MISSION
The mission of the Revenue Watch Institute is to promote responsible management of natural resource wealth for the public good. We believe that improved public oversight of these revenues, coupled with targeted assistance to governments on managing them, can help turn resource wealth from a hindrance into an asset.

Begun as the Revenue Watch Program of the Open Society Institute in 2002, and spun-off into an independent operating and grantmaking 501(c) 3 organization in May 2006, RWI works with civil society, media and policy-makers in resource-dependent countries to counter the effects of the so-called 'resource curse' and enhance public participation in these countries' economic governance. Through the Open Society Institute's network and partners around the world, the Revenue Watch Institute has helped create local coalitions advocating revenue and expenditure transparency, and has created public finance monitoring centers in several countries. It has created a body of research and reference tools to assist citizens in monitoring natural resource revenues and public expenditures, and facilitates a wide range of trainings for local actors to enhance their skills as public finance and extractive industry monitors and advocates. RWI helps policy-makers improve their capacity to transparently and efficiently manage their country's public finances, particularly extractive revenues. RWI also provides journalists with the reference tools and training necessary to cover extractive industries and public finances effectively. RWI helped initiate and works closely with the international Publish What You Pay campaign to encourage oil, gas and mining companies to publicly report payments to governments in resource dependent economies and to engage the IFIs in the resource revenue transparency campaign. The Revenue Watch Institute also actively supports the development and implementation of international protocols that promote transparency and anti-corruption such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).

ACTIVITIES
RWI activities address the complex and diverse challenges of resource-dependency according to four operating principles:

• continuous independent civil society oversight/monitoring;
• timely research on the country's extractive industry/public finance management to ensure that current/proposed policies are in the public's best interest;
• well-informed advocacy promoting greater openness and accountability of government's management and distribution of extractive revenues and public finances more broadly; and
• independent technical assistance to enable governments with a genuine interest in becoming more accountable and transparent with the knowledge and tools to do so.

While limited in scope to resource-rich countries, the Revenue Watch Institute is concerned with both revenue and expenditure transparency and our partners engage in increasingly diverse forms of public finance monitoring, including service delivery, participatory budgeting, and aid and expenditure tracking. RWI partners have now begun to share skills and strategies amongst themselves, forming the basis of an indigenous-led network of non-governmental organizations that has become a growing force for fighting corruption and guarding the public interest in resource-dependent countries around the world.

The Revenue Watch Institute brings a constructive multi-stakeholder approach to its work, based on a fundamental alliance with civil society. It identifies which scholars, citizens, and activists in resource-dependent countries have an interest in working to promote transparent and accountable governance, and then works with them to create independent public watchdog organizations and movements with the research, analytic and advocacy skills to monitor and raise public awareness about the countries' extractive industries and public finances.

RWI also works with journalists to build their capacity to understand, analyze and report on their country's public finances and extractive industries. It works with companies to encourage and support an accountable and transparent presence in resource-rich countries and to highlight the shareholder risks that come along with investing in these nations where good governance is lacking. And finally, the Revenue Watch Institute works with policy-makers to manage natural resource revenues effectively and transparently, international financial institutions capable of influencing relevant international policy. It does so by acting as a clearinghouse by facilitating donor coordination and providing neutral and trusted expertise on highly contentious issues, such as stabilization agreements and petroleum fund development.

RWI's advocacy takes it regularly to producing countries to bolster its programs to speak to governments, companies, donor and multi-lateral lending institutions, together with local coalitions and allies. At the global level, RWI's partners identify issues of concern regarding the mismanagement of natural resource revenues and other abuses, and subsequently seek to educate the US government, European Union, International Financial Institutions, donor agencies and the private sector.

REGIONAL SCOPE
The Revenue Watch Institute presently supports partners and affiliates with operating programs in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mexico, Mongolia, Peru, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe and Yemen. Priority countries where projects are currently in the planning or development stages include Algeria, Angola, Bolivia, Cameroon, Chad, DRC, Ghana, Guinea, Libya, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Timor Leste and Venezuela.

OPERATIONS

Research and Publications

• In 2003, Revenue Watch issued its first publication, a book-length study, Caspian Oil Windfalls: Who Will Benefit?, which analyses 10 oil funds and draws lessons about best practices, applying those lessons to how oil revenues are managed in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
• In Iraq, Revenue Watch produced a series of 15 investigative and analytic reports about how Iraqi oil revenues are being spent and the systems to oversee expenditures, as well as organized conferences and reports debating issues of governance and development of Iraq's oil industry.
• In Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, Revenue Watch programs have produced reports about the annual budget, the tax system applied to oil companies, and programs on poverty reduction.
• Revenue Watch has sponsored the creation of a Resource Revenue Transparency Index by Save the Children UK, which measures company and home government revenue transparency, disclosure standards and performance. This index is available online (www.revenuewatch.org or www.savethechildren.org.uk) in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Mongolian, and Bahsa Indonesian. In 2006 Revenue Watch is continuing to develop this project in cooperation with Transparency International.
• Revenue Watch is currently publishing a 4-part book series:
  • A guide for civil society activism on budget and resource revenue transparency called Follow the Money, which was co-produced with Central European University and the International Budget Project.
  • A guide for journalists to covering extractive industries called Covering Oil: A Journalist's Guide to Energy and Development, co-produced with Columbia University's Initiative for Policy Dialogue.
  • A guide for policy-makers to managing the Extractive Industries called Escaping the Resource Curse, co-produced with the Earth Institute, which will be published by Columbia University Press sometime in late 2006
  • An investors' guide to the extractive industries, co-produced with RAND, which will appear in late 2006

Advocacy

• When Revenue Watch's partners identify issues of concern regarding their country's mismanagement of natural resource revenues or other abuses, it serves, together with other parts of the Soros Foundations Network, as a vehicle to take this message to Washington, European capitals, and international financial institutions
• Revenue Watch has worked with the Publish What You Pay Coalition and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to get the first set of countries to report their oil and gas earnings under the EITI
• Revenue Watch has worked to build civil society coalitions in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Nigeria (work of OSI-West Africa) to ensure civil society participation in EITI, and continues to do so in other EITI endorsing/implementing countries around the world
• In 2004, Revenue Watch funded the creation of a Publish What You Pay U.S. Coalition comprised of leading groups working on extractive sector issues. The coalition has an ambitious research and advocacy plan to push for greater US commitment to revenue transparency in the extractive sector, as well as working with the multilateral banks
• In 2004, Revenue Watch advised OSI Azerbaijan, which signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with BP on monitoring the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, and subsequently conducted training and funding for NGO monitors to undertake research and write reports. OSI Azerbaijan has published these findings and renewed its MOU with BP for continued monitoring and follow-up work on BTC for 2005/2006

Grants and Capacity Building:

• In the Middle East and North Africa, West Africa, Latin America and Central Asia, Revenue Watch has organized and sponsored conferences and workshops aimed at fostering broader public engagement in extractive sector/budget monitoring and fiscal transparency.
• In Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, Revenue Watch has provided grants to create public finance monitoring centers, which conduct their own research, hold open forums to discuss issues of public finance, provide commentary on draft legislation that affects public finances, and produce quarterly reports on the economy. Ahead of the presidential election in Azerbaijan, the public finance monitoring center hosted each of the parties whose candidates were running for office, where they presented their budget priorities.
• Revenue Watch has also sponsored workshops in Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Mongolia with national and municipal legislators on participatory budget practices, and roundtables to discuss pending legislation such as changes to Kazakhstan's budget code and Mongolia's revenue management laws
• Revenue Watch has partnerships with two well-known and established budget groups in Latin America: FUNDAR in Mexico and Grupo Propuesta Ciudadana in Peru. Both monitor budget expenditures in their countries, and have developed comprehensive programs for monitoring and reporting on government extractive sector revenues and how they are managed.
• In collaboration with the International Budget Project Revenue Watch provides grants for training NGOs on how to monitor the government budget. This has been followed in some countries by a small grant competition to NGOs who are engaging in budget work.
• Recognizing the central role that media plays in raising public awareness about the impact that natural resources are having on the country, Revenue Watch has also partnered with the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (IPD), a group of economists founded by Joseph Stiglitz, which runs a program on journalism training. Together with IDP, Revenue Watch funds trainings for journalists to help improve their understanding of the legal regimes for oil extraction, and the economic and social challenges, as well as international resources they can use for information.
• Revenue Watch has also funded journalism competitions at OSI Foundations for best pieces of economic investigative research, which will serve as a resource in their coverage of the oil, gas, and mining sector. Similar competitions have been held or are planned for civil society in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic.

REVENUE WATCH PARTNERS
Among those entities with which Revenue Watch works in the Soros Foundation Network are:

OSI-Assistance Foundation (Azerbaijan), Public Finance Monitoring Center (Azerbaijan), OSI Georgia Foundation, Soros Foundation Kazakhstan, Public Policy Research Center (Kazakhstan), Soros Foundation Kyrgyzstan, Tree of Life (Kyrgyzstan), Economic Policy Institute (Kyrgyzstan), Open Society Forum (Mongolia), OSI-West Africa, Middle East/North Africa Initiatives, the Central Eurasia Project, Eurasianet, the Latin America Program, OSI's Washington Office, OSI EU/London, OSI Budapest, the East East Program, the Local Government Initiative, Central European University, and the Open Society Justice Initiative

Among those organizations that Revenue Watch has partnered with are:

The International Budget Project, the World Bank, the Earth Institute (Columbia University), the Initiative for Policy Dialogue (Columbia University), Catholic Relief Service, Democracy Center, Friends of the Earth, Global Witness, Save the Children (UK), the PWYP international and U.S. Coalitions, FUNDAR (Mexico), Transparency International, Grupo Propuesta Cuidadana (Peru), Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Oxfam, CAFOD, and the RAND Corporation

REVENUE WATCH STAFF
Director - Karin Lissakers
Deputy Director - Julie McCarthy
Program Coordinator - Morgan Mandeville
Program Assistant - Ingrid Anderson
Director of Training and Capacity Building - Vanessa Herringshaw
Director for Middle East /North Africa and Senior Advisor - Yahia Said
Policy Analyst - Juan Carlos Quiroz
Legal Analyst - Matthew Genasci
Program Coordinator for Southeast Asia - Rebecca Iwerks
Senior Economist - Antoine Heuty
Senior Economist - Akram Esanov
Internet Director - Jed Miller

REVENUE WATCH GOVERNING BOARD
Anthony Richter (Chair)
Warren Krafchik
Stewart Paperin
Willy Olsen
Smita Singh
Karina Litvack
Ngozi Iweala
David De Ferranti
Tulegen Askarov

REVENUE WATCH ADVISORY BOARD
Joe Bell (Chair)
Alan Detheridge
Anya Schiffrin
David Goldwyn
Erica Downs
Gavin Hayman
Ilgar Mammadov
Michael Ross
Nick Butler
Sanjaasuren Oyun
Scott Horton
Teddy Weohau
Thomas Heller
Anthony Paul
Paul Collier