Mining Watch Afghanistan (MWA)

Mining Watch Afghanistan came into being in 2015 by a movement of Afghan and international civil society organizations that were fighting against abuses in the mining sector of Afghanistan.

Mining Watch Afghanistan (MWA) is an independent, non-profit, non-political network, which monitors all steps of mining cycle over the country, providing capacity building training for civil society, local communities and do advocacy to ensure transparency, accountability and public debates in mining sector of Afghanistan.

The mission of Mining Watch Afghanistan is to monitor mining sector at both; up stream processes (Mineral and Mining laws and regulations, Mineral projects allocation, bidding process, contracting and contracts of mining companies), and  down stream processes (Exploitation, transportation, export, revenue collection and its management, environmental protection at extraction, concentration, transformation, and after mine closure processes). We do advocacy to obtain rights of the affected and non affected communities living around mine sites to prevent smuggling, corruption, water and air pollution, geo-hazards and other illegal activities, to not cause natural resource curse.

Mining Watch Afghanistan provides training to raise awareness and built capacity of local communities and civil society at various parts of country on different topics related to responsible mining in Afghanistan by taking in consideration the OECD due diligence policy implementation.

MWA also plays vital role in the development of the sector by close coordination between; the civil society, State/Government, local communities  and extractive companies.

Our Work

Mining Watch Afghanistan work has two major components: (1) Advocacy and (2) Capacity building training of communities in Extractives Industries

The aim of our advocacy work is to advocate for knowledgeable, right decision-making and to have informed public debate/ trainings on corruption and integrity in Extractives Industries of Afghanistan. Currently our main focus is advocacy on amending mining related laws and regulation, fair remuneration, ban on child labor, environmental protection, transparently revenue collection and its management and distribution, safety at mines, lobbying against illegal mining to do not convert the mineral bless into natural resource curse for Afghans.

The aim of our capacity building sessions is to raise awareness in communities to know their rights, gain access to information and finally to have a well informed, equally economically developed and stable society.