A WORLD WHERE ALL CITIZENS BENEFIT FROM THEIR NATURAL RESOURCES,
TODAY AND TOMORROW
Publish What You Pay (PWYP) is a global membership-based coalition of civil society organisations (CSOs) in over 40 countries
across the world.
PWYP works to reduce poverty, combat corruption, protect basic human rights and promote economically, socially and environmentally sustainable development through the transparent management of the oil, gas and mining sector.
Our vision is a world where all citizens benefit from their natural resources, today and tomorrow.
PWYP was launched by six London based organisations in 2002 to call for extractive companies to publish their payments to governments. Today, PWYP has grown to include more than 700 member organisations in over 40 countries and engages at all stages of the extractive sector value chain to support research and promote training, learning and access to information by citizens.
Our members include human rights, development, environmental, community-based and faith-based organisations. The coalition is supported by a decentralised Secretariat and governed by a Global Council, a Board and an Africa Steering Committee.
PWYP aims to address what is commonly known as the “resource curse”, a phenomenon in which countries rich in natural resources tend to have worse development outcomes than those without abundant oil, gas or mineral resources. PWYP’s theory of change is that improved transparency in the extractive sector (oil, gas and mining) will allow men and women in developing countries to address corruption and claim fair benefits from natural resource extraction thereby realising their “right to a better life”. Our focus is on the extractive sector as it is one of the most corrupt industrial sectors, which at the same time often provides the majority of state revenues in resource-rich countries.
PWYP’s approach to realise this theory of change is to advocate for transparency and good governance in the management of the extractive sector, from both governments and companies; and to support civil society to demand accountability along the entire extractive value chain, including the allocation of revenues (taxes, fees, royalties) flowing from those resources to national and sub-national budgets.
In this way, PWYP aims to alleviate poverty by reducing opportunities for corruption and enhancing the role that citizens play in identifying and implementing a rights-based approach to development. Concretely, this means supporting the participation of civil society in multi-stakeholder initiatives such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI); promoting information disclosure by oil, gas and mining companies; advocating for legislation that promotes the extractive sector’s good governance and contribution to sustainable development; and building the capacity of citizens to analyse extractives data in order to hold governments and companies to account for revenues generated by oil, gas and mineral exploitation.
In 2012, PWYP adopted its long-term strategic framework: Vision 20/20. While this will continue to be the organisation’s broad framework, we are currently in the process of developing a new 5 year strategy with a number of new global goals and collective priorities in an effort to focus our work and enhance our impact. While transparency will remain a key objective, issues such as accountability, citizen voice and movement building will also take center stage in our approach. We expect the new strategy to be endorsed by all members in January 2019. This strategic framework reflects the evolution of PWYP from working solely on extractives’ revenue transparency to working along the whole extractive “value chain”.
