Extractive Industries: Civil society leaders learn new governance norms

Transparency International- Cameroon facilitated the meeting of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in Yaounde Friday.

Members of the civil society organizations who are part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI Committee in Cameroon, are now better prepared to ensure transparency and governance in the extractive industries sector through a mastery of the new international norms.

They participated in a one-day workshop in Yaounde on May 9, 2014 on the theme, “New EITI norms” organized to strengthen the capacities of society organisation leaders who are members of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative on the new rules of EITI.

The President of Transparency International Cameroon, Barrister Charles Nguini who chaired the workshop said the civil society constitutes a core component of the tripartite Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative group that is also made up of the public administration and companies involved in exploiting natural resources. He said the civil society is there to ensure that the norms are respected in terms of producing viable reports and governance in the management of the fallouts from the sector.

Cameroon was declared compliant country to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in 2013. With this status, the country needs to apply the new international norms of EITI. One of the EITI Committee members, the Director of the civil society organization, Ecumenical Service for Peace, Ndi Richard Tanto said the new norms that depart from exigencies to governance, have to be applied by all countries that participate in the initiative.

This will enable them to be judged using international standards. He said there are seven key new norms. The salient ones, he listed, include the principle of tripartite that consists of civil society organizations, government and companies participating in the extractive industries sector.

Other norms are international standards in audit accounts, financial information audited using international standards, exhaustiveness of the number of companies taking part in the sector, regularity in the production of EITI reports that should be within a maximum two-year period and the validation of the report every year.