Jean Garnier opened the workshop and expressed the objectives of working to increase standards of living in Africa.

Hugo Castelli described (in a Power Point document in Spanish (available to all) how the Publish What You Pay (PWYP) coalition works as a means for networking with African and northern non-governmental organizations and civil societies. Partenia and Iglesia de Base de Madrid are both members of this coalition whose main objective is to work for financial transparency on a country by country basis to ensure the natural resources of African countries receive a just payment and are not the subject of financial fraud which leaves these countries empoverished.  Intermón Oxfam reports that according to the World Bank, the amount of this fraud is between 650,000 million dollars and 1 billion dollars.

Local and foreign members of the PWYP coalition can be found by clicking on:

www.publishwhatyoupay.org/ and then clicking on “Where we work”.

Iglesia de Base has recorded a summary of correspondence between member PWYP member organizations between end May 2010 and end January 2011.

PWYP stresses the importance of working together with the other member groups in ones  own country.  Maria Joao recommended the Open Society, Jean Garnier recommended 2 Partenia sites:

http://soutien-ste-civile.over-blog.com/ and

http://partenia-au-dela-des-frontieres.over-blog.com

Hugo Castelli recommended the Spanish PSIE (Plataforma de Seguimiento de las Industrias Extractivas) at http://catalunya.ingenieriasinfronteras.org/pipeline/cast/principal.htm

Maria Joao Sande Lemos stressed the terrible poverty in many African countries and the despair of parents as they watch their children die of starvation whilst church leaders, especially Catholic Church leaders, do nothing to remedy the situation and we must take responsibility for not making the struggle for social justice our most important objective.

Therefore, the workshop proposes that:

All EN/RE member groups join the PWYP coalition in their own countries and

All EN/RE  member groups make social justice their most important objective.