ZELA to Launch Publish What You Pay (PWYP)-Zimbabwe Chapter

The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) in partnership with the Southern Africa Resource Watch (SARW) and the Publish What You Pay (PWYP)-International will be launching the Publish What You Pay (PWYP)-Zimbabwe Chapter in August 2011 in Harare. The PWYP-campaign is a global network of over 600 civil society member organizations in more than 30 countries that are united in their call for extractive sector revenues to form the basis for development and improving the lives of ordinary citizens in resource-rich countries. PWYP undertakes public campaigns and policy advocacy to achieve disclosure of information about extractive industry (mining, oil and gas) revenues and contracts. The PWYP-Campaign allows for the sharing of extractive sector advocacy information, best practices and lessons learnt across the world.

The premise of the PWYP-Campaign is the call for extractive industries or companies to “publish what they pay” and for governments to “publish what they earn” as a key step towards a more accountable system for the management of natural resource revenues. When companies disclose what they pay, and governments disclose their receipts of such revenues, civil society and citizens are able to compare the two, thus hold their governments accountable for the management of this valuable source of income. Revenue transparency triggers democratic debate over the effective use and allocation of resource revenues and public finance in order to meet development objectives, improve public services, and redistribute income.

The PWYP-Zimbabwe chapter will act as a platform for civil society to call for transparency and accountability in the mining sector. Zimbabwe is blessed with a lot of minerals resources (diamonds, platinum, gold, chrome, copper, iron ore, coal, asbestos etc) that if properly exploited and managed will significantly contribute to economic growth. PWYP-Zimbabwe will accordingly call for disclosure of mining contracts and payments being made by mining companies to government and what government is in turn receiving from mining companies. This is particularly important in light of the secrecy, opaqueness and lack of transparency and accountability in the allocation of prospecting and mining rights and management and distribution of revenue from minerals resources.

While the PWYP campaign is basically a civil society led initiative, the launch of PWYP-Zimbabwe will be attended by over 50 participants drawn from civil society, media, government, mining companies, community based organizations and the academia. Representatives of PWYP Chapters in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana will be invited to share experiences on the PWYP. It is expected that the membership for the Zimbabwean Chapter will be drawn from civil society organisations and community based organisations from the following sectors environment, mining, human rights and religious and faith based organisations among others.