KZGO Concerned about Situation in NGO Coalition for EITI

The Committee to Protect Civil Society (KZGO – local abbr.) expressed concern about the situation around the NGO Coalition for Extracting Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI). The appeal by KZGO on this occasion says:

“The activities of the coalition and the tripartite working group, which includes the NGO Coalition for EITI, the State Oil Fund and the International EITI, are almost paralyzed.

Technically the crisis is increased by attempts to block the work of the multilateral group that was elected democratically and in accordance with the charter of the organization.

On January 20, 2017 at a meeting the coalition elected its members by secret ballot (3 main and 3 spares) in the multilateral group to improve transparency in the extractive industries (the group includes representatives of the government, oil companies and civil society)

February 7 by the initiative of the head of the government commission on EITI, Director of SOFAZ Shahmar Movsumov a meeting of the coalition was convened with the participation of about 50 of the 160 members of the coalition. In a press release, SOFAZ reported that “the main purpose of the meeting is the creation of conditions for open dialogue, the organization of a platform for the discussion of differences on the representation in the multilateral group and general management.’

But in fact, there was an attempt to lay the foundation for changing or neutralizing legally elected members of the multilateral group of the Coalition of NGOs.

KZGO believes such an action is inadmissible, since dialogue is necessary to solve the problems of civil society, set by EITI before the government of Azerbaijan.

KZGO calls upon the parties to begin a discussion of questions that must be answered before the meeting of EITI in Bogota in March of this year, in order to prevent the suspension of Azerbaijan's membership in the Initiative.  --0-