ALTERNATIVE 1

You feel that the most appropriate thing to do is to respect the cultural norms and the autonomy of the local leaders. The company heed your advice and re-arrange their compensation package according to the wishes of the chief and the headmen. The new agreement is also approved by ESCA upon your recommendation.

A portion of the land originally intended for the resettled is signed over to the chief for him to divide to the few households that did not choose cash-only compensation. The whole sum of the cash compensation is also given to the chief, along with the company’s careful calculations on the assets of each household and the appropriate amount of compensation. The chief guarantees to have the communities vacated within two weeks as he is now in charge of the resettlement process.

However, reports on human rights abuses and violent quarrels inside the affected communities soon reach your desk at the office. The reports suggest that the chief’s local militia had forcefully evicted the villages under threat of violence.

Soon after, many people shows up outside Magda Mining's office and angrily question the sum of compensation that they were given by the local leaders, saying that it was far less than what they had been told that the mine had allocated for their compensation. The mine officials only refers to the new agreement, stating that the people would have to seek out the chief to ask for the rest of their compensation.

A few weeks later, you read a report from a local NGO that had been investigating the resettlement. According to the report, many people had been too frightened and culturally bound to question or disagree with their chief and local leaders in the new community meetings. In addition, some households being entirely inexperienced in handling larger sums of cash had been buying expensive things like cars and motorcycles rather than investing the money in new land and property, leading to catastrophic consequences for their families. Many households had also been unable to find any new land to buy. The majority of the resettled had depended on the compensation to restore their livelihoods, and had now been left impoverished as a result of the new agreement . The NGO also report on family ties between the chief and the local headmen, which all had seemingly been made much more wealthy after the resettlement.

The relationship between the affected communities and the mining company is very poor. There are now occasional mass-demonstrations and smaller vandalizations aimed at Magda Mining, resulting in the company cancelling a planned CSR-program to build a local health clinic and a school. ESCA’s reputation also deteriorates, receiving heavy criticism for their failure as state actors to ensure protection for human rights.