Institute for Human Rights

and Development in Africa

Progress report: Since the last CSO Forum

2nd CSO Forum on the African Charter on the Rights and

Welfare of the Child
2ème Forum des OSC sur la Charte Africaine des Droits et du
Bien être de l’Enfant
Comitments made at the last CSO Forum

At the last CSO Forum we developed three sets of

recommendations:

– One to the ACERWC

– One giving input into the ACERWC Plan of Action

for 2010-2014

– One to CSOs committing ourselves to support the

Committee
This is a progress report on the third item- and looks at what has been done
centrally or collectively- but not what has been done at country-level.

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Objective 1: Popularisation of the ACRWC

1. Intensify advocacy work with states parties that have not ratified to the ACRWC.
No new countries have ratified the ACRWC since the last Forum

2. Use various communication channels to raise awareness on the African Children’s Charter
and the work for the ACERWC.
The last CSO Forum was in the media and well covered on CRIN.

3. Celebrate and popularize events such as the Day of the African Child, etc.
How many of you commemorated the Day of the African Child this year? The 10 th Anniversary
of the coming into force of the African Child Rights Charter will be celebrated on Friday.

4. Popularise and disseminate the already developed child friendly version of the ACRWC.
We have no information about this. We probably need to some samples of child-friendly
versions and e-mail them to the CSO Forum participants

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Objective 2: Protection of the Rights enshrined in the
Charter

1. Regularly organize the CSO forum on and around the ACERWC.

Achieved.

2. Disseminate the new publication “Advancing Children’s Rights – A Guide to Civil Society on
how to engage with the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare to the
Child”
The publication is on the CDs provided for you in your folder. Please continue to circulate it to
your partners.

3. Organize training workshops on the African Children’s Charter and the ACERWC to equip
relevant stakeholders.
Show of hands- how many of you have organized trainings on this topic?

4. Carry out in-country advocacy to muster governmental support for investigation missions by
the ACERWC.
As far as we know, this has not been done.

5. Disseminate the ACERWC’s guidelines for conducting investigations.

You will find them in your folders.

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Objective 3: Monitoring the implementation of the Charter

1. Establish a liaison unit/secretariat for a better information flow and collaboration

between the ACERWC and CSOs.
This has not been formally done (and we need to discuss how it should be done).
However, members of the organizing committee are in regular contact with the
AU and any new events and information has been circulated.

2. Monitor the implementation of the African Children’s Charter including producing

CSO reports.
No new CSO reports have been produced in this period.

3. Popularise the Concluding observations on the state party reports and advocate
for the recommendations to be implemented.
The first Concluding Observations were circulated on Monday this week- so this is
something for follow up for next CSO Forum

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Objective 4: Strengthening the Institutional capacity of
the Committee

1. Contribute to an annual review and reflection mechanism for the ACERWC and
Contribute to a review of the ACERWC 2005-2009 Plan of Action and to the planning
process for the ACERWC 2010 – 2014 Plan of Action.

One of the key recommendations the CSO Forum had to the ACERWC was to carry out a
review of their last Plan of Action. This was taken up by the Committee and a review is
underway. The consultant has contacted many of us about this already. He will also
be getting more input from us on day 2 of this Forum.

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Reflections

1. We need to assign someone, or a group of people, to collect information about

our collective work in this area (which area) (at country level) in order to share a
more accurate picture of what is going on at the next CSO Forum.

2. Now that Recommendations have been circulated for NIGERIA and EGYPT, we
have to be pro-active about ensuring they are distributed widely in those
countries.

3. We have to be more pro-active about exploring how we can establish a liaison

unit/secretariat for a better information flow and collaboration between the
ACERWC and CSOs.

4. Togo has recently submitted its State report- so we must encourage civil society
to write a CSO report.

5. We recommend that the AfricaWide Movement for Children also takes on the
responsibility of sharing and disseminating information and resource materials
on the Child Rights Charter.