I know we don't have a lot of time, so I will try to keep this very brief.
I'm going to focus on our work on responsible mineral supply chains. We have a specific instrument outlining due diligence expectations for companies throughout the entire mineral supply chain, from the mine all the way to the consumer end product—for example, jewellers or electronics industries—on the steps they need to take to ensure that those supply chains are not financing conflict or severe human rights abuses.
We've been implementing that work for over six years. The original focus was on materials from central Africa, particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo, but we have increasingly turned our attention to Latin America.
In Latin America, there's a unique convergence between criminal organizations, human rights abuses, and illegal mining, as well as some legal mining. In the context of Colombia, we have evidence to suggest that rents and benefits and revenues are earned up to three times more by criminal organizations than from the narcotics drug trade. The Colombian government estimates that they're losing around $400 million per year in revenues through criminal mining, and that likely illegal armed groups and mining are generating upwards of $5 billion per year in revenues for armed groups.
Of course, these are armed groups and criminal organizations that are perpetrators of serious human rights abuses. We have a number of reports that show these groups are involved in massacres and forced displacements as well as pressuring human rights defenders, and other issues around forced displacements. Virtually all types of human rights are implicated, as well as evidence of child labour and forced labour happening at artisanal, informal mine sites.
This is affecting gold mines, particularly and largely informal artisanal gold mining, but not exclusively. We also have reports of large-scale mining companies paying illegal rents or taxes to these groups that are also engaged in this type of criminal behaviour. These materials are entering global supply chains, mostly first via the United States and Switzerland in the bullion form, but then through jewellery and electronics as well, into Canada.
I'm not going to go into a lot of the detail about what our work is, but this standard that we have has been embedded into a number of national laws, including recently in the EU. It requires importers of metals to undertake and go through certification against our standard, as well as in the context of section 1502 of the Dodd Frank Act in the United States, for materials from central Africa.
I would be happy to talk a little more about our findings in Latin America. I know I'm short on time.
Thank you for listening to us, Mr. Chair.