Grievance and remedy: A critical test for the sector’s commitment to human rights processes
How companies handle grievances in practice is a critical test of the extractives sector’s commitment to human rights processes. While grievances are inevitable, poor practices for handling them should not be. These ‘pathologies’ can block access to remedy for rightsholders.
26 September 2024
Professor Deanna Kemp, Director of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining at the University of Queensland, shared some reflections on the topic of ‘grievance and remedy’ during the annual team meeting for the half of the ASI Secretariat based in Australia.
She drew from a recent open access publication (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-023-05332-0), which analysed the complex settings in which grievances arise, and the five unwanted “pathologies” that can hamper effectiveness of grievance mechanisms. These relate particularly to where companies deal directly with communities to try and resolve grievances.
The five pathologies
Through their research, they have found that it is these pathologies that most commonly characterise the grievance landscape. For stakeholders and rightsholders that raise grievances, these ineffective and/or misdirected processes create enormous frustration and loss of trust, often for those who are in a state of vulnerability.
Avoiding the pitfalls
Unquestionably, grievances are complex. At their heart, they frequently raise challenges that go beyond the design of a management system or procedure. They can even call into question the inherent nature of an operation.
However being aware of these pathologies should help companies to identify where they may be (unintentionally) exhibiting them in their own operational-level grievance mechanisms.
The ASI Performance Standard requires that Entities have a complaints mechanism that is rights-compatible (including under criteria 3.5 and 9.1). It should also be a source of continuous learning. Consider whether your complaints or grievance mechanism exhibits any of these pathologies, and how you could work to address that.
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