EITI Stakeholders convene in Paris for Global Assembly in June, 2019
Global stakeholders of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) will convene in Paris for the Global Assembly and conference which takes place every three years.
The EITI is currently a global standard which promotes transparency norms in the extractive sector. The organization has currently 52 member states from all over the world, committed to transparency and in the extractive sectors. The initiative brings together from implementing member states, companies and civil society organizations.
This year’s agenda will be packed with election of a new EITI Board Chairperson to replace Mr Fredrik Reinfeldt (Former Prime Minister of Sweden), who declined to serve another term. A new EITI Global board comprising of representatives from governments, mining and oil companies, Civil society and experts drawn from all over world will be also elected. This follows a rigorous search, vetting and selection exercise which started in March, 2019.
During this Global assembly, the new EITI Standard 2019, which was developed and passed during the last board meeting held in Kyviv, Ukraine will be endorsed by the EITI members. Amongst the new changes and developments to the EITI standard are provisions which will now make it mandatory for EITI implementing countries to openly publish mining and oil contracts related mining after 2020.
The new standards will require implementing countries to declare gender and social and environments payments made by companies.
The new requirements are significant developments within the EITI as they will raise the bar of transparency in the extractive sector and make it possible for citizens to track payments and revenues coming from the extractive sector and therefore be able to hold their governments, mining and oil companies accountable.
The Global assembly will also be with a large meeting of Civil Society from all over the world under the global Civil society and transparency movement, Publish What You Pay. The CSos will be pushing for further transparency and respect for the civic space and protection of human rights defenders and activists for extractive sector governance. For more about the EITI please visit: https://eiti.org/