by the Strathink Editorial Team

Nevsun Resources, Ltd. is on a mission—to make money from the highly lucrative Bisha Mine in Eritrea and to present to the world a story that they are advancing human rights in the country known as “the North Korea of Africa.” Making money is a lot easier.

The strathink editorial team spent some time looking at Nevsun’s website at nevsun.com. Without having any context of Eritrea’s current political, social and economic environment, Nevsun appears to be a model corporate citizen. Well-dressed Eritrean workers are shown sitting in high-tech classrooms and work areas, participating in decision-making meetings, and engaging in community self-help projects.

On the corporate social responsibility page, we learn that Nevsun Resources “is committed to ensuring its worldwide operations provide a comprehensive positive societal impact.” Click on the button marked “Governance,” and we see that Nevsun is committed to “ethical and sustainable social and environmental business practices wherever [Nevsun] operate[s]. In addition to upholding the highest safety standards, Nevsun says that it “believes in treating everyone equally with dignity and respect,” and “supports inclusiveness and diversity of opinions in decision-making.”

Nevsun Resources, according to its Code of Ethics, “cultivates mutual on-going respect through honesty and accountability in our interactions with our diverse stakeholders in the communities in which we operate.”

Nevsun is overseen by a Board of Directors. According to Nevsun’s website, “the Board is accountable to, and considers the legitimate interests of, our shareholders and other stakeholders such as government authorities, employees, contractors, customers, communities, and the public. The Board, through the Chief Executive Officer, sets the standards of conduct for the enterprise, provides direction and oversight, approves strategic plans presented by senior management, and evaluates the performance of senior management.”

Strathink introduced our readers to Nevsun’s CEO, Mr. Clive Davis, in part 1 of our series. Today we introduce you to Mr. Todd Romaine, Vice President for Corporate responsibility. Mr. Romaine is an environmental planner with a degree in international relations. He worked with the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation and the Government of Nunavut in Canada as well as Enbridge, a Canadian Oil Company. Mr. Romaine seems to specialize in representing corporations in areas where big business intersects indigenous communities—a kind of corporate anthropologist.

We ask you to remember these names because they will come up again when when we write about the three Eritreans who filed a case against Nevsun Resources—a case claiming that they were essentially “forced labor” for the mine while in Eritrea’s nation service.

Mr. Romaine’s job at Nevsun is to oversee the corporation’s corporate responsibility at Bisha Mine—“to help enforce national and international laws and best practices including human rights. Human rights is a major theme of Nevsun’s corporate responsibility portfolio.

Why? The UN Human Rights Commission report last year stated unequivocally that “The Commission collected evidence that forced labor occurred in the context of the development and exploitation of the Bisha mine, 150 km west of Asmara, which to date is the only mine in operation in Eritrea.” According to the report:

Even though Segen [a company owned by the Eritrean government] tried to conceal their status, the majority of Segen’s “workers” were in fact conscripts performing their national service. Engineers and other skilled staff worked directly for Segen under the civil national service scheme, while the majority of laborers were conscripts whose military units were put at the disposal of Segen by the army. Work assigned to conscripts included building the transport infrastructure to access the site, housing compounds for BMSC and Senet staff a few kilometers away from the mine, and all of the mine infrastructure.

Not only did Segen use the conscripts as forced labor, but tried to hide the fact that they were doing so. The fact that Segen, a company owned by the Eritrean government, broke Eritrea’s own laws is just one of the many ironies here.

Further sullying the name of Nevsun was the court case filed by three Eritreans suing the mining corporation for being complicit in the use of forced labor.

So here we have a report by the United Nations alleging forced labor and three Eritreans suing the corporation for the same. Nevsun, however, joins the Eritrean government in denying these allegations. Nevsun quickly puts together a crisis communication plan based on the premise of adopting a ‘stand-alone Human Rights Policy for the Bisha Mine. This Eritrean, site-level human rights policy “provides a good opportunity to raise further awareness about human rights with workers, communities, and business partners, as well as to imbed responsibilities for the ongoing implementation of human rights due diligence at the Bisha Mine.”

In 2012/13, Nevsun commissioned an independent human rights impact assessment (HRIA) to guide its policy and implementation. Last year, Nevsun released an audit of findings and remedies in place following the first report.

It is no coincidence that the 2015 report came out in August 2015 after the June 2015 release of the UN report.

So here are some conclusions we have reached about Nevsun, Eritrea and the Bisha Mine.

1. Corporations normally do not devote almost their entire website to its corporate social responsibility. Nevsun’s website is overwhelmingly populated by its corporate responsibility content in a transparently disingenuous attempt to mask its relationship with a government called “the North Korea of Africa.”
2. Nevsun is presenting itself to the world as an oasis of human rights respect while partnering with the Government of Eritrea, found by the United Nations as committing “crimes against humanity.”
3. Bisha Mine is Nevsun’s main source of income. Nevsun Resources is not viable without the Bisha Mine.
4. Nevsun Resources pushes out the assertion that accusations of using forced labor at the Bisha Mine is the work of political opponents—several individuals, according to Nevsun.

Part 3 of this series will focus on the court case brought by three Eritreans who worked in the Bisha Mine that accuse Nevsun Resources of using them as forced labor.