African civil society organizations met in Accra to discuss key development objectives on the road to UNCTAD 14 and Africa's trade and development policy priorities.
The event, held in Accra from 29 February to 3 March, was hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Third World Network-Africa and brought together civil society organizations from across the continent to discuss initiatives that aim to boost African trade-the Continental Free Trade Area in particular-and to assess them against the outcomes of multilateral trade negotiations, in particular the World Trade Organization's most recent ministerial conference and the interim Economic Partnership Agreements with the European Union.
It provided a timely platform to begin preparing civil society's participation at the 14th session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 14), seen by many participants as the opportunity to revive key issues of the Doha Development Agenda and to return to centre stage developing countries' concerns within the global economy.
UNCTAD was invited to present the road map for UNCTAD 14 and to discuss how civil society could participate in and contribute to the conference. Special attention was given to the process of negotiating the UNCTAD 14 outcome document and the opportunities for civil society organizations to provide input. The participants emphasized the need for full transparency of the outcome document negotiations.
The event also marked the occasion for civil society organizations to publicly endorse the nomination of Tax Justice Network Africa by the Kenyan government as the host organization that will coordinate with UNCTAD and lead civil society's activities at UNCTAD 14.
The last two days of the meeting were used as a strategy session to determine how civil society organizations could effectively influence Continental Free Trade Area negotiations, and to develop a strong African civil society position on the UNCTAD 14 sub-themes.
One outcome from the meeting will be a position paper that will be submitted as input for the UNCTAD 14 negotiations, ahead of the first preparatory hearing that the Intergovernmental Preparatory Committee for UNCTAD 14 will hold with civil society on 6 April 2016.
Some 40 participants from African civil society organizations, international civil society networks such as Our World Is Not For Sale, the South Centre, the African Union, the Africa Trade Policy Centre of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service took part in the meeting.
