Swedwatch: New guidance calls for urgent action to ensure justice for communities affected by extractives

New guidance highlights how faith actors can help unlock access to justice — and what companies, investors and states must do to support community-driven solutions. The guidance note will be launched at the Eastern Africa Exchange Platform on Business and Human Rights in Arusha, Tanzania, on the 5^th of June.

Communities across the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa are facing widespread human rights abuses and environmental damage linked to extractive industries — yet access to justice and remedy remains rare. A new guidance note from Swedwatch, FECCLAHA and Act Church of Sweden, with the support also from Christian Council of Tanzania, CCT, highlights the critical role of faith actors in enabling community-driven access to remedy, and calls for urgent action across global value chains to address persistent harms in one of the world’s most high-risk regions.

-Faith actors remain deeply rooted within communities and are often among the first institutions people turn to when facing injustice and harm linked to extractive industries. This guidance recognizes the important role faith leaders can play in supporting dialogue, trust-building, grievance processes, and long-term follow-up toward meaningful remedy and accountability, says Monica Njoroge, Programme Manager at FECCLAHA.

Picture from a training held in Tanzania for faith leaders in 2025, the training was held by Swedwatch, Fecclaha, Act Church of Sweden and CCT. Photo by Swedwatch.

The guidance, "Restoring Faith in Remedy — How faith actors can enable communitydriven grievance mechanisms" highlights severe and interconnected impacts from extractive operations, including environmental degradation, serious health risks, loss of livelihoods, violence, and land rights violations. Despite this, existing grievance mechanisms remain largely inaccessible, poorly communicated, and lack trust among affected communities.

-Communities living with the impacts of extractive industries are too often left without meaningful avenues to raise grievances or seek remedy. This guidance shows that solutions exist — but they require aligned action from all actors across the value chain, says Benjamin Claeson, programme officer at Swedwatch and author of the report.

Restrictions on civic space in the region mean that efforts to document stories of harm and engage company and State authorities are increasingly supressed through threats, arrests, violence, and administrative barriers.

- In many cases, grievances go unresolved, contributing to escalating conflict and long-term harm, says Benjamin Claeason.

A key finding is the critical role of faith actors in enabling access to remedy. As trusted and locally embedded institutions, faith leaders often serve as first points of contact for affected communities, as such they can support grievance processes, and facilitate conflict resolution as well as initiate dialogues within communities necessary to identify priorities for remedy.

-Faith actors have proximity to communities and therefore provide a trusted and powerful platform for facilitating sustained dialogues, as well as, advocating for the protection and justice of the vulnerable and marginalised communities, says Monica Njoroge.

The guidance, with a foreword from Bishop Nelson Kisare, Chairperson of the Tanzanian Interfaith Standing Committee on Economic Justice and Integrity of Creation (ISCEJIC), sets out practical recommendations for companies, investors, public buyers and states across extractives value chains. It emphasises that responsibility for remedy does not lie solely with mining companies, but requires coordinated action across the entire value chain.

Key recommendations
The guidance outlines 24 specific recommendations for how to develop grievance mechanisms, that faith leaders and mining impacted communities have identified as essential to enable community driven pathways to remedy. These include strategies to ensure the mechanism is visible, safe, accessible and transparent, and has independent governance and resources to review complaints.

They also include recommendations to ensure the community has the resources, spaces for organising, access to information about the value chain, and alternative pathways to justice.

Recognizing that value chain leverage is often essential to drive change in the extractives sector the guidance also outlines the following recommendations:

• Use leverage across value chains: Companies, investors and public buyers must require meaningful stakeholder engagement and effective grievance mechanisms, including through contracts, investment strategies and procurement practices. This guidance provides several recommendations on how this can be achieved. Aligned and specific guidance, as included in this guidance note, on how to fulfil these expectations is crucial to moving beyond cosmetic compliance.
• Enable community-driven access to remedy: Value chain actors should actively engage with community-based actors — including faith networks — through sustained collaboration and support independent, accessible mechanisms that reflect the needs and priorities of affected communities. This requires continuous monitoring to ensure compliance, which faith networks are well situated to provide.
• Strengthen accountability and enforcement: States must ensure effective enforcement of due diligence requirements, improve oversight of grievance mechanisms, and guarantee access to justice for affected communities.

-Ensuring access to remedy is not only a responsibility of extractive companies — it requires coordinated action across value chains. Without this, communities will continue to bear the costs of extraction without recourse, says Benjamin Claeson.

By placing communities at the centre of grievance processes and recognising the role of trusted local actors, the guidance offers a pathway toward more effective, inclusive, and conflict-sensitive approaches to remedy in the extractives sector.

SHORT FILM:
Below is a short documentary that explores the impact of mining expansion on a local community in Tanzania, where residents were forced to leave their homes as extraction operations expanded.
Its filmed and produced by Swedwatch.

FACT BOX:
-Act Church of Sweden is a faith and human rights-based actor in the field of international humanitarian action and development cooperation.

-FECCLAHA (The Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa) is a regional faith-based organization established with a head quarter in Kenya. It serves as a platform for member churches and councils to collaborate on issues of common concern, particularly peacebuilding and conflict transformation. The organization draws its membership from 11 national church councils spread across ten countries in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa and collaborates and partners with interfaith platforms/institutions.

-Swedwatch is an independent not-for-profit organisation that conducts in-depth research on the impacts of businesses on human rights and the environment.

-Christian Council of Tanzania, CCT, is an umbrella organization bringing together protestant denominations and church related organizations. There are 12 denominations and 10 Church related Organizations. They are a member organisation of FECCLAHA

FACT BOX: Methodology
The guidance note is based on six years of collaboration between Swedwatch, Act Church of Sweden and FECCLAHA. It draws on regional learning forums with faith leaders, a pilot project in Tanzania supporting community engagement on mining impacts, and interviews with 22 faith leaders from mining-affected communities across six countries in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa.

The analysis is further informed by a regional validation workshop and partner-led research, as well as a review of civil society reports and existing literature. The findings provide qualitative insights into recurring patterns of harm and community experiences, with all interview data anonymised to protect participants.

For media inquires:
Judy Muthoni, Fecclaha: judy.muthoni@fecclaha.org, +254 0739106618, Brighton Katabazi, CCT: +255 758118 223, or Ami Hedenborg, Swedwatch: ami@swedwatch.org, +46-709-3292 49