A new report provides an important case study for responsible coalitions and trade associations looking to develop common standards and self-regulatory mechanisms.

Centring on the Conflict-Free Gold Standard that provides a common approach to assure mining companies that their gold has been extracted in a manner that does not cause, support or benefit unlawful armed conflict, the report has been created by Cranfield School of Management and the Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy.

The report’s findings demonstrate the need for top-level and sustained commitment by individual business leaders and their companies, stakeholder engagement and meaningful consultation, identification and inclusion of advice from credible, third-party technical experts, effective ecosystem-mapping and co-ordination with other relevant initiatives and credible, independent third-party convenors to facilitate stakeholder dialogue.

Edward Bickham, Visiting Fellow at Cranfield School of Management and the author of the report, said: “It is five years since the World Gold Council launched the Conflict-Free Gold Standard as a process to enable gold mining companies to provide assurance to downstream users and other stakeholders that their gold had been produced in a way which avoids fuelling conflict or financing armed groups. The case study describes the consultation process and how the companies ultimately overcame their natural suspicions of each other to agree upon a workable framework the legitimacy of which has been widely accepted.”

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