A bill to establish and implement a multi-year Legal Gold and Mining Partnership Strategy to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of illicit gold mining in the Western Hemisphere, and for other purposes.
United States Legal Gold and Mining Partnership Act
This bill requires the Department of State to develop a comprehensive strategy to combat illicit gold mining in the Western Hemisphere, with a focus on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), a form of mining typified by labor-intensive techniques, dangerous working conditions, and limited regulation.
The required strategy shall include policies, programs, and initiatives to (1) interrupt the linkages between ASM and illicit actors such as drug traffickers and foreign terrorist organizations; (2) deter ASM in environmentally protected areas; (3) build the capacity of foreign civilian law enforcement to counter linkages between illicit gold mining and money laundering, forced labor, sex work, child labor, and trafficking; (4) support efforts by foreign governments to increase regulation of the ASM sector; and (5) interrupt the illicit gold trade in Nicaragua. The strategy must also include policy recommendations for responding to linkages between the government of Venezuela and the illicit mining, trafficking, and commercialization of precious metals and stones.
Additionally, the bill requires the U.S. Agency for International Development to coordinate with democratically elected governments in the region to establish a public-private partnership to improve transparency and traceability in the international gold trade.
Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Financial Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Introduced in Senate
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
Committee on Foreign Relations. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably.
Committee on Foreign Relations. Reported by Senator Menendez with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Without written report.
Committee on Foreign Relations. Reported by Senator Menendez with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. Without written report.
Placed on Senate Legislative Calendar under General Orders. Calendar No. 57.
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