A decade of Human Rights recommendations – Where we stand and the way forward
Developed in the course of a two-day seminar in December 2022, the document below brings together the jointly agreed recommendations of European and African civil society to the African Union (AU), European Union (EU) and their member states, as well as for the EU-AU partnership.
This seminar issued general recommendations on the AU-EU partnership and the role of civil society in this partnership, then drew on the past nine years of the civil society seminar to take stock of key concerns and issues recommendations on:
- Women affected by armed conflict and the participation of women in the peace process and in political life
- Human rights and elections
- Ensuring an enabling space for civil society organisations (CSOs)
- Freedom of expression
- Counter-terrorism and human rights
- Fight against torture and ill-treatment and redress for victims
- Youth rights to participation
- Human rights in the context of migration and forced displacement
To reflect the indivisibility of rights and the long-standing challenges in this area, an additional thematic strand was added to specifically address Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) and to consider practical ways of addressing how ESCR intersect with other human rights challenges on the EU-AU agenda. Participants highlighted two other key human rights issues in the AU-EU partnership – Digital and human rights, and Business and Human Rights – and formulated recommendations on these human rights issues as well.
 Final AU EU CSO seminar recommendations EN.pdf |