1. Scope

Keywords

Rationale

This proposed standard guide has been developed in response to increasing global regulatory, trade, and national security requirements addressing origin integrity, supply chain transparency, and human-rights-related risks in rare earth mineral supply chains. Rare earth minerals are strategic and critical materials with complex, multi-jurisdictional supply chains that present elevated risks related to origin misrepresentation, commingling, forced labor, and loss of traceability during processing and refinement. This guide establishes a conformity assessment framework tailored to rare earth minerals and organized around four core pillars: track and trace, authentication, validation, and oversight. Together, these pillars support verification of origin, chain of custody, and supply chain claims from extraction through processing, export, importation, and market entry. Rare earth minerals are recognized by governments and regulators as high-risk commodities due to concentrated geographic production, cross-border processing, and challenges in maintaining origin attribution once materials are refined or commingled. As a result, supply chain actors are increasingly expected to provide documented proof of origin, processing history, and responsible sourcing practices, as required by the Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ). This guide supports these expectations by providing a structured and repeatable approach for assessing supply chain documentation, including mine site declarations, batch and lot records, transport and processing documents, jurisdictional origin attestations where applicable, and conformity assessment records. The framework accommodates documentation-based traceability where physical traceability may be limited. By aligning verification activities with applicable critical mineral governance frameworks, import control obligations, and risk-based enforcement approaches defined by the AHJ, this guide provides regulators, importers, manufacturers, and third-party assessors with a consistent basis for evaluating whether rare earth mineral shipments support declared supply chain claims and comply with applicable laws and trade controls.