External Article: Principles for practitioners on implementing effective multi-stakeholder due diligence

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New guidance from DiliCHANCE, a European project in which EIT RawMaterials is a partner, explores how companies can move beyond identifying human rights and environmental risks to taking effective action through local collaboration.

Developed through consultation with businesses, civil society, trade unions, government-mandated institutions and expert practitioners, the DiliCHANCE Principles set out eight practical principles for designing and implementing local multi-stakeholder collaborations. They aim to help practitioners bring the right actors together to prevent, mitigate and remediate human rights and environmental issues in mineral supply chains.

Published August 21, 2026, by Julie Schindall

Introduction

This DiliCHANCE report presents the rationale and practical approach behind the DiliCHANCE Principles for implementing effective local multi-stakeholder collaborations to prevent, mitigate and remediate salient human rights and environmental issues in mineral supply chains. It explains the implementation gap in due diligence, outlines why local collaboration is essential, and provides an overview of eight practical principles and a step-by-step process that practitioners can use to design, implement and strengthen effective collaborations.

The due diligence gap: getting to ‘the doing’ and moving beyond ‘preparing’

Businesses have many resources available to them to help them understand core due diligence concepts and set up management systems for due diligence. Since the global norms on due diligence were established and aligned in 2011 (United Nations, 2011 and OECD, 2023), many businesses have made progress in implementing elements of due diligence, in particular around establishing policies and identifying risks. Many businesses also employ audits as a means to assess risks and address them, although the quality of these audits varies significantly and audits unto themselves cannot fulfil all expectations of due diligence (DiliCHANCE Work Package 4: Advancing Due Diligence Assurance and Verification looks extensively at how to increase the contributions auditing can make to due diligence).

Where many businesses struggle in their due diigence is 'the doing'. This is where businesses actually prevent, cease and mitigate risks and impacts - which is quite distinct from preparatory and enabling steps like establishing policies, undertaking risk identification and setting up management systems. This challenge is particularly acute in situations where the business is not causing the (potential) impact itself, but is connected to it through business relationships, such as in the supply chain. In the minerals sector, many downstream businesses have identified salient human rights and environmental issues (salient issues) at the minerals extracting and processing tiers of their supply chains, but they struggle to build and exert sufficient leverage to effectively prevent and address these issues. And mining companies themselves may recognise salient issues, but struggle to tackle them on their own due to root causes of issues that involve poverty, weak governance, conflict, and other contextual barriers that cannot be ‘solved’ by a single actor.

Relative lack of local collaborations to tackle specific issues

Preventing and addressing salient issues in the supply chain requires collaboration with others in order to exercise leverage and get the right actors in the room who are in a position to effectively address the issues. Many minerals sector businesses recognise that collaborations are necessary to address issues in supply chains, and there are numerous groupings of businesses – sometimes in multi-stakeholder settings – that seek to undertake elements of due diligence collectively. The Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), the Initiative for Responsible Minerals Assurance (IRMA) and the Cobalt4Development programme are just a few examples.

While many existing initiatives support businesses with aspects of their due diligence, few initiatives focus directly on risk prevention and mitigation actions that more immediately address risks and impacts. Existing literature on minerals governance and responsible sourcing consistently finds that collaborative initiatives prioritise risk signalling, transparency, and compliance. These actions are distinct from direct, on-the-ground risk prevention or mitigation.

In the global landscape of the minerals sector, in particular the high-risk minerals extraction tier, there remain many locations with salient issues that do not have existing collaborations seeking to address them. Many of the existing initiatives are more global in nature – lacking a direct focus on specific salient issues in specific places. And many existing initiatives stop short of implementing measures that actually prevent and mitigate issues – these initiatives are more focused on building a common understanding of the issues, building networks of relevant actors, educating relevant actors about their responsibilities, and engaging in dialogue to share information and build trust. All of these aims are worthwhile, but they must be viewed as distinct and more preparatory in nature as compared to interventions that directly prevent, mitigate or remediate salient issues.

Enabling more effective local collaborations: the principles

With this landscape in mind, this document presents a set of principles designed to guide business, civil society and government practitioners as they plan and implement local collaborations designed to prevent, mitigate and remediate salient issues. The principles were developed through a consultative process between DiliCHANCE consortium members, individual expert practitioners and a consultative group consisting of representatives from business, civil society, trade unions and institutions with a governmental mandate.

The full principles with more detailed guidance begins on page 6 of the report. The table below provides a summary of the principles. The visualisation immediately following the table shows how the principles can be implemented as a process.

Summary table of principles

Principle 1: Focus and specificity

To ensure that all participants and their stakeholders are clear about what salient issues are at hand and who is involved, the participants in the collaboration should be specific about and agree upon the focus geography, the specific salient issues they seek to address, and the way(s) that the business(es) are connected to the salient issues (causal, contributory, direct linkage).

Principle 2: Relevant participants

To ensure the planned interventions can be effective and reflect the fulfilment of responsibilities of those involved in the salient issues, the collaboration must include the right set of relevant participants. Mandatory participants include businesses — particularly those causing the issues — as well as representatives of rightsholders. Additional useful participants may include businesses that are directly linked to the salient issues and governmental representatives.

Principle 3: Mutual problem statement

To ensure that all participants and their stakeholders are clear about the salient issues that the collaboration will seek to address, the participants in the collaboration should be specific about and establish consensus upon what and who is causing or contributing to the salient issues, as well as why.

Principle 4: Shared objectives

Participants in the collaboration must identify and be explicit about their shared objectives for the collaboration. The objectives should focus on outcomes rather than outputs. It can be useful to be open about additional objectives held by individual participants.

Principle 5: Mutual commitment to ways of working

Participants in the collaboration should have clearly articulated ways of working that are agreed upon by all participants. This includes elements such as facilitation and mediation and assigning responsibilities for conceiving, delivering and evaluating interventions by the collaboration.

Principle 6: Shared action plan for interventions

Participants in the collaboration should work together to develop the action plan for the interventions they plan to take to address the salient issues. This is the ‘how’ and ‘what’ of the collaboration. It should take a root causes approach and must be informed by appropriate expertise as well as the perspectives of rights-holders.

Principle 7: Mutual commitment to resourcing plan

Once the participants have devised their action plan, they need to agree on a resourcing plan to enable the plan to come to life. All participants must commit resources — which does not necessarily have to mean money; it can also mean expertise or human resources. Where funding and/or appetite (buy-in) for the collaboration falls short of what would be needed to achieve the desired outcomes, the resourcing plan should address how to extend funding and appetite.

Principle 8: Regular evaluation and adaptation

Participants need to develop and execute a plan to ensure that the entirety of the collaboration is subject to regular evaluation and adaptation, should the evaluation indicate that adaptation is necessary.

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