"Alternative Mining Indaba Shows Meaningful Company-Community Dialogue Remains a Key Challenge"

The 7th annual Alternative Mining Indaba (AMI)...hosted by the ecclesiastical Economic Justice Network...8-11 February 2016 in Cape Town...brought together about 300 representatives from international and national civil society organisations...[and] mining affected communities from across Africa. The AMI was held in parallel to the Investing in Africa Mining Indaba (Mining Indaba), the biggest mining conference on the African continent with more than 7000 attendees. The AMI seeks to draw attention to the virtual exclusiveness of the critical discussions on the future of African mining that take place at the Mining Indaba mostly reserved to companies, business associations and government representatives...

Since 2010 the AMI has shifted its strategy from confrontation to dialogue, now stressing the importance of communication between CSOs/communities and businesses in the spirit of becoming...partners that disagree...but who nonetheless manage to work together...

Despite these efforts, companies did not attend the AMI... The AMI organisers also struggled anew in 2016 to convince business representatives to officially receive the final AMI Communiqué at the end of the traditional protest march to the Mining Indaba...

AMI dialogue also spotlighted a disconnection between the international human rights framework and...the effects of mining activities on the ground as seen by civil society organisations. There was a perceptible mistrust by the AMI delegates towards international instruments such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights and the Africa Mining Vision... [D]elegates made a demand for a new inclusive and internationally binding legal instrument on human rights.

...[It] was the World Bank Group and the German development cooperation agency, rather than human rights organisations, who hosted a side event during the Mining Indaba on human rights and mining...

One of AMI’s successes is the establishment of national (NAMIs) and provincial (PAMIs) mining indabas which are the foundation of the work of AMI in participating countries. Country reports throughout the AMI reported successful examples of companies and governments engaging in dialogue in these contexts, especially in Zambia and Zimbabwe.