Aoudaghost Network’s Malian Unit

Malian Unit

• Introduction
• Main results
• Partnerships
• Strategic plan/perspective for the next five years

Introduction of the National Unit Member Organizations

• Association d’appui aux initiatives de développement - AID-Mali, (Association of support to development initiatives)
• Association jeunesse – action - AJA-Mali, (Youth Action Association)
• Mali –Environnement et Jeunesse- Mali-EnJeu, (Mali – Youth and Environment)
• GUAMINA

Practical actions carried out by the unit in the ESC rights field

• Setting up the ESC rights Platform
• Helping in drafting the shadow report
• Building units’ and platforms’ capacities: training of unit and platform members in the tools and operative approaches of rights promotion and enforceability
• Building socioprofessional actors’ capacities: providing and intiating to techniques of citizen protest in phase with the evolution of the sectors concerned

Introduction

The Malian Unit was created along with the adoption of the AOUDAGHOST Network’s “refounding” texts during the General Assembly of December 10, 2004, in Lomé (Togo).

Unit’s status: The AOUDAGHOST Network was created by Decision No. -0102MATCL –DNI on May 17, 2006.

The Malian National Unit is affiliated with the AOUDAGHOST Network. It counts 4 development NGOs in Mali:

• Association d’appui aux initiatives de développement - AID-Mali, (Association of support to development initiatives)
• Association jeunesse – action - AJA-Mali, (Youth Action Association)
• Mali –Environnement et Jeunesse- Mali-EnJeu, (Mali – Youth and Environment)
• GUAMINA

The unit’s objectives are the following:

• Be a framework of exchange, reflection, solidarity and integration between member-structures;
• Be a framework of (institutional, structural and technical) capacity building;
• Be a lobbying force able to make propositions and exert pressure at national and African levels for better social and economic policies.

Unit’s mission

The National Unit is the Network’s local body in charge of the coordinating organization in each country. It is composed of the Network’s member-structure in the country under the terms of the internal regulations. Its mission is to:

• implement orientations at national level;
• define, develop, implement, and monitor the Network’s action programs at national level;
• seek technical and financial partnerships;
• mobilize resources.

Malian Unit’s organization and functioning mode

It is composed of the Network ’s member-structures in Mali.

• The National Unit is made of at least two structures and six at most until 2010. Yet, the countries that have only one structure are supported by the coordination and encouraged to progress and set up one more unit; The unit members choose the structure which is going to be in charge of finances, and leading and representing the national unit for a certain period of time;
• the national unit is accountable to the general coordination;
• the funds management at the national unit’s level will follow the Network’s financial and administrative guides and procedures;
• the national unit develops its structural framework independently, but the latter needs to be approved by the general coordination.

Unit’s main results

• Set-up of and conduct of the Malian ESC rights Platform in partnership with other civil society organizations.
• Participation of all the Unit members in the planned or non-planned activities.
• Creation of a permanent secretariat.
• Creation of a moderately well-equipped head office.

Partnerships

Institutional partnership
The national unit is partners - both in the South and the North – with:

• organisms of cooperation and capacity building in Mali, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Intitutional Cooperation, and the Ministry of Land Administration and Local Governement.
• international solidarity organizations such as Terre des Hommes France who took part in its creation.

Strategic partnership with Terre des Hommes France

Strategic plan / perspective for the next five years

• ESC rights practical promotion: spaces of communication and exchange created together with other national units;
• build the capacities of the national unit members, field professionals, grassroots actors and local elected representatives;
• participate in international and sub-regional meetings;
• lead and manage the national unit.

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INTRODUCTION OF THE NATIONAL UNIT MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS

Association d’appui aux initiatives de développement (AID-Mali)

Association of support to development initiatives

Status: Récépissé No. 0109/MAT-DBNIT/DAG
Date of creation: February 1986
Objectives

• Contribute to underprivileged rural populations’ self-sufficiency and food security,
• improve underprivileged populations’ sanitary coverage,
• support the promotion of basic education,
• contribute to women’s socioeconomic promotion,
• support income-generating local initiatives,
• support the development of local organizations and Education Center for Development (Centre d’Éducation pour le Développement).

Mission
The AID’s mission is to take part in local initiatives for the socioeconomic and cultural development of underprivileged rural and urban populations.

Fields of action

• Education
• Health
• SME - SMI
• Organizational strengthening
• Support to decentralized communities
• Natural resources management

Areas of action
Bamako - Ségou - Koulikoro - Mopti - Sikasso - Kayes

Targets
Underprivileged rural and urban populations

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Association jeunesse – action (AJA-Mali)

Youth Action Association

Status
AJA MALI is acknowledged by framework agreement No. 460 from July 12, 1994 as a development NGO.

Date of creation: July 13, 1993

Objectives:

• support the schooling of underprivileged children from outlying neighborhoods - in regular schools or the Education Center for Development;
• offer tutoring to children so as to create the conditions of their school success;
• help raise a collective awareness in the neighborhood of the point and use of children’s schooling;
• help young people master Information and Communication Technologies (especially young microentrepreneurs in the urban economy);
• efficiently answer 18 to 35 year-old young people’s and craftsmen’s needs in terms of integration and professional improvement in rural and urban areas.

Mission
Promote an educational integration policy for 6 to 14 year-old underprivileged children of the neighborhoods (street children and apprentices).

Fields of action:

• supporting the schooling of 6 to 14 year-old underprivileged children,
• school support to street children (who are unschooled or were removed from school early) at the Education Center for Development,
• school support to 15 to 18 year-old young apprentices for them to be admitted into a dual professional training,
• professional training of 18 to 35 year-old young people and craftsmen in rural and urban areas,
• activities of struggle against child trafficking,
• self-managed microcredit for women and girls from outlying neighborhoods, Information and Communication Technologies.

Areas of action
Bamako- Koulikoro – Ségou

Targets

• 6 to 9 year-old unschooled and underprivileged children,
• 9 to 14 year-old children in apprenticeship and/or no longer at school,
• the parents of children in apprenticeship (indirect beneficiaries),
• 9 to 16 year-old street children,
• street children’s mothers (indirect beneficiaries),
• 18 to 25 year-old boys and girls,
• young entrepreneurs who can read and write fluently.

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Mali –Environnement et Jeunesse (Mali-EnJeu)

Mali – Youth and Environment

Status
Associative non-governmental organization, framework agreement No. 0177/0340

Date of creation: May 28, 1992, in Bamako

Objective
Contribute to the socioeconomic integration of young people and children in difficult situations.

Mission
Mali-Enjeu aims at contributing to the promotion of young people’s and children’s initiatives through their training and integration into structures that provide them with a job and income.

Mali-Enjeu judges that “Mali’s development is based on the promotion of the multiple resources which the youth embodies”.

Fields of action

• Study and action research
• Education/training
• Self-managed microcredit
• Socio-educational activities
• Monitoring/evaluation
• Support advice
• Children’s rights’ promotion and advocacy.

Areas of action
Kayes - Koulikoro - Sikasso - Ségou - Mopti - Bankass - District de Bamako

Targets

• Street children and young people,
• Children in conflict with the law,
• Koranic pupils
• Children victims of the trade in young people with small jobs
• Early childhood
• Apprentice craftsmen
• Young project leaders
• Young people and women associations
• Domestic staff

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GUAMINA

Status
Non-governemental development organism that has signed a framework agreement with the governement under No. 0771/MATCL / CADB on July 29, 2008.

Date of creation: 1988

Objectives:

• help develop and implement projects and programs following a human rights approach,
• develop research actions on rural organizations’ structures and their specific beneficiaries;
• support grassroots structures for them to build their capacities and take charge of their own development;
• facilitate the integration of underprivileged, resourceless and marginalized groups by setting up productive projects and forming the volunteer corps;
• take part in the mobilization of material, human and financial resources in order to implement development programs;
• promote the structure’s internal skills through the involvement and participation of implementation officers and resource people in projects’ study, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Mission
Build Malian crafts and arts socioprofessional organizations’ capacities in particular, and the civil society’s capacities in general for them to participate in ESC rights promotion, as the main and responsible actors of the Malian socioeconomic development.

Fields of action:

• environment,
• development of socioeconomic activities,
• social development and decentralization.

A Specific Program of Support to the Promotion of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PAPDESC) was launched in 2002 in partnership with Terre des Hommes France to better define the issues, in relation to all those programs and projects, and help seek and implement the shared appropriate responses.

Areas of action
GUAMINA’s PAPDESC intervenes in the Bamako district and other Malian regions at the level of crafts and arts professional groups and associations, and organizations of human rights promotion/protection in all Malian localities: Kayes- Sikasso - Bamako - Mopti - Ségou - Tombouctou.

Targets:

• grassroots socioprofessional actors,
• children,
• women,
• craftsmen,
• vulnerable social classes which rights are in jeopardy

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PRACTICAL ACTIONS CARRIED OUT BY THE UNIT IN THE ESC RIGHTS FIELD

The set-up of the ESC rights Platform

Objectives:

• promote and protect economic, social and cultural rights all over Mali in a perspective of equitable and efficient economic, social and cultural development to fight poverty;
• promote civil society’s participation in implementing the ICESCR and public policies in Mali, drafting the pertaining reports and monitoring the United Nations Committee on economic, social and cultural rights’ recommendations on the report presented by the Malian government;
• develop activities and tools to build members and socioprofessional actors’ capacities so that they participate in full knowledge of the causes and effects in the conception, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Malian economic, social and cultural development policies, strategies, plans and programs;
• create a national space of information, partnership, reflection and cooperation that would allow capitalizing and circulating the members’ best experiences in terms of economic, social and cultural rights’ promotion and protection and the local communities’ knowledge and experience regarding rights enforcement and advocacy towards a collective better-being; carry out advocacy and lobbying campaigns for a universal realization of economic, social and cultural rights in Mali;
• create training dynamics through exchange at national, continental and international levels in order to better define economic, social and cultural problems and initiate common and collective actions to solve them.

Targets:

• the people;
• the government;
• civil society organizations;
• international and sub-regional organisms.

Areas of action
Bamako and all the Malian regions

Results obtained:

• the platform functions and is coordinated by the unit through Guamina;
• the platform has a status and internal regulations;
• it is legally recognized;
• it drafted and published its first alternative report on ESC rights in 2007;
• it took part twice in the Global Forum on Human Rights;
• it organizes thematic conferences on ESC rights on a regular basis.

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Support in drafting the shadow report

Objective
Work towards ESC rights effective enjoyment, to ensure the respect of our populations’ humanity.

Targets:

• civil society organizations,
• financial partners,
• international organizations,
• the government,
• the Committee on ESC rights in Geneva.

Areas of action
The whole national territory.

Results obtained
The report has been drafted and is available in Geneva.

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Units’and Platform’s capacity building: Training of the Unit and Platform members in the tools and operative approaches of rights promotion and enforceability

Objective
Inform all the participants about the state of implementation of the ICESCR and the importance of alternative reports.

Targets:

• political parties,
• legislative representatives,
• associations,
• NGOs.

Areas of action
Bamako and Koulikoro.

Results obtained
Thematic conferences took place on April 12, 14, and 19, 2007, at the Djoliba Center on the following issues: right to food, education, health, housing, land and social protection. One should note that:

• all the participants had been informed about the state of implementation of the ICESCR,
• they were also explained the use and importance of drafting alternative reports.

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Socioprofessional actors’ capacity building: providing - and initiating to – the techniques of citizen protest in phase with the evolution of the sectors concerned

Objectives:

• define the concept and tools of human rights in general and ESC rights in particular;
• formulate human rights fundamental principles;
• teach techniques of ESC rights claiming to the committees on ESC rights;
• determine which are the international instruments and analyse the possible ways for craftsmen to enforce their ESC rights;
• determine States’ and non-govermental stakeholders’ obligations in terms of respect, protection and enjoyment of human rights;
• circulate clear ESC rights enforceability approaches;
• give an overview of the economic, social and cultural rights’ situation in Mali;

Targets:

• socioprofessionnal actors,
• local elected representatives,
• staff of member NGOs,
• associations.

Areas of action
BAMAKO district - Bougouni - Bankass - Ségou - Kayes - Koulikoro.

Results obtained
The committees on ESC rights were consolidated by a training organized by the PAPDESC in partnership with the AOUDAGHOST Network at the Permanent Assembly of the Chambers of trade.

The committees on ESC rights were trained in:

• rights concepts,
• the ways people perceive rights,
• the various texts and other conventions,
• the information on those texts and conventions,
• implementation strategies for the State to respect the above-said rights,
• implementation strategies in case the State does not comply with the ICESCR.

But the acquired knowledge and skills derived from the drafting of the alternative report by the Malian ESC rights Platform had been shared with the participants beforehand.

The awareness raising and information campaigns were directed at around 360 craftsmen in the six towns of the Bamako district, 600 young people, and more than 80 people working within the the national unit’s member-structures. Those stakeholders were trained in the above-mentioned modules.

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