This paper discusses how human rights due diligence (“HRDD”) applies to the prevention and mitigation of social conflict in the Peruvian mining industry. Peru is one of the world’s largest producers of copper, gold, and zinc. Its mining industry accounts for ten percent of Peru’s gross domestic product, and sixty percent of its exports. Mining exports have helped to fuel fast economic growth in Peru, reduce its foreign debt, and reduce poverty (although not as significantly in rural areas where the bulk of mining in Peru takes place).However, due to a lack of social trust, particularly between rural peasants and mining companies, Peru’s mining sector has been marked by a high degree of social conflict regarding the impacts of mining projects, which resulted in 70 deaths between 2012 and 2016. Social conflict is a red flag for human rights abuse, is costly for businesses in ways they do not fully appreciate, and is bad for the Peruvian financial system.HRDD has a critical role to play in preventing and mitigating social conflict. HRDD is a stakeholder-centered process that enables businesses to manage their risks of involvement in human rights abuse. It derives from the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (“UNGPs”). The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, described the UNGPs as “the global authoritative standard, providing a blueprint for the steps all States and businesses should take to uphold human rights.”Ten years after their unanimous endorsement by the UN Human Rights Council, the UNGPs have become incorporated or reflected in public, commercial, and private law, in regulations, in multistakeholder international norms, in the decisions of investors and lenders, in the policies and practices of leading companies, in judicial and quasi-judicial decision-making, and in the advocacy of civil society. HRDD is becoming increasingly codified into law (particularly in Europe) and has become highly relevant to the huge and growing number of investors who are paying closer attention to Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) factors in their decision-making, where the “S” factor is heavily populated by human rights.The accelerating uptake of the UNGP suggests that the need for robust HRDD by mining companies doing business in Peru has become increasingly acute. Therefore, this paper briefly discusses the background and content of the UNGPs and HRDD; the problem of social conflict between communities and companies in Peru; the use of HRDD to address that conflict in Peru; and going forward, the relevance to extractive companies of the increasing uptake of HRDD for Peru, as reflected in mandatory human rights due diligence legislation in the EU, the rise of ESG investment, and the use by judicial bodies of the UNGPs and HRDD in their decision-making
