EITI Strategy Working Group (SWG)

1. EITI Strategy Working Group (SWG) Your opportunity to influence the shape and scope of the EITI in future

2. Outline • Overview of the EITI Strategy Working Group: Background, mandate and purpose • Civil society responses to date • Next steps, opportunities and challenges

3. History and mandate of the SWG • Oct 2010 – May 2011: Evaluation of the EITI (Scanteam) http://eiti.org/document/2011-evaluation-report • 10 June 2011: International EITI BoardRetreat (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) • July 2011: Board SWG established (participating EITI Civil Society Board representatives are: MrSabitBagirov, Mr Ali Idrissa, Ms Hannah Owuso-Koranteng, MrDiarmid O’Sullivan) • Two tele-conferences to date; next SWG meeting 26 October 2011 (Bangka, Indonesia 2011)

4. PWYP consultation and responses to date • PWYP Consultation launched July 2011 • (http://www.publishwhatyoupay.org/about/advocacy/future-eiti) • +20 submissions received to date • Questions: • What are the main problems and limitations of the EITI? • Which additional issues do you think the EITI needs to include in its scope? • How would your country benefit from this issue being included in the EITI? • Would your government, and/or the companies operating in your country, support the inclusion of this issue? • What information on this issue should be included in EITI reports, and how would citizens use this information to bring about greater accountability? • Should all countries be required to include such new issues in their EITI reporting, or should countries be allowed to innovate at their own speed? • What other questions/issues do we need to consider? Board

5. Emerging themes • The current scope of the EITI is too narrow. • There is a strong view amongst civil society that for the EITI to achieve its aims, its scope must widen – not ably to the allocation of licences and contracts, the publication of contracts and greater transparency of government budgets and spending. • There is also a view that EITI reporting should cover certain other sectors of the economy, such natural resource transportation and transit, downstream oil and metals processing and agricultural commodities. 2. The information in EITI reports needs to be more detailed. Data in EITI reports should be disaggregated by company and government agency. Without disaggregation, it is difficult for civil society to have confidence in the figures. Other key information should also be reported, including revenue flows to subnational levels of government, “social payments” from industry and figures on extractive companies’ costs and production. This information is needed to address the concern that the EITI only tells citizens what revenue has been paid by companies, not whether this revenue is the correct amount or not.

6. Emerging themes (cont’d) 3. The EITI needs a firmer legal basis, nationally and internationally. • There is a widespread view that the EITI needs to be embedded within national law in EITI implementing countries as a way of ensuring that governments remain committed to it and provide the necessary financing. • Some also view that the EITI should be enshrined in an international instrument, such as a UN convention (c.f. the UN Convention against Corruption). • 4. The EITI must engage more deeply with local communities and their concerns • The EITI must do more to engage with the citizens of resource-rich countries and in particular, local communities in regions where resource extraction takes place, because these communities often receive little benefit from resource extraction and have to suffer its negative impacts. Some suggested that community representatives should be included on multi-stakeholder groups, at national or local level, and that the EITI should report on the environmental and social impacts of resource extraction as well as on financial flows.

7. Process, challenges and next steps • Recent EITI Secretariat discussion paper: • “The submissions from PWYP…. call for fundamental change. They advocate, among other things, a firmer legal basis for the EITI, contract transparency, disaggregated EITI reporting, and coverage of licencing, in-kind payments, and transit revenues…. • …The Secretariat foresees considerable resistance to these changes... Accordingly, the Secretariat suggeststhat the Board considers whether a scoring system be introduced, recognising and incentivising good performance by implementing countries. The majority of the current requirements would remain unchanged. The goalposts would remain where they are. The quality assurance mechanisms would be modified.

8. Next steps: Your opportunity to influence • Individual submissions to the International EITI Secretariat • Posting on the PWYP website • National coalition responses (with organisational logos and signatures) • Research and analysis (e.g. around local impacts) • A regional ‘Eurasia’ civil society response • Implementing country government endorsement? • Other ideas (blogs, articles, tweeting)?