Organised by: DCAF – The Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance and the Governments of Switzerland and The Netherlands Human rights due diligence requires companies to scrutinize the role of public, private, and other security forces in their operations and supply chains. This panel will show how multistakeholder engagement through the framework of the Voluntary Principles in the Democratic Republic of Congo can improve human rights and security in both large-scale and artisanal mining settings. This session will be held in English with French interpretation.

Organised by: Women’s Rights and Mining with participation of ActionAid and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs Scarce minerals and metals are needed to realize our renewable energy ambitions. We raise some questions on how this can happen in an inclusive and fair manner, without leaving anyone behind. Certain negative effects of mining have disproportionately been affecting women, through exclusion from jobs, sexual harassment, or dealing with water, land, and air pollution caused by mining. In this interactive panel, we discuss what is needed to realize a gender-just energy transition.

Organised by: International Tin Supply Chain Initiative In the context of increased due diligence requirements or expectations, companies may choose to use mineral supply chain initiatives or schemes, such as ITSCI, while retaining individual responsibility to understand the scope and activities of those schemes, ensure they are relevant to the company’s own business circumstances and needs, pinpoint any gaps in due diligence support provided, work to fill those gaps and act on information provided by the scheme. To facilitate companies’ understanding, schemes should undergo regular alignment assessments of adequate independence, quality, and credibility by providing an expert view of the scheme’s processes, strengths, and areas of ongoing – past and planned – improvements. This partner session aims to discuss this approach, seeking to promote the usefulness of such assessment and the objective of a level playing field for supply chain initiatives. The session will start with a presentation of the second Alignment Assessment of the ITSCI Programme, including its methodology, transparency, and results. ITSCI will be the first mineral supply chain initiative completing a second AA and publishing its results, including both the AA report and tool. The presentation will be followed by an open panel discussion on best practices on the use of schemes and on AA results for company’s due diligence, both upstream and downstream, while tackling the risk of over-reliance on such scheme.

While the green transition will reduce the global dependence on fossil fuels, it will generate pressure on the production of other raw materials like minerals because of their intensive use in low-carbon technologies. The growing demand for these minerals has highlighted the stakes for resilient mineral supply chains. This comes against a backdrop of heightened vulnerabilities accentuated by the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and global competition for these resources. If not properly managed, such vulnerabilities and competition could aggravate existing risks in mineral supply chains, potentially fueling conflict and disrupting supply. There is therefore a clear opportunity to mainstream the implementation of the Due Diligence Guidance and other responsible business conduct instruments as a way of fostering a just energy transition and shoring up a reliable supply of critical minerals simultaneously. This session will examine related risks and opportunities by drawing on other experiences in mineral supply chains.

To bridge the demand for critical minerals - projected to quadruple by 2040 for cobalt, copper, lithium and nickel – countries and companies alike are considering how to diversify sources of supply, across geographies but also across modes of production. If the role of artisanal mining in cobalt supply chains has been brought to global scrutiny, albeit not always with a sufficient level of nuance, less is known about the role of small- and medium-scale mining production of copper, mica, bauxite, tantalum and other critical minerals. The session will aim to fill this knowledge gap and to challenge misconceptions around due diligence approaches towards sourcing from small- and medium-scale in these supply chains.

Organised by: Ministry of Mining and Energy of Colombia supported by WWF With immense jungles and rivers containing unique nature, supporting a remarkable cultural diversity in 7 million square kilometers, the Amazon is of great importance for South America and the entire planet. In eight countries and one overseas territory, this large portion of the biosphere is home to almost 10% of the Earth's biodiversity. The largest gold exporting countries in the Amazon (Colombia, Perú and Brazil) share a triple-border which is territorially isolated, lacks state control and security, and has low development indexes, without the mechanisms for the inspection of a declared origin by the seller or buyer, which facilitates gold legalization from illegal mining (mostly linked to other illicit activities such as drug trafficking). Furthermore, effects of mercury and the deforestation caused by the mining activities, are critically impacting indigenous communities and amazon ecosystems. The objective of this session is to promote a multi-stakeholder dialogue to encourage collaborative solutions based on technical information, to control illegal mining and traceability of gold production in the Amazon countries, such as tracing mechanisms and/or origin certifications. Previous analysis made by WWF Colombia and WWF Brazil, among other key information, regarding illegal gold mining routes and dynamics in the Amazon countries, will be used as a basis for discussion.

Organised by: World Resources Forum (WRF) Building on the results of the Extractive Commodity Trading Report 2023 from the World Resources Forum and the Responsible Mining Foundation, the session will provide an up-to-date state-of-play, highlighting gaps and good practices seen across the extractive commodity trading industry (oil, gas, metals and minerals). The speakers on the panel will reflect on the wider issues, successes, and remaining challenges, from their perspective, offering a diverse and rich overview.

Organised by: Pact Inc. (International NGO) While the OECD DDG was developed with a focus on 3TG, after more than 10 years, evidence for widespread uptake for international gold trade remains limited, and appears to be hampered by a number of factors. This is particularly evident in Africa where the majority of Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) production leaves the continent through ‘informal’ channels. A significant recent development is the introduction of responsible sourcing regulations which directly target gold trade (e.g., EU Conflict Minerals Regulation 2017/821; UAE Good Delivery Standard for Gold, 2021) - which aim to ensure that due diligence requirements become enshrined in regulation and can thus be enforced. Pact is convening and moderating this panel discussion, which aims to highlight important perspectives from the private sector, with emphasis on active players in international gold trade – including African gold exporters, and international gold buyers based in UAE. The moderated discussion will shed light on new business models and potential solutions which could help to mitigate risks and challenges in Africa’s burgeoning ASGM sector.

Organised by: European Partnership for Responsible Minerals (EPRM), Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM) and Datastake In this session we want to reflect on EPRM´s evolving role as an accompanying measure to EU regulations, and highlight the upcoming call for proposals and its criteria. EPRM has invested in projects which evolved into systemic and replicable solutions to a more bottom-up and cost-effective due diligence processes, aiming at increasing the engagement with the ASM sector. Yet, even though more and more upstream projects, approaches and tools are appearing, the connection between the efforts on the ground and downstream companies or industry schemes is not fluid enough. EPRM will moderate a discussion on how to better integrate the upstream initiatives, NGOs, and local actors with the industry due diligence mechanisms, to satisfy the regulatory requirements and create an effective environment for companies to start meaningfully engaging with the ASM. To spark this debate, we will showcase a practical example: the Craft Code and CADD protocol, our partners from ARM and Datastake joined forces to digitalize their tools to enhance upstream supply chain due diligence. An open-source Datastake platform for managing supply chain information, combined with ARM´s mine focused progressAPP, provide systemized information for buyers, investors, banks and donors, while promoting the engagement of local civil society in the monitoring and feeding the information.

Organised by: The Fair Cobalt Alliance, The Center for Childs Rights and Business, Save the Children (Germany), The Responsible Mika Initiative and Fairphone In this campfire style discussion, we will discuss how the OECD Guidelines can support companies in the minerals sector to meet their due diligence to respect human rights whilst stressing the need for concrete and tangible multi-stakeholder action on the ground, to alleviate the suffering of the most vulnerable. This session will be based on the concrete experience, across the metal industry and will seek inputs from the public on how to bridge the gap between concrete and immediate action and long-term systemic change.

The high risk of corruption in mineral supply chains and its many corrosive effects are well documented. As these risks are only increasing with the push for security of mineral supply, there is little evidence of widespread meaningful company action, particularly for companies in the mid and downstream segment of mineral supply chains. The objective of this session will be to discuss how policy approaches to corruption can help overcome barriers to investment in low governance mining regions and elaborate on tools available to support anti-corruption due diligence.

Organised by: The Copper Mark, the International Molybdenum Association, the International Zinc Association and the Nickel Institute This session seeks to provide the audience with a high-level introduction to four metals: Copper, molybdenum, nickel and zinc with a focus on their production processes and countries of production. In addition, the presenters will speak to how the Copper Mark’s responsible production framework, and the recent development of a Molybdenum Mark, Nickel Mark and Zinc Mark, will provide producers of those metals access to a credible assurance framework to manage their ESG issues.

Organised by: Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime Criminality in the extractives sector poses a major barrier to advancing due diligence for responsible mineral sourcing. The challenge is further complicated, and impacts even greater, when extraction takes place in places experiencing high-levels of conflict and insecurity. This partner session will present deep dives into the dynamics between extractives, crime and insecurity followed by a discussion on similarities and differences in criminal threats, conflict and security dynamics, and implications for due diligence and responsible sourcing efforts.

As the world transitions towards net zero, the rapid shift to green technologies is expected to drive a significant increase in demand for many minerals. While advances in recycling and material efficiency may reduce the overall environmental impact of producing green technology in the long term, the short term challenge is ensuring that increased mineral extraction, processing and trade is responsible. All companies in mineral supply chains have a role to play. This session will focus on how supply chain due diligence can effectively address upstream environmental risks, specific impacts of the transition on rightsholders, including through gender-responsive due diligence, and the broader policy landscape and evolving expectations on companies to conduct environmental due diligence.

Organised by: Precious Metals Impact Forum Currently gold is considered to be “recycled” if it has been transformed at least once after its primary refining from freshly mined gold (also called virgin material). The specifics of which type of gold is included or not differs between OECD and current standard setters (LBMA vs RJC vs RMI vs UAE or other standard setters). This means that freshly mined gold can be converted into recycled without ever seeing a consumer. In the view of the working group which developed this new definition, this poses a significant risk of greenwashing. As the majority of the consumers associate the definition of recycled with responsible, there was a need to come up with a more precise definition of what “recycled” gold is, that fulfills the criteria given by the general perception of recycling. This session will offer a panel discussion of different actors of the gold sector, who will discuss their perception of the current definitions and of the new proposed definition of recycled gold. We expect this session to be interactive and to allow discussions between panelists and the audience for an open and honest discussion around such an important subject.

Organised by: IPIS, PAX, EurAc The European Union Regulation on the responsible supply of tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold (3TG) from conflict-affected and high-risk areas (2017/821) entered into force on January 1, 2021. In anticipation of the official review of the 3TG Regulation later this year, this session will reflect on the experiences and insights gained during the implementation so far. Presentations will focus on the original objectives of the Regulation, namely breaking the link between conflict and mineral extraction and contribute to socio-economic development at an upstream level. Has the Regulation contributed to these key objectives? What is needed to achieve these objectives in the future, for the EU 3TG Regulation but also for the relevant upcoming EU Regulations?