After the successful launch of the Africa Regional Extractive Industry Knowledge Hub in Ghana last year, RWI is expanding this unique knowledge-sharing and capacity building model to another area of operations. Work on establishing a Latin American Hub is underway in Lima, Peru, where RWI Regional Coordinator Carlos Monge and his team are preparing an inaugural residential phase to begin this April.
Currently, the hub planning process is in the midst of establishing pre-course requirements for its Regional Diploma Program on Extractives. During this phase, which began in December, participants in upcoming Hub training sessions are completing preparatory reading and compiling background research on their country's extractive industries. They will complete at least two research essays that will help them make an informed contribution to, and gain the most from, the lectures and debates organized during the residential course. Participants' submissions will be assessed and graded by course faculty. Successful completion of these requirements is mandatory for all participants in the residential course.
Twenty-eight students from RWI's and Oxfam International's civil society partners in the region were selected from nonprofit organizations located in Perú, Bolivia, Ecuador and México.
The residential phase will be an 11-day intermediary course taking place at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) Cultural Centre facilities. The program will cover key issues in the governance of extractives in Latin America, including a theoretical overview of policy issues in extractives, with a focus on literature, debates, empirical evidence and case studies from the region or the rest of the world; extensive question and answer sessions and debate; panel discussions to present and reflect on country case studies; and applied-learning modules where participants tackle fictional scenarios to make use of their acquired knowledge on concrete cases and develop skills needed in their work.
Specific training sessions will also cover economic and political challenges; general frameworks for decisions leading up to extraction; laws and contracts (including sessions on fiscal, social and environment aspects of the law); a review of extractive industries contracts processes; use and distribution of benefits; and transparency and accountability.
The overall goal is for students to combine learning through readings and research with face-to-face interaction with their peers and qualified senior and assistant faculty, and to identify specific issues for action plans to be developed in the following phase.
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