Written submission from Dr Saphia Fleury (CRM0004)

Call for evidence: Critical minerals

1.              About the author

Dr Saphia Fleury is a Research Fellow at the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute, with expertise in climate change, human migration and international human rights law.

2.              Introduction

This paper examines the UK’s Vision 2035: Critical Minerals Strategy from a human rights perspective. It considers the human rights costs of expanding mineral extraction and processing in the UK and through bilateral and multinational initiatives through the lenses of: labour rights abuses; pollution and forced evictions; and the procedural rights to public participation and free, prior and informed consent.

Availability of critical minerals for the green transition is essential to both the UK’s domestic energy security and climate change commitments. The Critical Minerals Strategy aims to increase available critical minerals for UK manufacturing by increasing the domestic supply of critical minerals (through mining and recycling) and also via international bilateral and multilateral partnerships. Each has its own risks and rewards. This paper highlights several areas requiring further examination to ensure that the UK upholds its legal human rights obligations under international and domestic human rights law, as well as its just transition obligations under the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement.

3. Labour rights abuses

The international mining sector and rare-earth supply chain are awash with cases of labour rights abuses.

A 2025 report by the Business and Human Rights Centre (BHRC) focusing on Eastern Europe and Central Asia identified 270 allegations of abuse of workers and local communities associated with mining project development, extraction and processing (smelting and refining) of 19 minerals in 13 countries: Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.[1] In Kazakhstan specifically, which is highlighted in the UK’s Critical Minerals Strategy as a key international minerals partner, the BHRC recorded “more allegations of abuse in 2024 than during the previous five years combined.”[2]

All too frequently, workers are killed in accidents at transitional mining projects. In May 2023, two miners were crushed to death at a Chinese-run lithium mine in Zimbabwe.[3] Eight workers died in an accident at Karaganda Ferroalloy Plant, Kazakhstan, in July 2024.[4] In August 2025, five mine workers were killed in a copper mine collapse in Chile.[5] Two months later, a gold mine collapse in Venezuela killed at least 14.[6]

Occupational disease leading to early death also continues to be a risk in this sector, as does economic exploitation of workers. In the first three months of 2024 alone, BHRC recorded 66 reports of accidents, acute occupational diseases (poisoning), and chronic occupational illnesses from mine workers in Ukraine.[7] In Kosovo, a miners’ strike over unpaid wages and poor working conditions continued for months across 2023 and 2024.[8] 

Similar issues are rare in the UK, although accidents do still occur at “traditional” coal mines, such as the 2011 Gleision colliery disaster that killed four Welsh miners.[9] However, the lack of labour rights and health and safety protections comes into starker focus when considering overseas partnerships, such as that with Kazakhstan. UK authorities, financiers and mining companies must conduct thorough human rights due diligence to ensure the safety of all workers in critical mineral supply chains, at home and abroad.

3. Pollution and forced evictions

Mining, including for critical minerals, has the potential to be hugely polluting, putting local communities’ right to a healthy environment at severe risk. Tailings from gold mining are dumped into Bolivia’s rivers, causing serious illness and even death among the local populations, including small children.[10] Indigenous peoples are often most at risk. In Peru and Nicaragua, a 2025 study by the International Pollutants Elimination Network found Indigenous women of child-bearing age to have high levels of mercury in their hair samples; a cause of brain damage for developing foetuses.[11] In Norway, Sweden and Finland, Indigenous Sami people are campaigning against the intensification of rare earth mining on their territories, enabled by the EU’s Critical Raw Minerals Act, which cause noise and traffic pollution among other impacts that threaten their traditional ways of life.[12] In the north of Thailand, arsenic contamination of water supplies has been linked to recent rare-earth mining in neighbouring Myanmar, threatening the health of Indigenous and ethnic communities living along the Kok River.[13]

As with the labour rights issues above, these examples represent just a snapshot of current pollution concerns linked to critical mineral mining around the world. Many more cases exist, having a devastating impact on people’s lives. As well as the effects on peoples’ health and local environment, communities in several locations are also facing forced evictions to make way for new mining projects. For example, in El Salvador, a seven-year a ban on metals mining was overturned in 2024,[14] opening the door to the mass evictions in a country where forced removal of citizens is a frequent tactic to make way for new infrastructure projects.

Again, UK interests in overseas mining opportunities, as well as expansion of critical minerals operations on UK soil, must ensure than local communities are not harmed by pollution, contamination or other threats to their way of life or right to an adequate standard of living, including housing and health. Particular care should be taken when investing in exploration on Indigenous territories, as these territories are not always recognised as such by national governments.

4. Rights of environmental defenders and activists

Around the world, large numbers of courageous activists and environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) put their lives, liberty and reputations on the line to counter polluting and exploitative mineral extraction projects. Their efforts are hampered by various state strategies, including refusal to grant procedural rights (rights to information, consultation and free, prior and informed consent), discrediting and criminalisation of EHRDs, and crackdowns on protests.

On the island of Annobón, a province of Equatorial Guinea, widespread peaceful protests erupted in 2024 over the use of dynamite in mining operations that caused structural damage to housing. Sixteen people who wrote to the authorities expressing their concerns, along with many peaceful activists who supported the cause, were arrested. Most were detained and charged with rebellion and “abusive exercise of fundamental rights”.[15]

In May 2025, Indonesian police charged 11 Indigenous people with obstructing nickel mining activities. They received sentences of between two months’ and more than five months’ imprisonment. Indonesia’s Mineral and Coal Mining Law makes it a criminal offence to disrupt licensed mining activities,[16] contrary to the internationally recognised human rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.

In Madagascar, suspended prison sentences of up to five years have been used against dozens of people protesting mining operations. The alleged extrajudicial execution of protest leader Jean Salomon Andriamamonjy by security forces in October 2023 had yet to be investigated at the time of writing. He was one of three activists shot and killed while demonstrating against the QMM Mine belonging to London-listed Rio Tinto.[17]

In March 2025, the Prosecutor’s Office in Paraguay brought charges against Vidal Brítez for an incident in which he was not involved. Amnesty International raised concerns that he was targeted because of his previous calls for a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.[18] Vidal Brítez had previously campaigned against pollution from gold mining activities.

Sometimes abuses come from private actors involved in mining activities. In Ghana, for example, journalists reporting on illegal mining have been attacked and had their equipment vandalised by unidentified men.[19] Often, the victims of non-state actors receive little protection from the state.

The ability of local people, Indigenous communities and EHRDs to learn about, campaign against or be consulted on mining projects that affect them is hampered when governments fail to fulfil their procedural rights, including the rights to information, public participation, and free, prior and informed consent.

The Barroso Mine in northern Portugal, described as Europe’s largest lithium project,[20] has become a focus of activism by environmental campaigners and local communities due to their concerns over extensive social and ecological impacts. Scholarship has identified “insidious social technologies of pacification employed to engineer extraction and assemble an open-pit lithium mine with severe socio-ecological impacts in northern Portugal”, including tactics to “infiltrate rural social bonds, exploit psycho-social vulnerabilities and attempt to disable anti-mining organizing and unity within the region”.[21] Moreover, in August 2025, the United Nations Aarhus Committee found that Portugal had violated the rights to information and participation while carrying out the environmental assessment process for the Barroso Mine.[22] Savannah Resources Plc, the sole owner of the Barosso Lithium Project, is a London-listed company.[23]

Governments in Europe and beyond frequently fail to get the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before commencing mining operations on their land. This has been the case for the Sami people of northern Europe, whose lands, livelihoods and culture are being put at grave risk by the EU’s Critical Raw Minerals Act and Norway’s Minerals Act of 2024.[24] In the Philippines, consent was not given by local Indigenous groups for nickel mining that has contaminated their territory and harmed their health.[25] Again, these are two examples among many.

5. Conclusion

Climate change is the biggest threat to human existence and the right to a healthy environment. Critical and rare earth minerals are essential to the green transition, but their extraction and processing must be conducted in a way that does not place further pressure on ecosystems, human systems and legally protected human rights. In designing the UK’s vision for a critical minerals-based transition, the government has a one-time opportunity to ensure that rare earth projects at home and overseas (with the support of UK backers) are safe and clean and protect the human rights of local communities. Doing so it not only a moral, but also a legal obligation for the UK government and all companies involved in these enterprises.