THE AOUDAGHOST NETWORK
METHODOLOGY AND ACTION STRATEGY
- Information and education / training
- Techniques and tools used depending on the type of stakeholder concerned
- Actions in favor of ESC rights’ enforceability
- Methods of lobbying the State
- Practical experiences in claiming ESC rights and results obtained
GENERAL PRESENTATION OF THE AOUDAGHOST NETWORK
The AOUDAGHOST Network was created in 1996 between structures of support to the socioeconomic and professional integration of young people in Africa. It brought together fourteen (14) national civil society organizations as well as para-public structures from Benin, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Guinea-Conakry, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Togo until 2005.
Upon a decision taken during the 2004 Ordinary General Assembly meeting in Lomé (Togo), the network was re-structured and now, only civil society organizations working for the promotion of young people’s, children’s and women’s rights in Africa can be members.
AOUDAGHOST is on the one hand a framework for exchange, reflection, solidarity and integration between the member-structures, and on the other hand, a lobbying force able to make suggestions on a national and African scale for better social and economic policies.
The network’s headquarters have been transferred from Ouagadougou to Bamako, Mali.
42, porte 232 Hamdallaye
BP2744 Bamako, MALI
Phone nb. +223 20 29 59 10 / Fax. + 223 20 29 31 94
E-mail: aoudaghost@buroticservices.net.ml or use the contact form
Website: http://www.aoudaghost.org
The institutional network’ structuration is based on three (03) bodies: the General Assembly, the National Units and the General Coordination which is the representative body in charge of political orientation.
The network is currently present in four African countries:
- Association d’appui aux initiatives de développement- AID-Mali, (Association of support to development initiatives)
- Association jeunesse – action- AJA-Mali, (Youth Action Association)
- GUAMINA
- Mali –Environnement et Jeunesse - Mali-EnJeu, (Mali –Youth and Environment)
- Groupe de recherche et d’appui aux initiatives de développement endogène - GRAIDE, (Group of research and support to endogenous development initiatives)
- Association pour une dynamique de progrès économique et social - ADPES, (Association for a Dynamic of Economic and Social Progress)
- Réseau africain pour le développement intégré- RADI, (African Network for Integrated Development)
- La Kora PRD Tambacounda
- Groupe de recherche et d’action pour la promotion de l’agriculture et du développement - GRAPAD, (Group pf research and action for the promotion of agriculture and - development)
- Association des caisses de financement a la base - ACFB, (Association of financing funds of Benin)
- Association femme et vie - AFV, (Woman and Life Association)
- Centre d’appui pour la Gestion et le Développement - CAGED, (Support center for Management and Development)
- DON BOSCO Center Togo / Kara
- Structure d’Appui au Développement des Enfants et des jeunes Filles en Difficulté au Togo - SOTCHI Kara, (Structure of support to children and girls in difficulties in Togo)
- IRAD-Maluk
THE NETWORK’S GOAL
Be a framework of exchange, reflection, solidarity and integration between the member-structures on the one hand; make suggestions and exert a pressure on a national and African scale for better social and economic policies on the other hand.
THE NETWORK’S VISION
Become a lobbying force able to make propositions at national and African levels in order to have economic, social and cultural rights integrated into legislations and public policies.
MISSIONS AND MEANS OF ACTION
The Network, as a civil society organization, defines itself as a framework of solidarity, exchange and (institutional, structural, and technical) capacity building, specialized in promoting development intiatives carried out by young people, women and children in Africa. It aims more precisely at promoting and protecting young people’s, women’s and children’s economic, social and cultural rights.
FIELDS OF ACTION
Building members’ capacities
- Annual meetings / training of the member-structures,
- Periods of work experience within and outside the structures,
- Exchange meetings between the grassroots groups partners with the -structures,
- Thematic exchanges/reflection,
- Exchanges of experiences with resource structures or persons external to the Network,
- Studies/research and publications,
- Resource development (human resources and products),
- Institutional support to the member-structures.
Promoting and protecting economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights)
- Raising grassroots populations’, civil society stakeholders’ and political decision-makers’ awareness of economic, social and cultural rights.
- Warning and monitoring, for the protection of ESC rights.
Seeking funds through projects’ development in order to make ESC rights accessible
METHODOLOGY AND ACTION STRATEGY
The AOUDAGHOST Network’s action strategy is based on studies/research on societal problems, identifying and analysing the fields of action and stakeholders concerned, and providing thematic information, education and training with specific tools.
The AOUDAGHOST Network carried out several thematic studies on recent national and regional events. These studies helped improve the understanding of the internal and external environment, not only through the recommendations made to public agencies in terms of socioeconomic and cultural development, but also through the advocacy and lobbying actions for the implementation of the recommendations. Here are a few examples:
- Study on family micro businesses in 2000,
- Study/reflection on the debt burden in African States’ economies in 2001,
- Study on the West African apprentices’ situation in 2002,
- Studies on the ESC rights’ situation in Mali, in Senegal (2002), in Togo (2003) and in Benin (2005).
These studies on ESC rights were carried out by the AOUDAGHOST Network in Benin, Mali, Senegal and Togo, in partnership with Terre des Hommes France.
Information and education / training
The studies on the ESC rights’ situation clearly showed in every target country the obvious ignorance of the ICESCR at all levels (State institutions and administrations, populations and grassroots development and human rights organizations).
Based on that observation, the information, education and training were perceived both as preconditions and constants in the ESC rights promotion and protection approach in all the countries members of the AOUDAGHOST Network.
The information, education and training approach aims at:
Promoting ESC rights in the letter and spirit of the pertaining Covenant, with:
- social actors, as basic components of the civil society and first rights-holders (content and stakes of the specific rights, actions to be launched for the enjoyment and consolidation of those rights, possible obstacles and measures of demand, negotiation and justice),
- active civil society organizations involved in economic, social and cultural development, as places of creation and defense of democratic public spaces for exchanging, making decisions, and defining collective stances in order to suggest alternative policies answering the populations’ legitimate aspirations (content and stakes of the specific rights, advocacy and lobbying actions to be launched for the enjoyment and consolidation of such rights, possible obstacles, measures of demand, negotiation and justice, willing technical support from the authorities for the understanding and implementation of the ICESCR, drafting of shadow reports and monitoring of the Committee on ESC rights’ recommendations ),
- institutional, administrative and political persons in charge, directly involved in the implementation and monitoring of the ICESCR (respect of ESC rights, drafting of official reports, monitoring of the Committee on ESC rights’ recommendations).
Encourage a change of behavior within the triptych: State – grassroots stakeholders – organized civil society. Such evolution is essential for the ESC rights’ implementation and future, and especially for the Optional Protocol, as a tool of justiciability and enforceability.
Contribute to the collective realization of each stakeholder’s role and responsibilities in complying with the ICESCR
Build social actors’ capacities so that they are able, on the one hand, to claim and demand in full knowledge the best possible access to ESC rights; and to proceed on the other hand to the objective evaluation of all the development programs, considering the objectives assigned and the implemented means. The point is to prepare them to take part in the - so much advocated - good governance, by participating as much as they wish and being able to denounce cases of acknowledged rights’ violation and abuse. Aoudaghost also raises the stakeholders’ awareness of their roles and responsabilities which they must be eventually accountable for to the citizens. This approach is a necessary step in the evolution towards enforceability and justiciability, not only in a judicial sense but also and above all in terms of negociation, considering that the ratification process of the Optional Protocol will take a variable amount of time depending on the States, as the latter can use the progressive nature of ESC rights’ realization as an excuse for being slow.
Encourage the authorities to respect and integrate ESC rights into their economic, social and cultural development plans and policies. Solidarity practices, alliances between grassroots networks and social movements, and the international cooperation based on the real development problems of the country are the constants of a better guarantee of ESC rights accessibility and protection as well as the struggle against poverty and exclusion.
Promote and protect ESC rights so that the rights-holders are able to claim their effective enjoyment in all legitimacy. The national legislations must provide a clear and precise reading of the means to be used, the collaboration framework and the special prerogatives applying to the structures in charge of implementing the national policy and all the non-governmental stakeholders (civil society and national private sector).
Techniques and tools used depending on the type of stakeholder concerned
In order to better circulate the information and messages and provide the best education and training possible, the AOUDAGHOST Network uses the following techniques and tools, depending on the type of information and message conveyed, as well as on the type of stakeholder targeted at local, national and sub-regional (West African) levels.
The most used techniques are linked to the conduct of thematic public conferences, meetings – debates, seminars, workshops and forums; publications in the media; and the screening of testimony films.
The leaders/trainers of the AOUDAGHOST Network, either internal and external to the network, use all the national languages to circulate the legal instruments and information relating to the rights situation, linked to the public policies of development. Audio and visual pedagogical tools are also used and collective demonstrations of protest organized (marches, popular campaigns, petitions...).
Actions in favor of ESC rights’ enforceability
When working towards human rights’ universality and indivisibility, it is necessary to get an overview of the existing mechanisms of enforceability and justiciability at international and national levels, in order to determine what can be done and what stands in the way. Economic, social and cultural rights, much more than civil and political rights, always depend on the country’s level of economic development (available and potential resources). As such, ESC rights’ enforceability becomes conditional and exclusively dependent on the ruling government’s goodwill.
But no State can use the poor budgetary resources as an excuse to mortgage the realization of fundamental ESC rights that are essential to the country’s global development, such as the rights to food, to health, education, work and housing.
However, the precarious economic situation, people’s lack of knowledge, the fatalism and weight of customs and traditions in Africa don’t facilitate right away a coherent approach to enforce economic, social and cultural rights on the long term and in the required manners.
Yet, in every country, people suffer from ESC rights violations and even when they succeed in some rare instances in winning their cases, such progress is more likely to be seen as a sporadic act of solidarity on the part of public authorities which never leads to the creation of a new legislation in accordance with the international instruments.
The AOUDAGHOST Network attaches a great importance to cooperations, exchanges of experiences and alliances within the national, international and African civil society advocating the respect of ESC rights. The role of the network is to efficiently encourage the awareness raising, organization, advocacy and lobbying dynamics that it needs face with the possible resistance on the part of public institutions and the grassroots social actors’ ignorance of rights stakes.
Methods of lobbying the State
Based on case studies, true or verifiable recurrent testimonies and the information drawn from the international conventions, treaties and agreements the States are signatories of, the AOUDAGHOST Network, having taken as a rule to always carry out actions in consultation with other networks and coalitions involved, usually carries out lobbying actions following these steps:
- the organization of debates on conventional commitments, and publication of the results;
- the drafting of manifestos on what really and potentially jeopardizes ESC rights;
- the information and awareness raising on cases of ESC rights violations;
- the organization of touring popular campaigns on ESC rights;
- the set-up and coordinating organization of groups of monitoring and advocacy on the different ESC rights categories in general among social actors and support organisms;
- the creation of ESC rights watch platforms in the member countries.
Currently, two ESC rights platforms are functional in Mali and Togo. In 2007, the Malian platform published a first alternative report on the ICESCR’s implementation.
Practical experiences in claiming ESC rights and results obtained
These experiences rely on the organization and training of grassroots actors in claiming and demanding their rights to work, education and training, food, housing, health, as well as the rights of access to means of production and lands for professional exploitation.
It is the State’s imperative duty to guarantee these fundamental rights and to generate the conditions for their equitable enjoyment by all, through more relevant and social policies really and strongly supported by non-governemental stakeholders and the international cooperation.
The AOUDAGHOST Network, based on NGO GUAMINA’s initiative as a member-structure, carried out research on Malian people who had been repatriated from the Ivory Coast as a consequence of the war events having occurred there. This neighboring country welcomed more than two million Malian people.
- Regarding the right to health: the access to voluntary medical insurance for women, children and heads of family in need through their subscription to the Malian mutual insurance system. The latter were exempt of subscription fees and monthly contribution at least during their three-month observation period. A campaign of awareness raising and organization into units of communal mutual insurance was carried out afterwards. It aimed at raising awareness of the necessity to generalize those results and make them last in time through political and legal measures. For the AOUDAGHOST Network, beyond a particular solidarity motivation and regardless of a Welfare State logic, the point of such approach was eventually to have the department of social development enlarge this example to all the Malians residing in the country, from all sectors and in a difficult situation, and also to the Malians who enter the country in a precarious situation.
- Regarding the right to education: *within the framework of a partnership with the Malian Solidarity Fund (Fonds de solidarité au Mali), the children of the Malians repatriated from the Ivory Coast because of the war situation in the country were registered and/or reintegrated into the different education levels in Mali. *As part of a professional training in arts and crafts, young craftsmen were organized and formed into a network to be able to claim access to training through apprenticeship, claim the acknowledgement of their training and the access to production equipments.
- Regarding the right to housing: within the framework of the partnership with the National Solidarity Fund (Fond national de solidarité – FNS), the heads of family in need repatriated from the Ivory Coast were organized so as to be able to claim access to social housing. In the meantime, they were given the means to find a shelter with their family.
- Regarding the right to means of production: within the framework of the partnership with decentralized financial systems and the Professional Association of Microfinance Institutions (Association professionnelle des institutions de micro finance), the AOUDAGHOST Network built professional stakeholders’ training and support capacities for them to access micro-business funding and a continuous professional and technical training. The network also negotiated preferential rates for craftsmen and women’s cooperatives.
The AOUDAGHOST Network filled into a gap thanks to its thematic specificity, by:
- building the action capacities of the Network’s member-structures for them to carry out field actions,
- informing and training political decision-makers and other stakeholders for them to have a better understanding of ESC rights and work towards their realization and protection,
- supporting socioprofessional actors in advocating their rights, carrying out thematic studies on ESC rights, the debt situation, the popular economy, emigration etc....
- developing exchanges with other networks and forums, like in Africa, in South America and Asia.
