July 9, 2009

VIII. Recommendations

To the government of Equatorial Guinea

Establish a clear fiscal policy for transparent management of oil wealth, including making the budget public, identifying the location of foreign accounts, and conducting an audit of government accounts.
Progressively realize the rights of access to health and education, and ensure appropriate allocation of resources to that end is made.
Ensure that government officials declare their assets and that this is verifiable (as provided for by Equatorial Guinea law).
Produce a comprehensive list of political prisoners, and provide information on where all prisoners are being detained.
Grant families access to the detained.
Promptly investigate allegations of torture.
Allow foreign diplomats access to the country’s prisons and detention centers to monitor the condition of prisoners and prisons.
Put procedures in place to ensure free, fair, and transparent elections, including voter registration and elections training and monitoring, and allow independent foreign monitors and journalists access.
Uphold the rights of the opposition to travel freely, hold meetings, disseminate their views, and have equal access to the media.
Respect and promote freedom of expression in accordance with Equatorial Guinea’s international human rights obligations.
Ensure that an independent appraisal can be made of the effectiveness of human rights training given by MPRI to security and law enforcement agencies.

Insist upon full participation of independent civil society, particularly organizations focused on human rights and good governance, as an essential condition before declaring Equatorial Guinea EITI compliant.

Congress should mandate that the Export-Import Bank (ExIm) and Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) require extractive companies who receive funding or political risk insurance from them to show that they have effective policies and procedures to address security and human rights, and give those companies the capacity to monitor compliance with those standards.
Bilateral military assistance and training programs that involve security forces that also provide security to the extractive industries should include components to ensure that funding is contingent on respect for human rights and accountability for violations when they provide such security.
Congress should examine how to ensure private security contractors, who may provide services to the government and also to extractive industries, follow human rights standards.
Congress should examine what steps can be taken to ensure that extractive companies adequately follow human rights standards.
Congress should provide adequate resources and guidance to the State Department, Department of Defense, and other relevant agencies, and require them to raise human rights issues related to the provision of security with foreign governments and to address the conduct of companies operating abroad.
Deny visas to Equatoguinean officials credibly implicated in corruption.
Identify assets held by those officials with the intent of seizing and repatriating them to a freely elected government.