Thank you. As this committee is aware, Eritrea is one of the world's most repressive countries. Its government has pursued a path of crushing political repression at home and a belligerent foreign policy. There is no civil society. There is no independent media. No elections have been held since independence in 1993. And torture is widespread.
Eritrea's impoverished economy has also suffered greatly because of the government's political and diplomatic isolation, but in recent years the government has actively courted international investors attracted by the country's large and untapped mineral resources.
The Bisha project, which is majority-owned and operated by Canadian firm Nevsun Resources, is Eritrea's first and so far only operational mine. It began gold production in 2011 and produced some $614 million worth of ore. To put that in perspective, the entire GDP of Eritrea is $2.6 billion, so it is a significant amount, a significant input into the Eritrean economy. Other companies from Australia, China, and Canada are poised to develop further mines.
Eritrea is also well known for its national service program, which uses forced labour indefinitely. Through this program, the Eritrean government keeps an enormous number of Eritreans under perpetual government control as conscripts. Originally conceived as an 18-month program, the national service scheme now requires all able-bodied men and most women to serve indefinitely, often for years with no end in sight, under harsh and abusive conditions. Those who try to flee risk imprisonment, torture, and even reprisals directed against their families.
Eritrea's national service program is not a secret. There is a lot of documentation about the types of violations and types of abuses that take place under that program. In 2009, Human Rights Watch produced Service for Life, which outlined some of those violations, including the use of forced labour.
Some national service conscripts are assigned to state-owned construction companies that exercise a complete monopoly in the field. International mining firms operating in Eritrea face intense government pressure to engage these contractors to develop some of their project infrastructure. If they do so, they run a pronounced risk of at least indirect involvement in the use and harsh mistreatment of forced labourers. This means international mining companies, including Nevsun Resources, could see their projects develop on the backs of forced labour.
Now, when Nevsun Resources began building its Bisha mine in 2008, it failed to conduct human rights due diligence activity and it did not have adequate procedures in place to ensure that forced labour was not being used to develop the project. At the government's insistence, the Bisha project engaged Segen Construction Company, which is a state-run PFDJ contractor. And there's evidence that Segen regularly exploits national service conscripts in its activities.
Human Rights Watch interviewed some Eritreans who worked at Nevsun's Bisha mine project in various capacities, including two who said they were conscripts forced by Segen to carry out construction work at the mine site during its initial development. There was also clear evidence that many of Segen's workers at Bisha during that period faced terrible conditions, from inadequate food supplies to unsafe housing. The workers we interviewed said that national service conscripts lived in fear and had been ordered not to complain about their situation. One former conscript told Human Rights Watch that he was captured and imprisoned after leaving the mine site without permission in order to attend a friend's funeral. Since the publication of the report, numerous other individuals have come forward and their testimonies and stories are very consistent with the types of allegations that we outlined in the report.
Human Rights Watch engaged in extensive dialogue with Nevsun about these allegations to try to understand what steps the company has taken to address them. Since our engagement with Nevsun, to their credit, they have tightened their policies, largely through an improved screening procedure that is meant to vet all workers at the mine to ensure that they're there voluntarily.
Nevsun, as you know, says that these policies are now adequate to the task of keeping the project free of forced labour, but—and this is critical—the company does not know for certain whether conscript labourers are being used at Bisha or not. When Nevsun sought to interview Segen workers in an effort to ensure the company was not complicit in the abuses, they were refused by Segen. When they sought to visit the camps to investigate the living conditions of Segen workers, again they were refused.
So its efforts to investigate these allegations have been obstructed by Segen itself and Nevsun appears to feel it has no power to confront its own state-run contractor about these allegations of abuse. Instead, its response to Segen's stonewalling has been one of quiet acceptance.
But Nevsun cannot simply pass on the responsibility for human rights problems at its mine site to the contractor it is paying to work there. Any human rights abuses by Segen would implicate Nevsun and Nevsun has the responsibility to investigate them and to ensure that they stop.
For us, the lessons here are clear. Mining firms must either find ways to ensure that their Eritrea operations do not involve them in the use and maltreatment of forced labour or they should not invest there at all. They cannot afford to develop human rights safeguards on the fly when project development is already under way. They must develop them before they begin mine development. If their projects in Eritrea do become complicit in the use of forced labour, they should be held accountable by their own governments and by their shareholders.
We believe that Nevsun should immediately work to address the shortcomings of its engagement in Eritrea and refuse to continue operating under the status quo. The company should insist on full cooperation from its partners in investigating the allegations of human rights abuses connected to the mining project. Nevsun's experience should serve as a clear reminder to other mining and exploration firms, including the other Canadian firm, that they are now on notice and that they face the risk of being complicit in human rights abuses should they choose to invest in Eritrea's mining sector.
Unfortunately, there is no indication that other mining firms developing projects in Eritrea are taking these risks seriously enough. Three firms, including Canada's Sunridge Gold, are actively moving ahead with plans to develop new mines in Eritrea, while other firms are exploring numerous other potential projects. The Canadian firm Sunridge failed to reply to repeated efforts to contact it by phone and by writing.
In conclusion, our report serves as a strong example of why governments, like those in Canada, need to develop mechanisms that pay close attention to the human rights records of their companies when they operate abroad.
We call on the Government of Canada to do three things: first, to implement legal frameworks that allow government institutions to monitor the human rights performance of Canadian companies when they operate abroad in areas that carry serious human rights risks, such as Eritrea; second, to take steps to regulate the human rights conduct of domestic companies operating abroad in these complex environments, such as requiring companies to carry out some form of human rights due diligence; third, to communicate an expectation to the Government of Eritrea, that companies investing in their mining sector should not be using forced labour or be involved in any other human rights abuses.
Thank you.
