A company joint-owned by Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has been accused of human rights breaches over the treatment of people living near a mine in the African nation of Guinea.

Key points: Villagers in Guinea say a jointly-owned Australian mine is polluting their farmlands and waterways

Villagers in Guinea say a jointly-owned Australian mine is polluting their farmlands and waterways The villagers say productivity on nearby pastures has decreased due to the bauxite mine

The villagers say productivity on nearby pastures has decreased due to the bauxite mine The mine is run by a company part-owned by Rio Tinto

Villagers from the area surrounding the bauxite mine told the ABC that rivers and farmland have been polluted as a result of the mining and surveying activities. They also say the mining company has conducted surveys on their lands without permission.

"In our villages, we ran out of drinking water. After the mine started, most of our backwaters have been polluted," villager Kounssa Bailo Barry said.

"The air is polluted. Dust is dropping on our plants. Productivity of the land is reduced. There's less cultivable soil available."

A nearby river that locals say has been polluted by the bauxite mine. ( Supplied: Inclusive Development International )

The mine, in a region called Boke, is operated by a company called Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee (CBG) and has been operating since 1973.

Rio Tinto is the part-owner of CBG, along with two other companies, Alcoa and Dadco, in partnership with the Guinean Government.

Rio Tinto is one of the largest mining companies in the world and grossed $2.3 billion in revenue from bauxite mines across the globe in 2018, including the one in Guinea.

Households from 13 villages near the mine have lodged a formal complaint against the private sector lending arm of the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provided CBG with a $200 million loan in 2016.

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The villagers are being assisted by a non-government organisation called Inclusive Development International (IDI), which claims aluminium produced from the bauxite extracted from the mine has found its way into the supply chains of multinational companies such as Coca Cola, Red Bull, Audi, BMW, Fiat-Chrysler, Ferrari, Coors and Campbell's Soup.

The complaint has been filed with the independent watchdog of the IFC and accuses the lending organisation of breaching its own standards and international law.

The watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman, is currently facilitating a mediation process between the villagers, the IFC and the mine owner.

'We never hear anything back'

Kounssa Fassaly Foutabhe says the mine has polluted areas and waterways around his village. ( Supplied )

Local villagers have told the ABC the mining company comes onto their land and carries out surveying without asking permission, and does not adequately compensate them.

"There have been instances where people have come onto [our] land, conducted 10 surveys, which were never registered and never compensated for," Mr Barry said.

"They don't go through the local authorities. They go straight to the land. It's only when we find them on our fields and ask questions that they tell us what they're doing.

"With the blasting that's going on, our backwaters are all polluted, and there's dust everywhere. So we're mostly concerned about our health."

Mr Barry said the local authorities also sided with the mining company over the local inhabitants.

"The problem is the local authorities do not fully support us. We can complain, the community can complain, but we never hear anything back," he said.

"They don't get involved in the mining activity and when they do, they always intervene in favour of the company."

Villagers say they were warned not to protest mine

The mine in Boke, Guinea, is operated by a company called Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee, which is part-owned by Rio Tinto. ( Supplied: Inclusive Development International )

In September 2017, people in the Boke region rioted over their anger about inadequate local services and the impacts of the mine. Several were shot dead by Guinean security forces.

Other villagers from the region told the ABC local authorities intimidated the villagers into silence by threatening to send police or the military if they protested about the mining.

They also said the mining company made arbitrary decisions about how much compensation was owed for trees and grazing land destroyed by its activities.

Mamadou Saliou Dialo, who lives in a village called Samayabhe, said the mining company took over a plateau used for pasturing and breeding cattle and did not compensate the affected villagers.

He also said children had trouble getting to school because they had to cross the train tracks.

He said that since the mining company began operations in 1973 there had been no investment in infrastructure.

Boke villager Mariama Camara said a railway had been built through valuable farming land that was confiscated by the mining company. ( Supplied )

Another villager, Mariama Camara, said the mining company confiscated valuable pasture lands to run a railway through them, and that sheep and cattle had been hit by trains

David Pred, executive director of Inclusive Development International, said the owners of the mine, including Rio Tinto, should shoulder responsibility for the impact of the mine on the villagers.

"I'd say that the onus is squarely on the owners of the mine, including Rio Tinto, to ensure that the project not only does no harm to their host communities, but those host communities secure meaningful and lasting benefits from the mining operations," he said.

"If the company is unwilling to take the measures that are necessary to avoid adverse impact, and to make long-term investments in the wellbeing of these communities, then they have no business being there, and they certainly shouldn't be getting funding from the World Bank Group."

In statement to the ABC, Rio Tinto said: "It is in our policies and standards, which are aligned with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, to identify whether we have caused or contributed to adverse human rights impacts and, if so, to support our business partners to engage in remedy.

"We are therefore supporting CBG's participation, as per our Human Rights Policy and Communities and Social Performance (CSP) standard, in the IFC's grievance mechanism operated by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman."

The IFC said it was "working closely" with the mining company to address concerns raised by the inhabitants of the area around the mine.