OSI'S REVENUE WATCH PROGRAM BECOMES INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE
June 30, 2006

In June 2006, the Open Society Institute spun off its Revenue Watch program to create an independent Revenue Watch Institute (RWI), a sister organization to coordinate and lead the Soros Foundation Network’s (SFN) work on transparency and accountability in resource-rich countries.

Today the world is witnessing the rapid coalescence of a global movement to promote transparency and accountability in the extractive industries of oil, gas and mining. According to the World Bank, about 60 developing or transition countries are dependent on oil, mining or gas revenues, with two-thirds of the world’s most impoverished people living inside their borders on less than $2 a day. Yet, around the world there is a rising public awareness of the impact these industries make on governance, human development, the economy and the environment; and the new Revenue Watch Institute is at the forefront of this unique international movement.

Begun as a program of the Open Society Institute in 2002, the Revenue Watch Institute is now an incorporated and independent 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization. The mission of RWI is to improve democratic accountability in natural resource-rich countries by equipping citizens with the information, training, networks, and funding they need to become more effective monitors of government revenues and expenditures. Over the course of its four year existence, Revenue Watch has made significant contributions to the effort to counter the “resource curse” through building and strengthening the capacity of citizens in natural resource dependent countries to monitor, analyze and report on extractive revenues and budget expenditures. As a stand-alone institution, RWI will continue evolve over the coming years in terms of providing new forms of institutional support, technical assistance, training and intellectual resources that meet the specific needs of our partners, old and new.

A joint partnership of several private and public donors including the Open Society Institute and the Hewlett Foundation, RWI will remain based at OSI’s offices in New York. The new organization will continue to work closely with the Soros Foundations Network, including its national foundations and network programs, and will continue the former RW program’s operating and grantmaking roles in support of fiscal transparency and accountability in resource-dependent countries, now with enhanced financial and staff capacity.

RWI’s new director is Karin Lissakers, most recently the senior advisor to George Soros and who has previously served as United States executive director on the board of the International Monetary Fund; deputy director of the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State; staff director of the foreign economic policy subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; and has been a lecturer at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.