---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 11:51:49 +0000
From: Charlotte Utting <[log in to unmask]>
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To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [WASAN] FW: ADNA UPDATE: Final version of NEPAD critique
----------
From: "Nunu Kidane" <[log in to unmask]>
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Date: Tue, 3 Dec 2002 22:40:10 -0800
To: "ADNA E-mail List" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: ADNA UPDATE: Final version of NEPAD critique
ADNA UPDATE: 021203
Message from: Advocacy Network for Africa
For contact information see also:
http://www.africaaction.org/adna
Dear friends in the ADNA network,
Here in text is the final version of our NEPAD critique. You may
also access it at <http://www.woaafrica.org/Nepad.htm>
If ADNA members wish to reproduce it in a format that is more
attractive for distribution, contact me at [log in to unmask] and I will
send it to you as an MSWord attachment.
Yours,
Leon Spencer
Washington Office on Africa
****
NEPAD ~ Taking the New Partnership for Africa’s Development
seriously: A response to NEPAD from the Advocacy Network for
Africa (USA) The Advocacy Network for Africa (ADNA) is a
progressive non-partisan network of over 200 US organizations at
the national, regional, state, and local level. Our initiatives address
issues of peace and security; human, civil, political, and women’s
rights; environmentally and economically sustainable development
for poverty eradication; social justice, popular participation, and
good governance; and humanitarian and crisis relief.
Our network, under the name of the Southern Africa Working Group
(SAWG), was founded to mobilize action in solidarity with the anti-
apartheid and grassroots liberation movements in southern Africa.
With the successes of those movements during the late 1980s and
early 1990s, we adopted a new name the Advocacy Network for
Africa and began to address a broad spectrum of US-Africa foreign
policy issues, with an expanded focus on sub-Saharan Africa.
NEPAD naturally became a recent focus of our attention.
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), emerging
from African government initiatives and endorsed by the African
Union, is receiving increasing attention internationally, including
among the G-7 countries and within the United States. NEPAD
seeks to create a strategic common vision among African
governments, with a commitment toward eradicating poverty and
supporting sustainable development based on improved access to
capital, technology and human skills and resources. In the
process, it outlines conditions for development and conditions for
relationship that originate in Africa, not in the West, and envisions
partnership rather than subservient relations. Its emerging African
Peer Review Mechanism is seeking to set standards within Africa
for good political governance.
As advocacy organizations concerned with justice and sustainable
development in Africa, and justice in US policy toward Africa, we
are well aware of the criticisms directed toward NEPAD from
progressive NGOs and civil society in Africa and around the world.
We deeply regret the absence of African civil society participation
in the evolution of the document itself, and we affirm that this
renders NEPAD seriously flawed. We will be listening closely to
African NGO partners as they are now becoming more familiar with
and responding to the NEPAD agenda.
We also recognize that NEPAD embraces a neo-liberal economic
agenda. It may well prove to be true that this approach renders
NEPAD fatally flawed. We look skeptically at the view that NEPAD
seems to articulate, namely that while economic globalization has
failed Africa, Africa needs more of those same policies.
Nevertheless, we see in NEPAD an opportunity for a deeper and
broader debate about development as more than the mere absence
of poverty, disease, violence and basic human rights violations. We
see this even though we recognize that NEPAD’s proponents
underscore its political process aspects over its sustainable
economic development agenda. We therefore emphasize, in this
document, the breadth of issues NEPAD raises, with primacy
toward that which would affirm the dignity of all citizens of African
countries. This document then proceeds to identify appropriate
strategic indicators that would measure the seriousness with
which the United States treats issues and citizens alike.
Fundamental to our approach is the conviction that partnership with
Africa is defined by a concern for the common good, and that the
definition of the common good is not limited to such global
economic indicators as GDP, trade balance and foreign reserves.
What follows, then, are statements of what we have read in the
NEPAD document and influenced by African civil society
responses to NEPAD what we believe would be appropriate
indicators related to US policy. They appear under the following
rubrics:
1. Peace and security
2. Democracy
3. Human rights
4. Economic development
5. Education
6. Health
7. Gender equality and opportunity
1. Peace and security
NEPAD’s vision NEPAD commits African governments to establish
mechanisms to be accountable for securing the rights of minorities,
nationalities, and ethnic groups; to protect natural resources from
exploitation, especially during times of conflict; and to demonstrate
the will to confront root causes of conflicts in a manner that
respects human rights and moves nations toward just conflict
resolution.
US responsibility To support these aspirations, as a recognition of
a common concern for a just peace and of the US responsibility to
contribute toward that peace in the international community, we
note the following indicators for US policy:
a. The US government will have as its primary focus a people-
centered common security interest in its security relationship to
African countries.
b. The US government will respect the sovereignty of African
countries and will refrain from unilateral activity aimed at
undemocratic regime changes.
c. The US government will contribute its fair share to multilateral
peace-keeping initiatives.
d. The US government will ratify the landmines treaty and the child
soldiers protocol, and will actively support multinational efforts to
control the arms traffic, including small arms.
e. The US government will take concrete action to prevent US
economic activities from serving to fuel and exploit African
conflicts, including, but not limited to, oil and diamonds.
2. Democracy
NEPAD’s vision NEPAD commits African governments to address
democratic governance issues from a standpoint that goes beyond
institutional reforms and technical adjustments toward a
willingness to be more fully engaged with civic organizations, where
critical alternatives may be advanced from civil society and the
NGO community without being perceived as threats to power.
Further, African governments commit themselves through NEPAD
to be more attuned to gender inequality and to take concrete steps
to advance participation of African women in governance; to
establish and sustain independent mechanisms to provide reliable
assessments of election processes, and to provide multinational
avenues to demand adherence to internationally-recognized
standards for political participation; and to demonstrate
commitment to democratic institutions by taking no actions
to undermine the independence of the judiciary, the capacity of
political opposition to function, a free press, and the right of civil
society to organize, meet, and publish.
US responsibility To support these aspirations for greater freedom
of expression and participation, and as a recognition of the US
responsibility to support, though not to define, democratic
processes, we note the following indicators for US policy:
a. The US government will respect the political integrity of each
county, acknowledging that the internal political process must be
settled, fundamentally, by the people of that country or region.
b. While recognizing and acknowledging its own democratic
failures, the US government will contribute to multilateral election
monitoring initiatives, and will provide appropriate support for
independent monitoring initiatives in African civil society.
c. The US government will neither fund nor otherwise involve itself in
assisting or undermining political parties on the continent.
d. The US government will seek opportunities to support and
strengthen African civil society in civil society efforts to define their
own agenda and to articulate alternatives, including civil society
representation in the African Peer Review Mechanism.
e. The US government will find avenues to indicate its support for a
free press, including a commitment to an African-controlled
independent press.
3. Human rights
NEPAD’s vision NEPAD commits African governments to establish
a human rights code of conduct, and to acknowledge the
interdependence of all human rights, including economic and
social. Further, it commits African governments to develop detailed
provisions as to how human rights are to be monitored, inter alia
the establishment of a peer review mechanism that is independent
and credible; to ensure that human rights protections will be a key
element in any peace-keeping and peace-building initiatives; and to
create structures and processes to ensure accountability.
NEPAD’s failures In and of themselves, these are positive
provisions. However, we note that the document fails to
acknowledge the progress made in defining and protecting human
rights, shown in the absence of reference to the African Charter on
Human and Peoples Rights, to the African Commission, or to the
OAU’s commitment to the establishment of an African Court. The
document lacks clear benchmarks for human rights performance,
and it fails to support the ratification of such human rights initiatives
as the Additional Protocol on Women’s Rights of the African
Charter.
US responsibility To support these human rights aspirations, we
note the following indicators for US policy:
a. The US government will name human rights abuses wherever
they may be found.
b. The US government will participate actively in international
human rights fora.
c. The US government will provide a meaningful contribution to
multilateral human rights initiatives, including assistance to aid
victims of abuses.
d. The US government will participate actively in programs that
respect fundamental workers’ rights, as defined by the International
Labor Organization, both as human rights, and as an avenue
toward more equitable economic development and more effective
democratic governance.
e. The US government will reverse its decision repudiating the
International Criminal Court.
4. Economic development
NEPAD’s vision and failure It is in the realm of economic policy
that the debate about NEPAD is the most intense. It does indeed
espouse a free market formula in a manner that seems to differ
little from the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) that have
fallen into such disrepute. Some have suggested that the only
difference between SAPs and NEPAD is that the former is imposed
upon Africa by the international financial institutions, while the
latter is imposed upon Africa by African governments themselves.
Our concerns and hopes We share with our partners in Africa and
elsewhere serious questions about the foundation of NEPAD’s
economic policy. Nevertheless, we also read in NEPAD a
commitment by African governments to embrace the concerns of
poor and marginalized Africans rather than the priorities of an
African elite or of northern donor nations. To our mind this requires
that they advance economic policies consistent with their vision for
economic development, in active consultation with the breadth of
African civil society, as opposed to adopting policies demanded by
the G-7 nations and international financial institutions.
Toward that end, we embrace those features in NEPAD that
commit African governments to advance economic policies that
place the private sector firmly in the context of societal needs. This
means, for example, that issues of human need and poverty
reduction take precedence over a rigid free market economy.
Access to water, health care, and education, for example, need to
remain in the public sector. In the private sector, labor rights,
gender opportunity, and the furtherance of African initiatives rather
than those of multinational corporations need to be secured.
To the extent that the NEPAD process affirms such principles,
there are aspects of the NEPAD agenda that may well lead to such
UN Millennium Development goals of halving the proportion of
people whose income is less than one dollar a day, by 2015;
halving by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable
access to safe drinking water; and demonstrably improving the
lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
We profoundly regret the decision to remove from the final version
of NEPAD a previous commitment to give legal expression to the
protection of the rights of local communities, farmers and breeders,
and for the regulation of access to biological resources as
envisioned in the OAU Model Legislation. We lift up the strong and
growing support it has received from many African governments
and from civil society organizations in Africa, North America and
throughout the world, and we applaud its recognition by the US
Congress in the AFRICA Resolution (107th Congress, H.Con.Res.
260).
US responsibility To support these aspirations, we note the
following indicators for US policy:
a. The US government will respect the rights of African
governments to define their economic policies and priorities,
without insistence upon rigid free market provisions or other
economic conditions perceived by African civil society and African
governments to be against the interests of African development.
b. The US government will actively pursue full debt cancellation of
multilateral debts owed by African governments.
c. The US government will remove the barriers which discourage
African agricultural exports to the US.
d. The US government will not only avoid retaliation but will actively
support African initiatives to secure access to affordable
medicines.
e. The US government will pursue limits upon the US extractive
industry operating in Africa requiring that they meet environmental
standards at least equivalent to those required within the US. Such
operations should benefit, not hinder, local communities.
f. The US government will demonstrate a serious commitment to
African economic development and community rights through
adherence to the principles of the AFRICA Resolution supporting
the OAU Model Legislation.
g. The US government will engage in negotiations leading to the
payment and provision of reconstruction assistance to countries
where the US was involved, overtly or covertly, in policies or
programs of destabilization.
h. The US government will move forward aggressively toward
development assistance levels approaching 0.7% of GNP, without
proscriptive structural-adjustment-style conditions.
i. The US government will remove “tied-aid” conditions for
development assistance, by which African nations are required to
purchase US products as part of development activities.
j. The US government will ensure that at least half of development
assistance under the Millennial Challenge Account will be directed
toward sub-Saharan Africa.
k. Until the TRIPS agreement is reviewed as has been requested
by African trade ministers the US government will refrain from
negotiating any trade agreement with TRIPS obligations any more
stringent than those obligations outlined by the Uruguay Round and
held by WTO member nations.
5. Education
NEPAD’s vision NEPAD commits African governments to approach
access to education as a right, and therefore places education in
the context of social rights as an expression of transparent and
accountable governance. Implicit in this understanding is a
commitment to the UN Millennium Development goals of ensuring
that boys and girls alike, everywhere, will be able to complete a full
course of primary schooling; and that gender disparity in all levels
of education will be eliminated no later than 2015.
We simply add that the acute shortage of a trained workforce, the
serious under-investment in education, literacy rates of less than
50% in many countries, the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on the
education system, and the importance to education to stemming
the tide of HIV/AIDS, make a compelling case for the critical
importance of education to sustainable development in Africa.
US responsibility To support these educational aspirations, we
note the following indicators for US policy:
a. The US government will seek ways, including development
assistance and, in particular, a substantial increase in assistance
for basic education and vocational education, to support the
educational agenda of African governments.
b. The US government will oppose “user fees” for basic education,
either directly or through international financial institutions.
c. The US government will aggressively pursue debt cancellation as
an avenue to increase revenue for education.
6. Health
NEPAD’s vision NEPAD commits African governments to approach
access to health care as a right to health, and therefore places
health in the context of social rights as an expression of
transparent and accountable governance. Implicit in that
understanding is a commitment to a significant increase in the
percentage of people with access to health facilities, and to the UN
Millennium Development goals of reducing the under-five mortality
rate by two-thirds by 2015, reducing by three-quarters the maternal
mortality rate by 2015; and halting and reversing the incidence of
malaria and tuberculosis by 2015.
With regard to HIV/AIDS, we see in NEPAD a commitment by
African governments to establish participatory mechanisms to
involve diverse community groups in crafting AIDS programs and
defining priorities regarding funding. We envision a significant
increase in the percentage of people with access to voluntary
counseling and testing in conjunction with treatment programs, a
reversal in the infection rate, a significant increase in the numbers
of women receiving mother-to-child transmission treatment, and a
major expansion in the provision of antiretroviral medications.
US responsibility To support these health aspirations, we note the
following indicators for US policy:
a. The US government will increase annual US contributions for
global AIDS efforts, including the Global Fund, to a minimum of
$2.5 billion.
b. The US government will support a broad HIV/AIDS agenda,
including treatment, education, prevention, and care for people
living with AIDS, and which will encompass health infrastructure,
participatory community awareness, culturally-sensitive attitudinal
change and nutrition.
c. The US government will oppose “user fees” for basic health
services, either directly or through international financial
institutions.
d. The US government will actively support affordable access to
medicines, including good faith commitments to support the spirit
of the Doha statement (“Declaration of the TRIPS Agreement and
Public Health, Ministerial Conference of the World Trade
Organization, at Doha, November 2001), broad interpretation of
third-country access to medications, and development of
indigenous pharmaceutical industries and capacity in Africa. In
particular, the US will offer explicit support of the right of African
nations to obtain or produce generic medications in order to
address their domestic public health concerns.
7. Gender equality and opportunity
NEPAD’s vision NEPAD commits African governments to the
empowerment of women, to be demonstrated by an increase in
income earning power, as a share of professional and managerial
jobs, and as a share of parliamentary seats held by women. Where
major gender discrepancies exist in life expectancy data, we
consider that a key empowerment indicator will be the narrowing of
those discrepancies.
NEPAD’s failures We note with regret, however, that NEPAD is
lacking in details regarding gender empowerment, and the failure to
endorse existing African-initiated action plans, standards and goals
including those of the Africa platform of the 1994 Beijing women’s
conference is glaring.
US responsibility To support these aspirations for gender equality,
we note the following indicators for US policy:
a. The US government will give high priority to development
assistance programs, especially through the African Development
Foundation, that empower women and support grassroots
initiatives.
b. The US government will seek to address, through development
assistance, educational opportunities for girls.
c. The US government will respect the women-led African initiatives
and decisions on issues of family planning, birth control and
HIV/AIDS prevention programs.
d. The US government will support United Nations efforts to
advance the rights, skills and leadership of women.
Conclusions Through all of these topics we have sought to note
what we have heard from the NEPAD document as an African
agenda, and indicators that would demonstrate that the US was
supportive of principles articulated in NEPAD that seek to serve the
common good.
Fundamentally, we believe that the point of departure of a “new
partnership” should be human need, not Africa’s integration into the
global economic system. As the African Social Forum of NGOs
(meeting in Bamako in 2001) helpfully observed, this means that
the issue of clean water does not begin by opening up the provision
of water to international market forces, but rather by considering
access to safe water as a right rather than an economic privilege.
To the extent, therefore, that NEPAD inspires a partnership that
goes beyond a narrow economic prescription toward a vision of
Africa where wealth is shared, equity is affirmed, hopes for health
and education are met, human rights are respected, gender
inequality is overcome, and peace, security, and good governance
become the norm, then this initiative by African leadership despite
the neglect of civil society in its preparation is a contribution to the
good.
For this to happen, the affirmations that appear in the declaration of
the Joint CODESRIA-Third World Network Conference on Africa’s
Development Challenges in the Millennium, held in Accra in April,
2002, need to be heard by African and Western governments alike,
and heard far more clearly than appears up to now to be the case.
Our African partners in Accra spoke of “a state for which social
equity, social inclusion, national unity and respect for human rights
form the basis of economic policy; a state which actively promotes
and nurtures the productive sectors of the economy; actively
engages appropriately in the equitable and balanced allocation and
distribution of resources among sectors and people; and most
importantly a state that is democratic and which integrates
people’s control over decision making at all levels in the
management, equitable use and distribution of social resources.”
It is our firm hope and desire that this vision of Africa, articulated
so well by leaders in African civil society, will become the dominant
theme in the NEPAD process. NEPAD may provide an opportunity
for broad-based and intense African-defined discussion. It may not.
In either case, our contribution, as US-based NGOs, is to hear the
need-based and rights-based agenda that is implicit in NEPAD; to
serve as a medium through which African civil society voices are
heard widely as they reflect upon NEPAD; to coordinate our
initiatives with those on the continent to the greatest extent
possible; and to challenge the US government to respond to
NEPAD, both as presently designed and as it may evolve, in a
manner that respects the indicators set forth here, and in a
supportive rather than dominant relationship with African
governments and African civil society.
November 2002
For further information about the Advocacy Network for Africa’s
work on NEPAD, contact Leon Spencer, Co-facilitator of ADNA, at
the Washington Office on Africa, 212 East Capitol Street,
Washington, DC 20003, USA.
Phone: 202/547-7503; Fax: 202/547-7505; E-mail: [log in to unmask]
or
Mark Harrison, Facilitator of ADNA’s NEPAD Working Group, at
the United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society,
100 Maryland Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002, USA.
Phone: 202/488-5645; Fax: 202/488-5639; E-mail:
[log in to unmask]
For further information about ADNA, visit our website at
www.africaaction.org/adna <http://www.africaaction.org/adna>
For access to NEPAD critiques from African civil society and from
various NGOs worldwide, visit the website of KAIROS: Canadian
Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, a coalition including the Inter-Church
Coalition on Africa, www.web.net/~iccaf/debtsap/nepad.htm
<http://www.web.net/~iccaf/debtsap/nepad.htm>
---------------------------
This message is distributed through the Advocacy Network for
Africa (ADNA) via IDEX
Nunu Kidane
Advocacy Network for Africa (ADNA)
Communications Facilitator for IDEX
International Development Exchange - IDEX
827 Valencia Street, Suite 101
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: (415) 824 8384
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