While absolute results remain low overall, Barrick Gold Corp shows one of the five stronger results in Community Wellbeing in part because the company shows evidence of tracking and reviewing its performance on preventing and remedying human rights abuses related to its security management. In addition, Barrick Gold Corp shows evidence of having put in place systems designed to ensure its operations conduct human rights due diligence and assess and address the potential impacts of involuntary displacement.

Barrick Gold Corp’s results in the other thematic areas are above the average achieved across all 38 companies. At the same time, Barrick Gold Corp ranks 13th among the 38 companies on its mine-site-level results, though with an average score of only 15% in the mine-site assessment.

In the company-wide assessment, other areas where Barrick Gold Corp’s results are stronger include for example the company’s disclosure of the payments it makes to national and sub-national governments in accordance with its home country Canada’s Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act, and its disclosure of information on the location and safety of its tailings storage facilities along with other companies, following the recent investor request.

Barrick Gold Corp is associated with several leading practices, including its systematic approach to prioritising local employees for senior management roles at mine sites.

On the other hand, Barrick Gold Corp’s overall results are held back by a lack of evidence of action on a number of issues, including for example collaborative R&D on socio-economic and environmental issues related to mining, tracking the quality of its relationships with affected communities, and ensuring that its operations address the health and safety needs of women workers. And the company still shows evidence of discrepancies in the level of effort it makes to track and review the performance of its grievance mechanisms. While the company shows evidence of tracking and reviewing the performance of its grievance mechanisms for communities, no such evidence is found relating to the performance of its grievance mechanisms for workers.

Moreover, the six Barrick Gold Corp mine sites assessed in the mine-site assessment show no evidence of disclosing data related to air quality. Likewise, none of these six mine sites show any evidence of informing affected communities about their emergency response plans or of involving these communities in the testing of these plans.