The purpose of validation

There are two purposes to validation:

1. For countries that are implementing EITI, but have not fully implemented EITI (Candidate countries), validation should measure progress in implementation.
2. For countries that have fully implemented EITI (Compliant countries), validation should provide an absolute assessment of whether a country is or is not compliant with EITI Principles and Criteria.

As noted above, there are two categories of countries:

1. Candidate countries are those who have signed up to implement EITI and met all four indicators in the sign up stage of the Validation Grid. This includes: committing to implement EITI; committing to work with civil society and the private sector; appointing an individual to lead implementation; and producing a Work Plan that has been agreed with stakeholders.
2. Compliant countries have fully implemented EITI. They have met all the indicators in the Validation grid, including the publication and distribution of an EITI Report.

Overview of validation

The first step is the appointment of a Validator by the multi-stakeholder group. The selected Validator will then use three key documents to underpin their work. These are:

• The Country Work Plan
• The Validation Grid and Indicator Assessment Tools, and
• The Company Forms

Using these documents, the Validator meets with the multi-stakeholder group, the organisation contracted to reconcile the figures disclosed by companies and the government and other key stakeholders (including companies and civil society not on the multi-stakeholder group).

Using this information, the Validator completes a report, comprising:

• A short narrative report on progress against the Country Work Plan.
• A short narrative report on progress against the indicators in the Validation Grid.
• The completed Validation Grid.
• A narrative report on company implementation
• Collated Company Forms.
• An overall assessment of the implementation of EITI: is a country a candidate, compliant or is there no meaningful progress?

This report goes initially to the multi-stakeholder group, the government and the EITI Board. If these groups are content with the Validation Report, it is published and conclusions and suggestions acted upon.

If there is disagreement regarding the validation process, then this is dealt with in the first instance locally, with the EITI Board only called in to help in cases of serious dispute.

Validation is not a financial audit. The job of the Validator is to check that countries and companies are doing what they say they are doing, it is not to undertake financial audits.

See attached document for the list of approved validators to be used for this process.  

See also the attached template terms of reference for this process (to be added shortly).