Extractives for Sustainable Development in Afghanistan

Natural resource exploitation is a source of both great hope and great peril for the people of Afghanistan. This briefing note sets out how the key process for setting the benchmarks of mutual accountability between the Afghan government and donors can help ensure that Afghan’s mineral and oil wealth helps the country rather than funding armed groups, fuelling  corruption, and undermining any effort to increase government revenues. These are measures which can help ensure the future prosperity and stability of Afghanistan, but which are also essential for increasing Afghanistan’s self-reliance. The lack of these basic measures could call into question how serious donors and the Afghan government are not just about moving Afghanistan away from a reliance on international aid, but about safeguarding the donor-country taxpayers.