This fully miner-led session creates direct, face-to-face engagement between upstream miners and downstream supply chain actors. Four miners from diverse regions share authentic, pre-recorded stories from their mine site, illustrating a specific challenge they face in production or in dealing with supply chain actors (e.g. pricing, standards, technology, finance, or recognition). Participants then join solution-focused "speed date" dialogues at miner-staffed tables, addressing concrete questions on appropriate mining technologies, mineral supply risks and security, women’s entrepreneurship and leadership, supply chain transparency and traceability, as well as fair and long‑term miner–buyer partnerships. The session closes with actionable commitments to build reliable, responsible mineral value chains through sustained collaboration.
Co-hosted by the International Council for Artisanal and Small-scale Mining.
With mineral demand expected to soar, ASM will likely expand. Interest in supply security at the downstream end of the supply chain can overshadow efforts to ensure that upstream ASM operations do not contribute to conflict or criminality. These interests intersect because responsible supply chains are reliable. When the importance of responsibility is overlooked, ASM operations are more likely to contribute to conflict or criminal political economies. ASM operations can generate illicit financial flows that finance armed groups. They can also be financed by transnational networks of illicit finance.
This session reviews major changes in ASM’s ties to conflict and how illicit finance continues to shape the landscape. Drawing from practical cases, we highlight the limited progress in balancing these interests. Still, responsible ASM engagement boosts supply security, resilience, and stability. The session uses successful collaborations to show how coordinated action can reshape these intersections and challenge the view of ASM as only harmful or illegal.
Co-hosted by the Government of France
Responsible minerals sourcing increasingly depends on the ability to build transparent, reliable, and inclusive value chains supporting both industry and artisanal and small-scale miners. The past decade has witnessed digital innovations: from traceability platforms and facility records to blockchain-based solutions and digital mine-site monitoring tools. These have transformed how the sector is governed and how companies manage risk, document due diligence, and engage with ASM. But an important question remains: how do these tools translate into real impact on the ground?
Beyond improving transparency for downstream actors, digital systems can strengthen mine-site oversight, improve record keeping, facilitate responsible sourcing verification, and support more structured engagement with ASM cooperatives and local stakeholders. When implemented effectively, they can help formalise supply chains, improve working conditions, and increase trust between miners, traders, smelters, and international markets. This session brings together different perspectives on how digital tools are shaping reliable, responsible mineral value chains and where further collaboration is needed.
Co-hosted by LuNA Smelter
ASM provides important shares of minerals essential for modern technologies and the energy transition. However, ASM is often associated with heightened environmental, social, and governance risks, particularly in regions with limited regulatory oversight. When such challenges arise, companies may be tempted to disengage. Disengagement rarely resolves underlying issues. Instead, it can drive miners further into informality, reduce transparency, and ultimately increase risks across the wider industry.
Responsible engagement that is grounded in due diligence and long-term partnerships offers an alternative approach. When managed effectively, ASM can generate employment, support sustainable development, strengthen community resilience, and diversify mineral supplies.
This session aims to equip businesses with practical steps to responsibly engage with ASM across diverse minerals, regions, and value chains. It will discuss how ASM engagement strengthens supply chain resilience and reliability, and how responsible approaches can create value for companies.
Co-hosted by The OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
Ensuring that the benefits from rising mineral demand are shared fairly is a central challenge. Gender-responsive due diligence (GRDD) in artisanal and small-scale mining can help balance interests and foster equity. This session draws on real experiences and efforts involving multiple stakeholders. It examines what has worked, what barriers remain, and how GRDD can move from principles into action. Key areas include women's access to resources, participation in decision-making, and opportunities to increase their share of value. Gathering stakeholders from across the mineral value chain, including ASM, encourages group reflection on institutional GRDD practices and day-to-day realities. The session reviews GRDD approaches by looking at implementation experiences and current tools. It offers practical lessons to help create more fair and inclusive mineral value chains.
Co-hosted by Women’s Rights and Mining
In Goma in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, filmmaker and journalist Bernadette Vivuya seeks funding for her film. At the same time, a Dutch crew wants to make a film about the conflicting perspectives of Goma, but is quickly confronted with the local community's refusal to be filmed. This sparks a conversation around power and trust, coloniality and representation.
"Stop Filming Us, but Listen" takes a closer look at the imbalance of power inherited from colonialism and its consequences on the representation of the DRC, cinematic and otherwise. The film follows the journey of Bernadette and her fellow local artists as they strive to challenge the Western narrative around their city.
A film by Bernadette Vivuya, Kagoma Twahirwa and Ganza Buroko © DOXY Films/Yole!Africa/Nederlands Filmfonds 2022. Watch the trailer here.
When you purchase a car, laptop, or phone, the materials in the battery are not distinguished by how they were produced. There is no such thing as an "LSM battery" or an "ASM battery." Yet despite their end products ending up in the same place, the two types of mining largely operate in silos, creating complexity in the downstream value chain and, at worst, conflict in the upstream.
This session looks at minerals value chains end-to-end through a variety of different perspectives to consider how LSM and ASM, despite their differences, can find opportunities to better align on governance, coexistence, production, standards, and traceability.
Through a case-to-action workshop, participants will examine a case the encapsulates key elements of the LSM-ASM issue and focus on the different perspectives of communities, ASM, LSM, local governments, and downstream actors to help find alignment and balance among sometimes competing interests. This session determines objectives, identifies roadblocks, and ideates solutions to reduce supply chain risks and increase benefits-sharing for the upstream.
Co-hosted by the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance
“Manos que hablan” (“Talking Hands”) is a prize-winning documentary made with love alongside the artisanal gold miners of Chocó. It is the first feature-length film on this subject to be made in Colombia and in this region. The Chocó biogeographic region is one of the planet’s major biodiversity hotspots. The film explores how, amidst an exceptionally rich and fragile natural environment, preserving the surroundings and the ancestral, sustainable mining and jewellery-making techniques is vital to local communities. Through the voices and gestures of passionate miners and jewellers, the documentary shows how mining must be a practice of environmental and social stewardship, of memory and dignity.
A film by Camilo Gómez Durán. Watch the trailer here.
Proliferating international mineral partnerships are reshaping mineral value chains. Yet ASM remains overlooked in many of these collaborations, despite its central role in livelihoods, local economies, and mineral production. As governments develop and refine (critical) mineral strategies, there are opportunities to consider how ASM can be better integrated into these agendas and related partnerships.
This session explores how incorporating ASM in mineral partnerships can support win-win outcomes. Drawing on national and regional perspectives from mineral-producing countries and regions, this session examines how partnerships can align with producing-country priorities, including local value addition and inclusive development, while reflecting the values that underpin cooperation. Building on emerging national ASM strategies and regional dialogue, regional coordination can strengthen these efforts.
To these ends, this session asks how national and regional priorities can be better reflected in evolving mineral partnerships. And how might regional approaches enhance negotiating positions, improve policy coherence, and support more reliable and responsible mineral value chains?
Co-hosted by the United Nations Development Programme