25 September, 2014IndustriALL invites affiliates to participate in the discussion of the Initiative for Responsible Mining (IRMA) released for public consultation.
The ground-breaking draft standards are developed within the framework of the multi-stakeholder approach and governance of the initiative, which allowed equal representation of mining, workers, indigenous communities, NGOs, downstream users/business.
Since the 1st world summit on sustainable development (Rio+10) in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002, almost every sector of the global industrial economy has seen a proliferation of global standards claiming to abide by imperatives of Sustainable Development.
Together with the United Steelworkers, IndustriALL has been involved in an effort to create higher independent third-party standards and verification systems for almost eight years since the time when ICEM (IndustriALL predecessor) participated in the second meeting of the Initiative for Responsible Mining (IRMA) in 2007. IndustriALL Global Union and the USW are members of the IRMA steering committee.
The development of standards require two public consultations and review periods. The release of the current draft is the first public review and consultation period that will end on 22 October 2014.
A second public review and consultation will open immediately following the collation of the comments, input and feedback by the IRMA steering committee.
After the standards are adopted, next step will be to set up on-site verifications systems, which must engage workers and community members directly and qualitatively to assure that the adopted standards are being implemented.
IndustriALL invites all the affiliates to take part in the first public consultation phase of the IRMA standards development and to submit their feedback to the draft Standard for Responsible Mining. For this purpose an internet-based survey has been created. The survey for the July 2014 version of the draft IRMA Standard will be open for comments until 22 October 2014. The English and Spanish version of online survey are available at http://www.responsiblemining.net/the-irma-process/stakeholder-feedback/#ONLINESURVEY
Direct access to the English versions of the survey:
· This version of the Survey allows one response per computer (recommended, as this version allows users to return to the survey and add or change comments at any time)
· This version of the Survey allows multiple respondents to use the same computer (each respondent must complete survey in one sitting)
More information about IRMA and its work is available through link http://www.responsiblemining.net/