ITSCI has issued its 2019/2020 Incident Review. The report gives an overview of the success of stakeholders working with the ITSCI Programme to achieve risk mitigation relating to mineral supply chains from Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda during the twelve month period 1st November 2019 to 31st October 2020.
The ITSCI Programme has extensive experience supporting companies, governments and civil society in the identification and mitigation of risks associated with 3T minerals supply chains. Our standards are independently confirmed to be 100% aligned with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas, and we support companies performing due diligence according to those expectations. Our on-the-ground teams supplement traceability with an incident management system to identify and verify risks, as a critical aspect of due diligence. We communicate these along the supply chain, recommend mitigation actions, and facilitate the discussion of mitigation among local stakeholders. In addition, we follow up and report on the progress of mitigation.
Salient indicators of ITSCI Programme implementation during the reporting period 1st November 2019 to 31st October 2020 are given in Table 1.
- 2,330 monitored mine sites
- 520 average on the ground visits per month
- 560,000 mineral transactions
- 1,175 whistle-blower calls
- 1,338 incidents opened
Of the 1,338 incidents, 117 were categorised as Level 1 seriousness, with potential association with human rights abuses, the involvement of non-state armed groups, or illegal taxation or involvement in mineral business by rogue individuals of state armed groups.
Of the 117 Level 1 incidents, 9 were categorised as High Risk, with relevance for U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reporting. To date all remain under mitigation and monitoring.
To facilitate resolution of incidents ITSCI supported local multi-stakeholder meetings for 45 committees and conducted 435 training sessions with 7,408 beneficiaries. As a result, across all incidents and ITSCI areas the overall rate of resolution of incidents was 79%.
ITSCI has 32 measures of outcomes from incident management which for the purpose of simplification are aggregated into 7 groupings. For resolved incidents, the proportion of major outcomes was:
- 46% Due Diligence Improvements
- 13% Governance & Security Improvements
- 14% Awareness-Raising & Mediation
- 4% Human Rights/Health and Safety Risk Mitigation
- 2% Mine/Company/Mineral Suspension or Seizure
Overall, the outcomes of incident management are similar to the previous reporting period. The extensive training activities performed by ITSCI over this time helped to achieve the high proportion of due diligence improvement (46%) as incident outcomes.
