Anglo American investors urged to consider ‘moral and legal risk’ re Kabwe lead pollution
03/12/2024
©JessHurd
Today, 3 December 2024, following an event in the House of Lords on 29 October 2024, ACTSA along with Corporate Justice Coalition, London Mining Network, and Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID) wrote to Anglo American investors.
The letter regarded the company’s role in the environmental and public health crisis affecting the town of Kabwe, in Zambia, and the resulting mass lead poisoning of children over many decades. In light of this, we urged investors to consider both Anglo American’s and their own responsibility under the UN Guiding Principles to “avoid infronting on the human rights of others and […] address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved.”
You can read the letter to investors here.
An open letter signed by 26 civil society organisations around the world such as Christian Aid, Client Earth, Friends of the Earth Africa and Save the Children Zambia, calling on Anglo American to live up to its own ESG commitments, was handed in to its London Headquarters on 31 October 2024.
We stand in solidarity with the mining community of Kabwe, who continue to live with the severe and irreversible impacts, especially on children, of lead poisoning, decades after Anglo American was urged by its own experts to clean up pollution from its 49-year-long mining activities at one of the world’s most productive lead mines. We leave you with community facilitator from Kabwe Barry Mulimba’s words in the House of Lords:
“We demand that Anglo American properly address the environmental devastation they’ve left behind. If this is not done, future generations will be condemned to live with the ongoing crisis of lead poisoning in Kabwe.”