Ethics and human rights
Xstrata operates in several regions where security issues make it necessary to protect our sites and employees. Xstrata supports the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Labour Organisation Conventions and is a signatory to the UN Global Compact. We apply the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (Voluntary Principles) to help ensure our security measures are reasonable and responsible. We conduct human rights risk assessments at all locations and have identified sites in Colombia, Philippines, Peru, the Dominican Republic and South Africa as posing the greatest risk. Our focus on identifying human rights risk and preventing incidents is important to ensure safe and unhampered operation of our facilities.
We respect the legislation in each country in which we operate and have aligned our Sustainable Development Framework with the 10 universally accepted principles of the Global Compact in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.
We compile an index cross-referencing our reporting to the Global Compact commitments
The primary human rights issues in our business relate to:
- Labour: The rights of our employees and contractors to work for equal pay, associate freely, to a safe and healthy workplace, to non-discrimination and to their legal rights;
- Security: The conduct of security organisations protecting our operations at certain specific locations where there is a threat to our people or assets. The conduct of public security forces who enter our sites during the execution of their duties; and
- Communities: The impact our operations may have on communities includes the use of land and mineral assets, economic impacts, displacement, access to resources such as water and energy and other environmental impacts. In certain circumstances disagreements over these factors can lead to an environment in which human rights are compromised.