The Canadian government is not upholding its obligations to protect women against human rights abuses, according to a report submitted yesterday by EarthRights International (ERI), MiningWatch Canada and the Human Rights Research and Education Centre Human Rights Clinic at the University of Ottawa. The report, submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), charges that Canada has been supporting and financing mining companies involved in discrimination, rape, and violence against women in their operations abroad, when it should be holding those companies accountable for the abuse.
A majority of the world’s mining companies, operating at over 8000 sites in over 100 countries, are headquartered in Canada. Many of these mines are also sites of serious human rights violations, including direct violence against local women and environmental degradation that destroys women’s ability to support their families. One recent study found that Canada’s mining companies are involved in such abuses and conflict more than any other country’s.
At Papua New Guinea’s Porgera gold mine, operated for years by Canadian miner Barrick Gold, local women have accused mine security personnel of a decades-long campaign of violations including systemic sexual violence and brutal gang rape. FULL REPORT