Baku, Azerbaijan, May 30, 2005. The National Non-Governmental-Organizations (NGOs) that took part in monitoring of the Azerbaijan section of the BTC Oil Export Pipeline released today the reports findings of their recently completed Monitoring Program conducted with the assistance of OSI-AF.
In April 2004, OSI-AF and BP Exploration (Caspian Sea) Limited (BP) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for supporting NGO monitoring and capacity building. According to the MOU, OSI-AF acted as a donor, facilitator and coordinator of local NGOs throughout the monitoring project. Since then, OSI-AF, the participating NGOs and BP have all worked intensively on this groundbreaking and rewarding project. With support of BP/BTC OSI-AF provided efficient training and mentoring components in regard with the monitoring methodology, audit analysis, planning, data collection, PR techniques, report writing, presentation skills etc.
Monitoring by NGOs covered the following areas:
- environment;
- social issues;
- human rights;
- historical, cultural and archaeological heritage;
- use of local resources.
The project commenced in April 2004 and involved activities ranging from training and presentations, initial document reviews, data collection and report writing. They also included site visits to more than a 100 communities along the pipeline. The results were reflected in five reports produced by the Working Groups.
The NGO participants were able to review the report findings during a number of workshops attended by the NGOs, OSI-AF and BP over the course of May 2005. All parties involved gave great importance to open discussion and dialogue on report findings and recommendations and for BP representatives to provide their response.
As a result of this monitoring program, some findings and recommendations were identified and taken on board by BP. There were also areas where parties disagreed or where the Working Groups agreed to follow-up the discussion in the next round of monitoring.
Some of the findings and recommendations presented by the NGOs and taken on board by BP include:
- Due to poor public awareness of archaeological activities opportunities to present historical and cultural artefacts discovered along the pipeline route to the public in Baku should be identified;
- FINCA's loan policy aimed at the agricultural development does not meet expectations. It is recommended that FINCA's loan policy in the agricultural sector should be more flexible and responsive to the development dynamics in Azerbaijan;
- Contractors of BTC have not fulfilled some of the commitments in regards to particular areas of environmental impact which were monitored by NGOs. BTC should reinforce control over contractor performance and considerably update their monitoring system;
- The Community Investment Program (CIP) has not covered all of the communities along the route of the BTC Pipeline The method for prioritising community projects should be improved and preference should be given to projects that will equally benefit several communities;
- Local labour market has not been efficiently explored to recruit local workforce. While recruiting various specialist, the local labour market should be explored and preference should be given to the local workforce.
There were areas of disagreement and findings that were not accepted by BP but all parties agreed to continue with their discussions. Some areas of disagreement include:
- The Land Acquisition Program was implemented with a number of deficiencies in some communities
- A number of violations of local worker labour rights were identified;
- No official documentation of handling alleged damages is present between BTC, contractors, subcontractors and local executives authorities.
Another feature of this project was the training component of this initiative that allowed participating members to strengthen their capabilities on monitoring techniques and business management. NGOs involved in the monitoring project have also concluded that this monitoring project provides a historical opportunity to minimize the potential negative impact of the pipeline construction in areas related to the environment, social aspects and human rights. NGOs are willing to use this opportunity and cooperation to continue their monitoring programme in the future.
For contact:
BTC monitoring project workgroup coordinators:
Afig Safarov (050) 5113806
Fikret Jafarov (055) 7906788
Gulaya Guliyeva (050) 3533668
Fuad Rasulov (050) 3276911
Mais Gulaliyev (050) 3344491
The Open Society Institute- Assistance Foundation/Azerbaijan belongs to the Open Society Foundation Network established by famous investor and philanthropist George Soros. The Network encompasses more than 50 countries with initiatives in Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus, Latin America, and Southeast Asia, as well as in Haiti, Mongolia, and Turkey. OSI also supports programs in the United States and selected projects elsewhere in the world. The main goal of OSI-Azerbaijan is to foster transition of a closed society to a more open one. Since its establishment in the country in 1996, OSI-Azerbaijan has encouraged the development of the third sector by awarding grants and through operational activity to support civic initiatives in education reforms, communication technologies, human rights and rule of law, mass media, public health, gender equality and arts and culture. Responding to new challenges of the country development, OSI-Azerbaijan has recently concentrated on increasing civil society involvement in the democratization process, good governance and transparency of the use of national resources.
