In August 2026, the Business and Human Rights Centre published Workers paying the price: Hidden costs of transition minerals boom in Eastern Europe and Central Asia - 2026 analysis. The report reveals a continued pattern of human rights abuses and environmental damage caused by companies mining and processing transition minerals in EECA, highlighting the urgent need to implement the principles of a just energy transition - corporate duty of care for human rights, fair negotiations, and shared prosperity.

The analysis includes 373 publicly reported allegations of human rights and environmental abuses that took place in 2025 and are linked to mining project development, extraction and processing (smelting and refining) of 19 transition minerals in 14 EECA countries.

In line with the Centre’s strategy and libel policy, we made every effort to reach out to companies accused of abuse and invited them to respond to the allegations through our Company Response Mechanism, except in cases where the company had already issued a public statement, the abuse was the subject of legal or regulatory action, or the company had no website or contact information available.

We invited 32 companies to respond to the findings. Serbia Zijin Copper was invited separately to respond to the Krivelj village case study featured in the report. We were unable to invite two companies, Rudnik Antimona doo and Metal Gold LLC, due to a lack of publicly available contact information. Eight companies responded. All responses and non-responses are available below.