Cameroon ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) as well as most international treaties and covenants dealing with human rights and human dignity, including the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Women’s Rights Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR).

This international programme of training on Economic, Social and Cultural (ESC) Rights enforceability approaches brings together Non-Governmental Organizations from Benin, Cameroon, France, India, Mali, Senegal, Togo and the Philippines. We decided to pool our experiences, notably via this website, in order to mutually build our capacities and share them with other stakeholders. Partners: Aoudaghost Network : Senegal Unit Benin Unit Togo Unit Malian Unit and the Malian ESC rights (...)

ASSOAL is a social, non-governmental, and non-profit support organization for stakeholders and local development processes. We work towards a bigger citizen participation in public affairs management, and for the improvement of the living conditions of underprivileged people, through an exchange of experiences, solidarity and an active citizenship.

Women-only non-governmental, non-partisan and non-profitmaking feminist Association. Mission: Eliminate all kinds of violence women and girls suffer from in all (private, public, political) spaces in Cameroon.

This document compiles exchanges of the first international training session which took place in Bamako, April 14th-17th, 2008. The themes addressed were: the various steps of mobilising civil society on ESC rights (Setting up ESC rights platforms, Indicator setting with participative enquiries and collection of data, Lobbying, advocacy), the participation in the elaboration and modification of laws integrating ESC rights and the drafting of shadow reports.

The second international seminar of this programme took place in Bangalore (India) in June 2009. We discussed the thematics : Organizing civil society into a broad social movement, Monitoring the UN Committee on ESC rights’ recommendations, Monitoring administrative and judicial practices and Mobilizing for the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Working both for promoting and standing up for ESC rights in Cameroon, these two organizations strengthened their cooperation on May 5th.

Last 18th and 19th February, the NGO ASSOAL’s premises provided the framework for this exercise.

More recently, the promotion and the protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC Rights) in Cameroon were still on the agenda. According to the main recommendation of the Constitutive General Assembly (CGA) of this network, a meeting said to be of planning brought together for two days the actors of the civil society on the human rights theme.

The African regional workshop on ESC Rights Enforceability Approaches was held in Yaounde (Cameroon) from January 18th to 22nd, 2010.
“The populations don’t often know their rights. The Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) have an obligation to inform them, to train them for actions of promotion and defence of these rights. Therefore, the issue is to make the CSOs accountable for promotion and protection of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC Rights).”

After the African regional workshop on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC Rights) enforceability approaches from January 18th to 22nd in Yaounde (Cameroon), Madani Koumaré, African coordinator of the ESC Rights international programme talks about the ESC Rights in Africa.

Civil society plays an important role not only in monitoring and orienting public policies and legislation but also in monitoring administrative and judicial practices so as to ensure their compliance with the legislation, identify problems and find solutions.

To monitor administrative and judicial practices on the field of housing, ASSOAL uses differents methods: Conduction of a study on the land status of spontaneous settlements, social capital and social and environmental risk factors; Setting up of legal clinics providing information and citizenship education (CIJEC)‏; Organization of associations, networks, community mutual insurance companies and social housing cooperatives; Implementation of a program of assistance and services and title deeds claim and a program of advocacy, monitoring and capitalization of skills.

On October 14th, at the monastery of Mount Febe in Yaounde, about 45 organizations from the Cameroonian civil society, representing associations, NGOs, trade unions, religious denominations and common initiative groups met in a constitutive General Assembly to debate on key statutory tools and regulations governing life within a platform and developed a draft policy (action plan). At the end of their work, a platform for organizations of Cameroonian civil society organizations on (...)

From October 13th to 16th , almost 40 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) came from the ten regions of the country and took part in start-up activities of a citizen rostrum on Economic, Social and Cultural rights (ESC rights). The Constitutive General Assembly amended and validated its key statutory tools and regulations, and was followed byrights to a training session on ESC rights enforceability approaches. At the end of the meeting, a petition for the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) by Cameroon was signed and an appeal all to the president of the Republic of Cameroon was sent.

On 20 May 2009 in New York, the Committee on NGOs in charge of considering applications for consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) or requests for reclassification, recommended ASSOAL for special consultative status.

With this new status, granted as well to eight other organizations from all over the world, the Cameroonian organization for development hopes to give more strength and visibility to its advocacy actions.

It has been the subject of the two day training session that followed the launching of the activities of Cameroon ESC rights platform. From 15 to 16 October 2009, about forty organizations, groups of associations and unions, involved in the promotion and defense of ESC rights, took part in the reflection on strategies to use in the context of Cameroon.