Resolution on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)

We the participants, at the Forum on the Participation of NGOs at the 34th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and at the 8th Book Fair on Human Rights in Africa, held at the Corinthia Atlantic Hotel, Banjul, from 3rd to 5th November, 2003,

Considering the principle of indivisibility of human rights, enshrined in the Preamble of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights;

Recalling the importance of economic, social and cultural rights and the right to development as stipulated in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights;

Conscious of the importance of being answerable for economic social and cultural rights in order to safeguard the right of all individuals to exercise their rights before an independent authority;

Recalling the responsibility of States to indiscriminately afford access to basic services such as water, education, health, and housing;

Recalling that all development policies should be implemented in strict accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its subsequent texts;

Saluting the African States for their willingness to take the development of Africa into their hands, particularly within the framework of The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) founded on the “Declaration on Democracy and Good Governance”;

Reaffirming the Declaration on Democracy, Political and Economic Good Governance and NEPAD’s efforts founded on the regional and international instruments governing human rights, This places NEPAD squarely within the ambit of Human Rights;

Lauding the creation of an African mechanism for peer review, whose mandate is to monitor conformity by the Partner States with the fundamental tenets enshrined in the Declaration on Democracy and Good Governance;

Expressing satisfaction at the nomination of the Eminent Persons Group (Panel) and welcoming the launching of the Peer Review process at the end of 2003;

The participants at the NGO Forum calls on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ rights:

To ensure that the Peer Review mechanism, includes the international and regional provisions on the protection of Human Rights, especially economic, social and cultural rights in its evaluation criteria of States’ development policies;

To allow for Civil Society participation in this mechanism, especially in the submission of alternative reports

Invite all the countries of the African Union to join the Peer Review Mechanism;

Exhort NEPAD Partner States to reserve a prominent position for Human Rights in the definition of development policies for the African continent;

Exhort NEPAD Partner States to streamline the gender dimension into all NEPAD projects;

Exhort NEPAD Partner States to prioritise the allocation of investments funds and give priority to basic social services such as Education, Health and access to water;

Ensure that the HIV/AIDS pandemic is given due prominence in the implementation of NEPAD and in the allocation of Resources;

Ensure that African Civil Society has access to information on NEPAD programmes;

Done in Banjul, on 5th November, 2003