Human Development through Fair Gold Mining? A case study of the Fairmined certification

Sammanfattning: This thesis aims to investigate to what extent the principles of the Human Development and Capability Approach (HDCA) are reflected in Fair Gold Mining (FGM). The Fairmined certification of the Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM) is taken as a case study. The principles of the HDCA are based on the idea of achieving people-centered development by promoting capabilities and a better quality of life. By using the HDCA as an analytical tool, this thesis feeds into on-going discussions on development and Fair Trade, among others. The empirical material was gathered through a content analysis of three texts written by ARM. The author established ten codes based on the HDCA to analyze the discourse that ARM uses in the context of the Fairmined certificate. The outcomes show that there is a high coherence between the principles of the HDCA and the Fairmined approach, as ARM states in their work.