by Joseph Ngwawi – SANF 07 No 28 The African Union’s Economic, Cultural and Social Council (ECOSOCC) will have a substantive governing body by the end of the year following the launch of the process to elect members of the council’s General Assembly. The AU invited applications from civil society organisations (CSOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), social groups, community-based groups and professional bodies interested in being elected members of a General Assembly of ECOSOCC. The proposed ECOSOCC is an organ of the AU established under the AU Constitutive Act to promote participation by African people in the implementation of Union policies and programmes. The General Assembly is expected to replace an interim standing committee appointed in March 2005 at the launch of ECOSOCC in Ethiopia. The interim standing committee was elected for a two-year term to organise elections of representatives of NGOs, CSOs, social and professional groups into the substantive ECOSOCC assembly by the end of March but the deadline was later extended to December. The election of national, regional and continental representatives is scheduled between June and December, with the General Assembly expected to be in place by January 2008. This will involve the election of 130 African CSOs, NGOs, community-based organisations, social and professional groups to sit on the ECOSOCC General Assembly. A further 20 seats will be reserved for groups from the African Diaspora, bringing the total to 150 organisations. “The vision in the AU is that by December 2007 civil society organisations from the continent should come up with their own representatives at regional, sub-regional and Diaspora levels,” said Charles Mutasa who is the deputy president of the interim ECOSOCC standing committee responsible for southern Africa. The interim standing committee is headed by Nobel Laureate and Kenyan environmentalist, Wangari Mathaai, who is the president and is assisted by four deputy presidents drawn from southern, North, Central and West Africa. Mathaai also represents East Africa on the interim assembly. The election of the general assembly is the culmination of a process started in 2005 involving consultations with representatives of NGOs, CSOs, social and professional bodies from Africa’s five regions. Representatives of CSOs and NGOs from the SADC region met in Windhoek, Namibia, in early April for their regional consultative meeting at which they sought to define an appropriate framework and strategies to guide ECOSOCC interactions with the AU. Mutasa said each of the 14 SADC countries will be required to elect two national CSOs to represent civil society on the AU body. The region will also be represented by two CSOs operating at a regional level, bringing the total regional representation to 30 organisations. Like other African regions, SADC has been building interim national structures to coordinate the activities of ECOSOCC. National consultations have been launched in Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. ECOSOCC will be an advisory organ of the AU comprising different social and professional groups from member states and the Diaspora. It will be made up of groups representing women, the youth, the elderly, persons with disabilities, workers, academia, business organisations, cultural organisations, non-governmental organisations, and community-based organisations. The formation of ECOSOCC comes at a time when the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region has made great strides in recognising the role of civil society in the implementation of regional programmes and projects. The SADC Council of Non-Governmental Organisations (SADC-CNGO) is an institution recognised by the SADC Secretariat that was created in 2002 in terms of Article 23 of the SADC Treaty. Article 23 of the Treaty recognises the need to “involve fully the people of the region and non-governmental organisations in the process of regional integration”. The SADC-CNGO held its first civil society forum ahead of the SADC Summit in Botswana in 2005 and a second one in Lesotho in 2006. The ECOSOCC initiative also comes at a time when some AU organs such as the Pan African Parliament (PAP) are in the process of opening up their processes to members of civil society. In early May, the PAP jointly organised with the Southern Africa Trust the first ever consultative dialogue with members of the African civil society in South Africa. The president of PAP, Getrude Mongella, called on CSOs to actively participate in the proceedings and plenary sessions of parliamentary committees and engage on African development issues. She emphasised that it is not the role of CSOs and parliaments to govern but oversee those who govern to ensure that policies are pro-people. To promote relations between the PAP and citizens of Africa, Mongella noted that the parliament will establish a civil society dialogue unit.
Southern African News Features AU moves to strengthen involvement of African people
