The city of Dakar in Senegal is hosting the Gender & EITI Project Learning Workshop from 24-25 November 2022. It is organised by the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) West African Francophone national coalitions with Burkina Faso, Guinea and Senegal as participating countries. A long way has been taken to get to this workshop.
Since 2018, PWYP International has been supporting the PWYP national coalitions of Guinea, Senegal and Burkina Faso in the implementation of the Gender & EITI project. The aim of the project is to ensure that the EITI has a positive impact on all citizens and helps to address the sometimes strong gender inequalities in the extractive sector.
As part of this project, implemented over the period 2018 – 2019, each of the 3 countries carried out an “EITI gender analysis” of their country. The Burkina Faso report was made public in October 2008.
Based on the results of the 3 countries, PWYP International engaged in strong advocacy that resulted in the inclusion of Gender as a Requirement in the 2019 EITI Standard during the June 2019 EITI International meeting.
Gender is taken into account in 4 requirements: (1) Gender balance in the composition of the multi-stakeholder group (Requirement 1.4). (2) Disclosure of certain information to understand women’s specific experience (employment) in the extractive sector (Requirement 6.3). (3) Means to ensure that women have access to relevant information published through the EITI (Requirement 7.1) and (4) Documenting measures taken to ensure gender equality and inclusiveness (Requirement 7.4).
These encouraging results have led PWYP International to support a second phase of the project in the 3 countries with the support of the Hewlett Foundation. This project is entitled “Project to promote gender equality in the governance of the mining sector in Burkina Faso”. The objectives of this second phase are to generate knowledge on gender in the EITI, to ensure that gender is taken into account in the EITI Standard that will be revised after the 2019 revision, and to build the capacity of PWYP coalitions and extractive sector governance structures on the principles and approaches of gender-responsive resource governance.
Four main activities were carried out under the project. These were a study to assess the implementation of the gender requirements of the 2019 EITI Standard, a gender case study (the Burkina study focused on gender and the local development mining fund), training on women’s leadership and a forum on gender and local content. All activities have received a high level of media coverage.
The project is due to end in 2022. The Dakar workshop aims to evaluate the results of each country; what has been achieved, what has not been achieved, the methodologies used during the project, the obstacles encountered, the measures taken to minimise the obstacles. It will also aim to identify potential next steps.
Elie KABORE, from Dakar
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