Responsibly Produced Products
Eldorado is committed to responsibly producing gold and other metals that offer a wide range of uses. Our products advance sustainable development and contribute to economic growth around the world.
Product Responsibility
Eldorado supports industry-wide efforts to responsibly produce gold and other precious and base metals. We acknowledge and believe that our license to operate requires that all of our activities be conducted in a manner that does not cause, contribute or directly link to human rights abuses or unlawful conduct. As a member in good standing of the World Gold Council, Euromines and the Mining Association of Canada, we are committed to operating to robust social and environmental standards that benefit all stakeholders. External standards and frameworks that our operating mines adhere to are listed in Our Approach to Responsible Mining.
How Our Products Contribute to Society
The metals we produce comprise many of the materials that make up the modern world. They are critical components of green technologies such as wind turbines, electric cars, solar cells and major infrastructure that are advancing the global transition to a lower-carbon economy. Our products create and store value for economies, societies and governments, and form an integral part of modern financial systems. Just as our products contribute to a better world, we are committed to producing them in a way that creates positive economic, social and environmental value for all our stakeholders.
Gold mining is a major economic driver for many countries and jurisdictions around the world. Well-managed, transparent and responsible gold mining can be a major contributor to the socio-economic well-being of host communities through the creation of local employment and business opportunities, as well as investments that seek to benefit community development.
In Canada, one in eight women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, making it essential that we have the tools to quickly identify and treat the disease. Through the Breast Surgical Localization Program, the Providence Breast Centre at Mount St. Joseph Hospital in Vancouver is ensuring that women have access to lifesaving and life-altering care.
Eldorado recognizes the impact this program is having for women in needs of cancer care, and that’s why, for the second year in a row, we were pleased to support Providence Breast Centre in improving the experience of women undergoing breast cancer surgery in British Columbia.
“We’re proud to once again support the lifesaving work of the Providence Breast Centre,” said George Burns, President & CEO, Eldorado Gold. “It’s exciting to see such an innovative use of gold in health care – and with such a profound impact on patients. The Providence Breast Centre can conduct more surgeries, with more precision in locating the tumour, and patients are more comfortable throughout the process.”
“Eldorado Gold’s donation was a catalyst for our program, helping to raise the start-up costs and get the program running,” said Dr. Rebecca Warburton, Medical Director of Providence Breast Centre. “Rarely do we see an entirely new program have such a quick turnaround time and with such impressive results.”
In the first five months following the program’s inception in April 2023, surgeons at the Providence Breast Centre performed 498 operations for proven or suspected breast cancer. The team is on track to conduct 1,500 surgeries this year – a staggering 25% increase in breast cancer surgeries since pre-pandemic times.
To learn more about how the team at Providence Breast Centre is successfully using this gold-enabled technology to save lives, click here.
We’re proud to once again support the lifesaving work of the Providence Breast Centre.
George Burns, President & CEO, Eldorado Gold
Contractor and Supplier Management
Eldorado’s supply chain forms an important stage in the lifecycle of the gold and precious metals we responsibly produce. Our contractors are a critical part of our workforce, contributing to areas including exploration, construction and other developments requiring specific resources and expertise, and we work with our suppliers to procure vital supplies for our workforce and operations, such as food, tools, equipment, machinery, or bulk materials.
Eldorado acknowledges the importance of not only managing risks and implementing internationally recognized best practices in its own operations, but extending these expectations to our contractors and down the supply chain. SIMS requires all contractors and suppliers to be evaluated and conduct their work according to minimum performance standards for health and safety, environmental, social, human rights and other facets of sustainability, including:
- Complying with the the MAC-TSM Prevention of Child and Forced Labour Verification Protocol;
- Having contractors’ and sub-contractors’ sustainability performance evaluated as part of the risk-based selection process;
- Undergoing site-level due diligence, monitoring, reporting and oversight; and
- Having adequate insurance, training, certifications and protocols.
Guided by our corporate commitments, applicable laws and evolving best practices, we are working to develop improved tools and controls to mitigate risks outside of our own operations and progress against the requirements in SIMS. In 2021, Eldorado identified an opportunity to broaden the reach of its formal policies and controls for stronger commitment to ethical and responsible supply chains. Through 2022, we worked to produce a Supplier Code of Conduct that was finalized and formally adopted in 2023 and seeks to align our suppliers with Eldorado’s commitments. We also began investigating and developing processes to conduct systematic risk-based due diligence and compliance monitoring of our supply chain as controls against the Supplier Code.
Human Rights
As a significant economic and social presence in the jurisdictions and communities where we operate, Eldorado has the potential to substantively impact the human rights of our stakeholders. We acknowledge that we have a responsibility to respect internationally recognized human rights as expressed in the International Bill of Human Rights and the International Labour Organization’s Declaration on the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. In doing so we commit to avoid causing or contributing to adverse human rights impacts and prevent or mitigate those impacts that are directly linked to our operations. To meet our responsibilities in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, we have put in place:
- A policy commitment to respect human rights, as expressed in our Human Rights Policy, which we updated and was approved by the Board in 2022. The policy has been informed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples;
- A due diligence process to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for how we address our human rights impacts, as outlined in our SIMS, which commits us to regular, third-party human rights impact assessments;
- External assurances in accordance with the WGC’s Conflict-Free Gold Standard for Eldorado’s gold-producing sites; and
- Processes to enable the remediation of adverse human rights impacts that we may cause or contribute to, as outlined in the grievance mechanism section of this report.
Employees and contractors are expected to adhere to our Human Rights Policy and associated requirements in SIMS. We expect our business partners, including security providers, contractors and suppliers, to share this commitment to the rights of our workforce, local community members and all stakeholders with whom we interact. This includes respecting the human rights of individuals who require particular attention, including women, children, Indigenous peoples (pertinent to Lamaque, as directly impacted Indigenous peoples have not been identified at or near our other operations) and other potentially vulnerable or marginalized groups. Our stakeholders are identified through regular stakeholder mapping, and any potential human rights impacts may be identified through local impact assessments, our accessible grievance mechanisms, regular third-party human rights impact assessments and stakeholder engagements. Salient human rights issues are managed principally by site, regional and corporate community relations and legal teams, with oversight from senior management and the Board.
We communicate our commitment and these expectations through various means, including but not limited to induction and refresher training, on our intranet site, meetings with our Community of Interest Committees, and during the procurement process through our Supplier Code of Conduct. These commitments apply equally across all of our operating jurisdictions and our Human Rights Policy is made accessible in all official languages where we operate.
United Nations Global Compact
Eldorado is a signatory to the UN Global Compact (UNGC), the world’s largest corporate responsibility initiative. The UNGC’s Ten Principles provide fundamental guidance for our business in the areas of human rights, labour standards, the environment and anti-corruption. We have considered the UNGC’s Principles in the development of our Code of Ethics and Business Conduct, Anti-Bribery and Corruption Policy, Human Rights Policy, Diversity Policy, Respectful Workplace Policy, Social Performance Policy and our Environmental Policy. We report against each of the Ten Principles in our Communications on Progress.
Security
Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights
Created in 2000, the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights (VPSHR) comprise a “set of principles designed to guide companies in maintaining the safety and security of their operations within an operating framework that encourages respect for human rights.” The VPSHR is considered the standard for best practice in managing security for extractive industry operations. The Government of Canada has identified the VPSHR as an important international standard in Canada’s Responsible Business Conduct Abroad Strategy, and implementation of the VPSHR is a membership requirement of the World Gold Council and MAC. Our commitment and progress on the VPSHR is discussed in our VPSHR Report and included in MAC’s annual Towards Sustainable Mining Performance Report.
Eldorado has committed to implementing the VPSHR in its Human Rights Policy, which all employees and contractors, including private security providers, are required to abide by. SIMS also supports Eldorado’s alignment with the VPSHR.
Eldorado retained a credible third party to conduct Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights assessments at operations in Canada and Türkiye in 2021 and in Greece by 2022, and to evaluate our policies, practices and controls for security-related human rights risks. The assessments confirmed that our overall risk exposure is low in Canada, Greece and Türkiye. Eldorado will seek to conduct new assessments globally in 2025. Lamaque and Olympias underwent SIMS Compliance Verifications in 2022 and 2023, respectively, during which performance against the SIMS Security Standards
was assessed and our full conformance with Year 3 requirements of the RGMPs, which include implementation of the VPSHR, was verified by an independent third-party auditor.
Eldorado continues to pursue further opportunities that advance our commitments aligned with the VPSHR, including engagement with private and public security providers on human rights topics.
Responsible Sourcing
World gold council’s (wGC) Conflict-Free Gold Standard (CFGS)
The WGC published the CFGS in 2012, following extensive consultation with governments, civil society, external auditors and supply chain participants. The standard creates a framework for assurance that the production of gold by a company does not contribute to unlawful armed conflict or human rights abuses. The CFGS also serves to operationalize the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High- Risk Areas. Eldorado’s operations are not located in conflict-affected areas, but we nonetheless adopted the CFGS in 2013 to provide assurance that the gold we produce does not cause, support or benefit armed conflict or contribute to human rights abuses or breaches of international humanitarian law. This is reinforced by our updated Human Rights Policy and in SIMS. We published our tenth annual Conflict-Free Gold Report in 2023 that confirms Eldorado’s gold-producing operations do not contribute to conflict.
A copy of our report and independent assurance statement can be found on the Sustainability Reporting page of our website.
We are responsible for the security of our people, property and products and work closely with public and private security providers to operate in a manner that promotes and protects human rights. As a member of MAC and the WGC, Eldorado is committed to providing a safe and secure working environment for our employees, contractors and visitors and managing security-related human rights risks through implementation of the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.
Eldorado’s SIMS was developed in alignment with the VPSHR and security and human rights-related requirements of MAC-TSM and the WGC’s RGMPs, and it is the principal mechanism by which actions toward conformance with these corporate commitments regarding security and human rights are managed and administered. The SIMS Security Performance Standards include conducting risk assessments consistent with the VPSHR and implementing systems and programs appropriate to the risks identified. Compliance with SIMS is verified at the operations level through internal compliance verifications and self-assessments, as well as external assessments by a credible third party.
Formal complaints and grievances pertaining to security and human rights may be reported through our third-party whistleblower reporting agency as well as our employee or external grievance mechanisms.
Despite Eldorado’s relatively lower-risk exposure to human rights risks, based on operating jurisdictions and management controls in place, we intend to continually improve our application of the VPSHR through the implementation of SIMS. Key findings from assessments and verifications inform action plans for each operation, outlining specific recommendations and responsibilities to address the risks identified, along with appropriate controls.