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• Last December, thousands of citizens took to the streets in Niamey to protest the unbalanced relationship between AREVA and Niger. You can see the photos here.  Negotiations between the company and Niger are on-going.
• Several countries, including Guinea,  Mali , Iraq  and Congo-Brazzaville , published EITI reports at the end of December
• Publish What You Pay Mauritania organised a workshop for parliamentarians – to increase their understanding of transparency in the extractive sector and also to convince them of its importance.
• Publish What You Pay members in Asia Pacific will be gathering in Manila, on 23 – 24th March, for a regional strategy meeting.  The meeting will provide a space for members to share their experiences operating in the region, develop common advocacy goals and advance the PWYP Vision 20/20 regional strategy. Members will also explore how the region can get involved with using the G20 to promote mandatory disclosure mechanisms.  Please contact Marinke if you would like to be involved.

With its mining companies operating all over the world, Canada plays a crucial role in the global extractive sector. Its activities generate millions in natural resource revenues, but how much do citizens in resource-rich countries benefit?

Canada’s Resource Revenue Transparency Working Group, made up of the Mining Association of Canada, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, PWYP-Canada and the Revenue Watch Institute, has published a framework for mandatory disclosure rules for extractive companies in the country. These rules would oblige all extractive companies listed in Canada to publish the payments they make to the governments where they operate around the world. These recommendations are equivalent to the mandatory disclosure rules recently adopted by the EU (in the Transparency and Accounting Directives) and passed by the US in 2010 (Dodd-Frank Act 1504).

The working group will present the framework as policy recommendations to the Canadian government, which last June pledged to introduce mandatory disclosure rules.

“By working with the mining industry to improve transparency, PWYP-Canada found a powerful ally to help achieve our goal of establishing mandatory payment transparency in Canada. From the outset, all organisations recognised the important role that transparency can play to enhance accountability and improve development,” said Claire Woodside, Director of PWYP Canada.

It is the first time mining companies have been so actively involved in promoting mandatory disclosure…

… read the full piece on our site!

Why not visit PWYP Canada's website to find out more? 

Read what the Globe & Mail, Wall Street Journal and Huffington Post had to say about the story

Image by Alex Indigo taken from Flickr. Used under the Creative Commons License.

This article was written by Diana Kaissy, our regional coordinator for MENA

2013 was a busy year for campaigners in Iraq. The Iraqi Transparency Alliance for Extractive Industries (ITAEI), PWYP’s affiliated coalition, shed light on some crucial aspects of Iraq’s natural resources. They succeeded in having Iraq’s internal consumption of oil and Iraq’s volumes of exported oils included in the EITI report published last December, which covers data from 2011. This data will give citizens a clearer picture of what the government really earns from Iraq’s oil.

The coalition also submitted a draft oil and gas law to increase provisions for transparency and good governance; it should hopefully be discussed by parliament in 2014. Members have been active in working at the subnational level, as they mobilised provincial councils to call on the central government to disclose license agreements on a provincial level.

2014 looks to be no less busy, and so the coalition met on the 1st November 2013 to reflect on their recent work and plan for the future. The meeting was attended by the national EITI coordinator Mr. Alaa Mudieddine as well as by Mr. Amer Abdul Jabbar, the previous Iraqi minister for transportation.

Members discussed whether data from the Kurdistan region should be included, as it had been in 2010. The Kurdistan Regional Government has so far been unwilling to share data on oil production and exportation. Because the only data available are from the ministry of natural resources, and highly inaccurate, it was decided  that KRG data would not be included in the 2011 report. 

In order to rectify this in the future, attendees agreed…
… find out more about what our members have been up to in Iraq, and read the full piece here.

Photo by flöscher from Flickr, available under a creative commons license

After a search that lasted almost 100 years, Uganda discovered commercially viable deposits of oil in 2006. This discovery brought with it the promise of prosperity and growth – but what of the communities who have to make way for oil extraction?

PWYP Uganda’s coordinating member Global Rights Alert examined the recent resettlement and compensation process which was carried out in Hoima district, where the government is building an oil refinery. In particular, GRA looked at the gender dimension of the resettlement process. Their report, Our land is our bank, illustrates how men and women are affected differently by community resettlement and compensation. GRA found that while the government’s Resettlement Action Plan for Hoima was gender-sensitive and designed to deal with these differences, its implementation failed to reflect the rhetoric.

Resettlement and compensation is, naturally, a difficult time for the whole community. However, because of existing gender roles and practices around land tenure, it is women who are most vulnerable to the changes.

For example, while women in Uganda use and depend on land, that land is rarely legally in their name. When that land is exchanged for compensation, it therefore becomes very difficult for women to receive what they are owed…

… read the rest of the piece on our blog dedicated to gender and the extractives, Extracting Equality.

We’re pleased to announce that the Publish What You Pay coalition has been nominated for a Katerva Award. Katerva’s mission is to identify innovative campaigns across the world – they focus on those that have the potential for global impact. Publish What You Pay has been nominated for the award in the economic category – we’ll find out in a couple of months if we’ve won, so keep those fingers crossed!

Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 February 2014

Chatham House, London

Doing business in states where corruption is endemic

Join business leaders and senior policymakers at this two-day conference to assess which policies and practices can make progress in the fight against corruption, focusing on key issues including:

• How can the independence of anti-corruption initiatives be safeguarded?

• Can ethical businesses secure a competitive advantage over less scrupulous firms?

• What economic reform should be prioritized to ensure transparency and accountability? 

• How can businesses mitigate the indirect risks that clients or partners are exposed to?

Find out more about this event and how to register 

Publish What You Pay – Finance and Grants Officer

PWYP seeks a Finance and Grants Officer to support the Publish What You Pay Secretariat in its budget development and analysis; tracking income and expenditure; and liaising with third parties such as donors, grantees or coalition members. As PWYP continues to grow it seeks to strengthen its capacity in terms of finance organisation. 

To find out more about how to apply, please visit our website.