While absolute results remain low overall, Barrick shows one of the six stronger results in Community Wellbeing. This is due in part to evidence of the company tracking and reviewing its performance on preventing and remedying human rights abuses related to its security management. In addition, Barrick 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’s results in the other five thematic areas are above the average. In the company-wide assessment, other areas where Barrick’s results are stronger include for example the company’s disclosure of the payments it makes to national and sub-national governments, its disclosure of information on the location and safety of its tailings storage facilities, and its commitment to a mitigation hierarchy approach to prioritise the prevention and avoidance of environmental impacts above measures to minimise, restore or offset the residual impacts.

In a sign of its continuous improvement efforts since the RMI Report 2020, Barrick now discloses the percentage of women at board and senior-level management levels over time as well as having set new targets to increase the number of women at board level.

On the other hand, Barrick’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, only very limited evidence is found relating to the performance of its grievance mechanisms for workers.

Barrick ranks 16th among the 40 companies on its mine-site-level results, with an average score of only 10% in the mine-site assessment. Moreover, none of the eight Barrick mine sites assessed – including joint ventures with Newmont and Antofagasta – show any relevant evidence on eight of the fifteen issues covered in the mine-site assessment: local procurement, air quality, water quality, safety of communities, safety of workers, women workers, training of workers, and living wage.