Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That's correct.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  If I could just clarify something, I had shortened my remarks to give Mr. Romaine a very brief moment at the end of my allotted 10 minutes. Is that okay?

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Absolutely.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's most appropriate that Mr. Romaine speak to the follow-up rather than me.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Good afternoon. I'd like to thank the chair and the members of the subcommittee for their invitation to present my recent work in Eritrea to conduct a human rights impact assessment of the Bisha mine. As I know the subcommittee has deliberated about the human rights situation i

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  As I mentioned, I'd read many of these reports before going to Eritrea, and I expected to see more overt repression as you see in other one-party states. I didn't see that. As for the people whom I spoke to both formally and informally, I did not observe traits of people who were

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I do. I really was able on both occasions to say that these are the groups of people I wanted to speak with and that included government officials. Obviously in the mine site it's easy to have access through the company to their managers but also in terms of dealing with employee

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I do. Also, at the end of my last mission, I had a chance to speak with Government of Eritrea people and in very general broad strokes painted out some of the areas I intended to address and they seemed open. Obviously, Mr. Romaine can speak more to their intention around the fol

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Just to complete my thought, the engagement with stakeholders around the recommendations gets to validate from different perspectives whether these are hitting the mark and can they be supplemented. I think the commitment that Nevsun has made to dialogue and also to publicly disc

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes. I have two remarks on that. It is a very valid question. In the absence of some sort of global mechanism that would fund this work so it could be completely independent and neutral, you come up against this. I get the same sorts of questions when I work with community grou

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There are two things you can do to try to preserve your independence, and as you mentioned, your reputation. One is by using internationally recognized methodologies. In the contractual arrangement and discussion we had it was very clear I would follow this methodology and I ex

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Indeed, I did. I actually obtained a copy of the Segen Construction company's collective agreement. It was in the local language. I had it translated and read through the 60-odd articles of that collective agreement. I had extensive conversations with Segen management, about how

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There are a couple of elements to it. One is the nature of the questions that you pose. In an interview, you will pose similar questions in a number of different ways at different times to ensure there's consistency within it. I tried to ask open questions to get someone to expl

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  An average interview would be somewhere between half an hour and an hour. Group interviews are another thing. They are less likely to get at very specific individual issues, but they're good at getting a broad understanding of how different groups feel and sort of more to the col