Families of two artisanal miners who died in Tanzania file UK lawsuit against London Bullion Market Association
"Legal claim launched against London Bullion Market Association following the deaths of two artisanal miners", 13 Dec 2022
The claimants are the families of two artisanal miners who died in 2019, both aged 23, after working at the North Mara Gold Mine, majority-owned by Barrick Gold Corporation, one of the world’s largest gold mining companies. Both individuals’ names have been anonymised to protect their families. The LBMA have until early 2023 to respond to the claims.
The claimants state that despite a widely reported pattern of systematic human rights abuses associated with the mine over many years, the LBMA has continued to be certify gold from the mine under its LBMA Responsible Gold standard.
The case applies standard legal principles of “third party liability” to the realm of certification and social auditing. This is a fast-developing area of law, examining when someone can be legally responsible for harm caused by another. The claimants will argue that a certifying body, like the LBMA, owes a duty of care to victims of human rights abuses following a failure to properly conduct human rights due diligence.
The legal issues raised by this case turn on whether a certification body, like the LBMA, can be held legally responsible for a flawed certification process which causes or contributes to ongoing human rights abuses...
The effect of removing LBMA accreditation and its Responsible Gold Certificate would be commercially and reputationally disastrous not only to the refiner, but would also hit the mine, as both would lose access to the London gold market, which is the largest in the world. This, the claimants allege, would have forced the mine and the refiner to finally put a stop to the systematic human rights abuse of artisanal miners. If this had happened, they believe that ZZZ and ZZY would still be alive.