Approximately 400 people participated in the global public consultation of CRAFT (Code of Risk-mitigation for Artisanal and small-scale mining engaging in Formal Trade).
Designed to reflect and align with the OECD Due Diligence Guidance Annex II, as well as identifying other high risks in the sector, CRAFT will serve as a voluntary technical code that can serve as a shared framework for artisanal gold producers and downstream users in assessing performance against minimum criteria for market acceptability and in guiding progressive improvement on social and environmental performance. CRAFT has been developed by the Alliance for Responsible Mining and RESOLVE in 2017 and 2018, with financial support from the European Partnership for Responsible Mining, and with active guidance from its multi-sector Standard Committee and its Advisory Group.
Stakeholder outreach involved 16 organized consultation activities, including workshops with artisanal and small-scale miners, industry stakeholders, civil society, and governments. In accordance with ISEAL’s recommendations on standard development, the consultation period lasted 60 days, from 26 February to 26 April 2018.
Consultations were held with artisanal miners as well as institutions in the La Llanada and Suárez departments in Colombia, as well as in Burkina Faso, Guyana, and Ghana (the latter was possible with support from Solidaridad Africa). These workshops were important to receive feedback from different geographic and policy contexts.
In parallel, four webinars were carried out with industry stakeholders, including members of the Responsible Jewelry Council, the London Bullion Market Association, the Swiss Better Gold Association, the OECD Multi-stakeholder Group, and the Responsible Minerals Initiative. In Washington, D.C. (USA) a meeting was held with the members of the Roundtable for Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining. Two meetings were organized in Bogotá (Colombia) that involved members of the National CAPAZ Committee representing academia, the government and governmental institutions and the GDIAM Mining Dialogue Group. A session was held at the OECD Forum on Mineral Supply Chains in Paris (France), which was attended by approximately 60 representatives from the gold industry, governments and other civil society actors. Finally, 22 contributions were collected through the online forms and direct feedback on the CRAFT Code.
Overall, the process included participation by refiners, miners, governments, NGOs, international agencies, members of the academia, audit organizations, mining dialogue groups, jewelry companies, support organizations for ASM, traders, supply chain initiatives, consultants and industry associations. Input reflected wide geographic engagement as well; comments were received from Guyana, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ghana, France, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Switzerland, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Germany, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Spain, India, Brazil, the Netherlands, and Peru.
After the public consultation period, comments are being reviewed for potential inclusion in a revised version of the CRAFT Code. The revised draft is currently under development and will next be submitted to the CRAFT Standard Committee and the Advisory Group for their final review; the version approved by these two bodies will be published as version 1.0 in July, 2018. The synopsis and list of comments will be published along with the Code on the CRAFT webpage.
We thank all who participated in the various consultation activities. Your contributions and comments were very valuable in the process of building a voluntary Code that promotes the social, organizational, and environmental development of artisanal and small-scale miners!