Human Rights, Safety & Community Health

Human Rights

Projects increasingly need to integrate human rights into their social practice. This most often includes compliance with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. HEC conducts human rights assessments, advises on integrating human rights expertise into community relations teams and helps clients respond effectively to issues raised by civil society or human rights organisations.

Gender

Projects need to integrate protections for women and sexual minorities into social policies and practice. This applies to work with local communities, but is also needed in human resource documents and protocols. These protections are especially critical where large workforces will be moving into remote communities, where other project-induced in-migration is occurring or where staff and contractors will be drawn from diverse cultures. HEC:

  • Integrates relevant protections and employment measures into existing social programming streams
  • Includes simple gender provisions into stakeholder engagement and other social management planning
  • Designs Gender-Based Violence (GBV) prevention programs

Artisanal Mining

Projects need to have a clear policy on artisanal mining if artisanal miners have historically operated within or near project footprints. Projects need to document interactions with artisanal miners and the public or private security forces interfacing with miners. Regulators, artisanal miners, actors within mining supply chains, public security forces and local communities can have different and conflicting perspectives on how artisanal mining should be treated.

HEC supports clients to meet their responsibilities and respond to stakeholder expectations without jeopardizing commercial objectives. HEC designs Alternative Livelihood Programming to provide skills training to youth and vulnerable groups transitioning out of artisanal mining.

Where more direct security management planning is been required, HEC collaborates with its security partners to design appropriate security measures.

Community Health

Projects need community health baseline data and impact assessments to demonstrate that potential risks and impacts to community health are being successfully identified and appropriately mitigated. This is often in regions where governments do not generate community-level data.

HEC advises Projects on how to integrate health data collection and impact assessment into social practice in culturally appropriate ways. HEC partners with doctors and epidemiologists to define data collection requirements, assess baseline health conditions and define mitigations. HEC designs community health-focussed educational campaigns with local implementing partners.

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