To understand members’ experiences more fully and identify their challenges and needs around civic freedoms, the PWYP Secretariat carried out in-depth profiling of the situation in two countries: Niger and the Republic of the Congo. We then carried out an online survey to find out more about members’ experiences facing increasingly restricted fundamental freedoms and multiple political upheavals on all continents.
PWYP members report that the growing global trend of closing civic space is exerting increasing pressure on them, undermining their activism and their ability to successfully deliver the people-centred extractive sector at the heart of our Vision 2025 strategy. Restrictions to civic freedoms in law and in practice mean many members struggle to participate meaningfully in public spheres and in decisions that affect them and the communities they represent. This restrictive environment, combined with the threats and attacks against them, have a chilling effect and generate self-censorship, as members are often afraid to openly oppose public policies or extractive companies, for fear of intimidation or other threatening consequences.
The findings in this report are limited in scope – geographically, as both missions were carried out in Francophone Africa, and in quantitative terms, as the survey had 34 respondents (although these were distributed worldwide). They cannot capture the complexity of the diversity of situations on the ground in full detail, but they do paint a clear and valuable picture of widespread violations of civic freedoms, how these affect PWYP members, and the support members feel they need in order to address these issues.
Story of Change In 2015, following an intensive campaign by civil society, the Government of Burkina Faso adopted a new mining code requiring mining companies to pay 1 per cent of their gross revenues to a community development fund. By July 2019, more than 12 billion Central African Francs (CFA), around US$20 million, had been…
Read Download
Consultation report for 2019 To understand members’ experiences more fully and identify their challenges and needs around civic freedoms, the PWYP Secretariat carried out in-depth profiling of the situation in two countries: Niger and the Republic of the Congo. We then carried out an online survey to find out more about members’ experiences facing increasingly…
Read Download
Civic space: a ground-breaking road map for addressing threats to civic space in the extractive sector PWYP’s Strategic Framework on civic space for 2020-2022 provides a road map for addressing threats to civic space in the extractive sector, in particular those faced by PWYP members. Natural resource activists campaigning against the harmful impact of extraction,…
Read Download