questions must therefore include: How soon can Rio Tinto ensure the current, government-led grievance process meets international standards?
As a participating member of the May 2022 Commission, which allowed for all parties to reflect and achieve its goals, and with so much at stake, why did QMM allow grievance mechanisms to be developed without international standards being applied in the first instance?
Most critically, who is going to rectify the current situation and take responsibility to avoid further conflict in the region and the threat of harm to aggrieved villagers?
This Author
Yvonne Orengo is an independent communications consultant and director of the Andrew Lees Trust (ALT UK) a British charity set up following the death of its namesake in 1994. She lived and worked in southern Madagascar to develop social and environmental programmes and has followed the evolution of the Rio Tinto/QMM mine for over twenty-seven years. ALT UK is working with Publish What You Pay (PWYP) Madagascar and international campaigners to research and advocate about the impacts of the QMM mine on rural communities in Anosy region, Southern Madagascar.
