Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, I'll do three things just briefly. I'll provide a little bit of background on what national contact points are, provide some information on the cases that have been handled by these entities globally, and focus in on the cases we've seen related to Latin America in particular.
National contact points, or NCPs, as they're known, are basically government offices that have a dual function. On the one hand, they promote the guidelines in our guidance documents. On the other hand, they hear cases, what we call “specific instances”, which are brought to them by non-governmental organizations, trade unions, individuals, and so on. In fact, anyone can bring a case to an NCP. Each case will relate to certain chapters of our guidelines, whether that be human rights, labour, environment, and so on. Governments are free to choose the location, structure, and composition of their NCPs, but they all have to be visible, accessible, transparent, and accountable. In Latin America there are seven national contact points. All of them, apart from one, have received cases to date.
Moving on to cases globally, we've seen that since 2000, when this mechanism was first launched, 400 cases have been handled in total by national contact points. They've related to issues or problems that have arisen in over 100 countries and territories. Some NCPs have received a large number of cases. In fact, six national contact points have received over 50% of all cases to date.
I'll say a quick word on procedure just to make sure it's clear. When NCPs receive a submission, they decide whether it merits further examination based on our criteria. If it does, they will offer what we call a “forum for discussion”. This can be professional mediation or a dialogue process, but it's very much a non-judicial exercise. At the end of the process, the NCP will report publicly on the case. In terms of the chapters that have been cited to date, since 2011, when a new chapter on human rights was added to our guidelines, we found that cases citing human rights have actually accounted for over 50% of all cases received since 2011.
Turning now specifically to Latin America, what we've seen, again since 2000, is that NCPs have reported 76 cases involving issues occurring in Latin American countries, and 17 of those 76 have actually involved extractive industry companies. That's where I've focused today, given the nature of your discussion.
In terms of the issues or the problems at root in each of those 17 cases, they've really covered a wide remit across our guidelines and chapters. To give you a bit of a flavour, on environmental cases, for instance, we've seen problems with regard to air, water, or noise pollution, or the overuse of water. We've seen damage to property, etc. On human rights, there have been various references to stakeholder engagement, and whether that's efficient or not. Engagement with indigenous populations has come up in cases, as has free, prior, and informed consent. We've seen issues concerning forced displacement, and issues regarding protests at mine sites and company responses. Under employment and industrial relations, there have been cases involving freedom of association and collective bargaining problems, and cases involving unfair dismissal and health and safety issues in the workplace.
To finish up this part of the presentation, I will provide one example of a case just by way of illustration. This is a recent case closed last year by the Brazilian national contact point. It involved a Brazilian subsidiary of Kinross Gold Corporation. It was a case brought by Paracatu neighbouring associations. The crux of the case involved, on the one hand, allegations involving the use of explosives and cracks appearing in people's houses near to the mine site. On the other hand, there were problems regarding dams that were hindering people's access to the city.
The Brazilian NCP accepted the case and informed the Canadian NCP, as is standard practice. Three mediation meetings took place over the course of the year. In the end, they reached a resolution between the company and the party, where it was agreed that with the local authorities the company would finance the renovation of damaged houses or resettlement, where necessary. The Brazilian NCP also went on to make some recommendations to the company to ensure good due diligence going forward.
I'll leave it there for now and hand it over to Tyler for the rest of the presentation.
Thank you.