SADC parliaments pursue rights-based approach in natural resources sector |15 May 2023
Members of the Standing Committees of the SADC Parliamentary Forum pose for a souvenir photograph on Tuesday, May 9, 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa (Photo: Omary Machunda, Parliament of the United Republic of Tanzania)
A joint session of Standing Committees of the Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF) has deliberated on a rights-based approach to the conduct of business within the natural resources sector in the SADC region.
The Standing Committees on Democratisation, Governance and Human Rights (DGHR); Human and Social Development and Special Programmes (HSDSP); Trade, Industry, Finance, and Infrastructure (TIFI) and Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (FANR) met in Johannesburg, South Africa on Tuesday, May 9, 2023.
The session was held under the theme, ‘Towards a Rights-Based Approach to the Conduct of Business Within the Natural Resources Sector in the SADC Region: What Parliamentarians Can Do?’
It discussed the potential of the mineral-rich SADC region to make a positive impact towards environmental, economic, social, and cultural rights including supporting social protection programmes, creating jobs, eradicating poverty and reducing inequalities.
The chairperson of the DGHR, Zimbabwean parliamentarian Honourable Dought Ndiweni, said the theme for the meeting was chosen because the Committee recently adopted the Principles and Guidelines for Parliaments in Promoting Human Rights in February 2023.
The guidelines seek to enhance the role of members of the legislature in ensuring the creation of a comprehensive human rights framework and effective oversight of its implementation. The Committee also adopted the Natural Resources Governance Barometer for Southern Africa in 2016 to enhance parliamentary interventions for accountability in the extractive industry.
Ndiweni said the exploitation of natural resources in Southern Africa has often been associated with human rights violations and environmental damage. Corporations engaged in the natural resources sector in Africa have operated with a general disregard for human and community rights.
“Allegations of rampant environmental, labour, health and human rights violations, including land despoliation, forced displacement, environmental pollution, cultural infringements and, in some instances, deaths have been levelled against corporations operating on the African continent,” Ndiweni said.
He argued that whereas the obligation to regulate corporate conduct and safeguard the human rights of communities lies with the state, the legislative provisions, institutions, and actions by some African states have tended to fall short of expectations, leaving communities vulnerable.
Globalisation and the increasing power of multinational or transnational corporations (TNCs) means that there is a lopsided power relation between the state and TNCs, resulting in limited capacity for the state to regulate and monitor the operations of TNCs, according to Ndiweni.
“This has resulted more complex gaps in natural resource governance, in particular rendering territorial regulation by individual countries impracticable,” he said.
He said that the increasing need for the world to move towards renewable energies had triggered an increase in the exploitation of mineral resources in Africa and the Southern Africa region in particular.
“The decarbonization of the energy and transport sector cannot be dissociated from the natural resources sector given the significant importance of minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper in the manufacturing of batteries and other green technologies,” the chairperson said.
Research has established that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) produces about 70% of the world’s cobalt, while South Africa has the largest share of manganese reserves. Mozambique has significant shares of graphite and Zimbabwe has the largest deposits of lithium in Africa.
However, emerging research shows that the transitional mineral boom is more likely to lead to a typical situation where communities bear the burden of the negative impacts of mining activities without reaping the benefits of the same.
Ndiweni contended that the potential for Southern Africa’s transitional minerals sector to significantly contribute to the SADC Vision 2050, Africa’s Agenda 2063, and the sustainable development agenda can only be realised if the human rights impacts of projects are carefully considered, identified, prevented, and remedied along the entire transitional minerals value chain.
The theme of a rights-based approach to the conduct of business within the natural resources sector in the SADC region is critical to ensure that the exploitation of natural resources benefits citizens substantively.
Speaking during the meeting, Eva Jhala, a legislative consultant, highlighted the role of parliaments in legislating for strategic and sensitive assets while considering the security of the nation and encouraging direct investments.
She said that most countries have eliminated barriers to trans-border capital flows and have abolished exceptions to national treatment for the acquisition, ownership, control, or operation of national strategic or sensitive assets by foreigners.
However, as international investment increased, many countries became concerned about malicious owners sabotaging or withholding access to critical infrastructure. These concerns led to the adoption of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for recipient country investment policies relating to national security, which served as a benchmark for policy design for many governments.
Jhala pointed out that most African countries have not comprehensively come up with policies or enacted laws to ensure the sustainability of investments coming into their countries, especially those involving natural resources, sensitive infrastructure, or advanced technology.
Instead, most African countries have opted for piece-meal enactments, such as defence and security laws, land laws, company laws, financial management laws, and securities laws. However, she maintained that these laws do not seriously take into account the risks involved in ownership-acquisitions or control by foreigners.
To address potential national security risks, Jhala recommended that investment policies relating to national security should become essential and embedded in legislation, either as standalone laws or integrated into complex competition laws using public interest tests related to essential security interests.
The policy and law generally should cover the regulation of foreign direct investments in national strategic assets, ownership and control of national strategic assets, procedures relating to state acquisitions of national strategic and sensitive assets, exempted national strategic and sensitive assets and entities, and entities eligible to be governed under nationality-neutral measures.
She stressed the importance of parliaments in understanding and interrogating complex structural and normative arrangements or mechanisms presented in draft legislation or encouraging debate on these matters.
Boemo Sekgoma, the SADC-PF secretary-general, said the joint session allowed MPs to deliberate from a multi-sectoral perspective on the theme under consideration.
She stressed that Joint Sessions of Standing Committees enable MPs to cross-learn and reflect on a theme from a holistic perspective, which would allow for comprehensive resolutions to be made to the Plenary Assembly of the Forum.
She emphasised that peace would inevitably depend on the extent of foreign influence over domestic assets, which are managed by the executive. The theme of the meeting was coined to address this issue.
The Joint Session highlighted the importance of parliaments in shaping the future and ensuring that both the present and the future can accommodate citizens' inclusiveness.
The mandate of parliaments goes beyond the current reality, and MPs need to brace for the future to ensure that citizens are included.
Ms Sekgoma noted that foreign debt instruments can influence important resources of a nation, and this can affect a successive Parliament existing at the time when the debt contract is enforced.
Such contracts, by their very nature, transcend time and distort democracy, and it is due to this democratic deficit that the Forum chose the theme for the joint session.
Moses Magadza
