A/HRC/42/42 Porgera Joint Venture gold mine in Papua New Guinea, 119 women were allegedly subjected to sexual violence and excessive use of force by mine security and police guarding the mine. One of the victims alleged that she had been gang raped by five security personnel who caught her on the Kogai waste dump while she was selling betel nut to informal miners working there in September 2009. The acts allegedly took place during a period when the mine was majority-owned and operated by Canadian mining company Barrick Gold Corporation.43 Like in so many cases of sexual violence, the perpetrators of these violations have not been brought to justice. Survivors of sexual or gender-based violence often suffer stigma and exclusion from their communities, leaving them in a vulnerable situation. The significant challenges that survivors of sexual violence, especially women, face have been well documented,44 and may be further exacerbated when private military and security companies are involved. VI. Accountability and access to remedy challenges 58. A major challenge to securing accountability for human rights abuses by private security companies operating in the extractive industry is, given the fluid and complex security arrangements that characterize the sector, the difficulty of identifying perpetrators. Private military and security companies and other private security personnel may not be easily identifiable in the absence, in many instances, of a uniform and/or insignia. This is problematic in cases in which such companies have directly committed human rights abuses. In other cases, where they are complicit through actions that enable, facilitate or contribute to abuses by extractive companies or violations by the State, documenting their involvement is equally challenging. 59. The opaque security arrangements prevalent in much of the extractive sector make it extremely difficult to ascertain chains of command, responsibilities and levels of coordination among the different security actors, and undermine transparency and monitoring efforts. Furthermore, it is usually difficult to find public confirmation of the identity of subcontractors in the event that they are hired. 60. A number of lawsuits involving human rights abuses by private security working in the extractive industry were brought to the attention of the Working Group. These were mainly legal claims for redress before national courts of the country where the parent company of the subsidiary running the project was domiciled. In most cases, a settlement was reached out of court, usually comprising financial compensation and sometimes shortterm work contracts, and therefore falling short of achieving accountability and holistic remedies for the victims. Some cases were also dismissed owing to jurisdictional issues. 61. In the host State of an extractive company, access to justice is often compromised for a number of reasons, such as the high costs associated with bringing a case to court, and the lack of legal aid funding; lack of legal professionals with the requisite knowledge and/or experience and/or willingness to pursue such sensitive cases in some jurisdictions; fear of retaliation for reporting abuses, and lack of victim and witness protection; weak judicial systems; and lengthy court proceedings. Moreover, such abuses are committed in a climate of impunity, in which perpetrators are rarely held to account, which further discourages victims from reporting abuses. Fundamentally, there is also an imbalance of power between the company (extractive or private military or security company) and the individuals and communities affected by those companies’ operations. This was striking in the case of Chevron vs. Ecuador, where the principles of international economic law, notably the corporation’s right to profit, were favoured over protective human rights laws promoted by the State. 62. In the company itself, grievance mechanisms are frequently not known to persons with a reason to lodge a complaint, and in some cases are set up on an ad hoc basis. Where complaints are lodged, many are viewed as “unsubstantiated” or “inconclusive”. They are 43 44 16 Joint communication AL PNG 2/2017. See Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, general recommendation No. 33 (2015) on women’s access to justice; see also OHCHR, Women's Rights are Human Rights, 2014.