Fuelling injustice: Companies respond to allegations linked to transition minerals in EECA region
In April 2024, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre published "Fuelling Injustice: Transition Mineral Impacts in Eastern Europe & Central Asia" - an analysis that exposes the scale and severity of human rights abuses and environmental damage caused by companies mining and processing transition minerals in EECA, emphasizing that changes are urgently needed in the EECA mining sector to ensure the transition to clean energy is not achieved at the expense of people and the environment.
The briefing includes 421 publicly reported allegations of environmental and human rights abuses between 2019 and 2023 that are linked to mining project development, extraction and processing (smelting and refining) of 20 transition minerals in 16 EECA countries. It also outlines recommendations for companies, governments, investors and financial institutions.
In line with the Resource Centre’s strategy and libel policy, we made every effort to reach out to companies accused of abuse and ask them to respond to allegations made using our Company Response Mechanism (unless the company has already publicly commented on the case, or if the abuse is the basis of a lawsuit or regulatory action, or the company has no website or contacts to reach to them).
We invited 49 companies to respond. We received 9 responses. All responses and non-responses can be found below.