Our annual report provides some key impact stories from MiningWatch's work in 2024, with additional information about our financial position in 2024.
This year marked a milestone for MiningWatch. Celebrating our 25th anniversary provided an important opportunity for reflecting on the reasons MiningWatch formed when we first opened our doors in 1999, the struggles we’ve supported, the relationships we’ve built along the way, and the immense challenges that lie ahead.
Some of our key impact stories from this past year include:
25 years: A bedrock for mining justice
- We kicked off a year of 25th anniversary celebrations with a one-day conference on June 9, 2024, featuring an impressive group of speakers from the Philippines to Colombia and Indigenous leaders from across Turtle Island.
- We also released a bilingual report to reflect more deeply on what we’ve collectively accomplished over the past two and a half decades.
Revealing What’s at Stake in the Canada-Ecuador Free Trade Agreement
- In October, we co-organized a highly successful delegation of Ecuadorian Indigenous women rights defenders to Canada, who urged Members of Parliament to reconsider the trade deal, warning it would worsen the abuses their communities are facing because of Canadian mining.
We produced a detailed brief outlining the heavy footprint of existing Canadian projects and joined Ecuadorian communities demands for Canada not to ratify the trade deal.
Documenting Forced Evictions and other Human Rights Violations at Barrick’s North Mara Gold Mine in Tanzania
We published a report in October 2024 on the findings of our 9th field visit to Tanzania since 2014, documenting forced evictions that took place between 2020 and 2023.
We also attended hearings in Toronto between October 15-17 held in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Toronto regarding alleged human rights abuses in and around the North Mara mine, closely following the legal proceedings and their implications for parent company accountability, and access to remedy for the victims.
Fighting for Lasting Reform to Quebec’s Mining Act
We co-produced a detailed analysis and proposed amendments to the “Bill to amend the Mining Act and other provisions” (Bill 63) with our partners in the Quebec Meilleure Mine (QMM) coalition.
Along with the QMM coalition, we presented this analysis to the Quebec National Assembly, and issued a follow-up memo with some additional context.