By: Gloria Angmorkie Anderson
Mercy Obonyo, the Programme Officer, Business and Human Rights, Network of African, National Human Rights Institutions says there is a need for countries to develop a National Action Plan (NAP) that seeks to surmount structural and procedural barriers to accessing remedies for corporate abuses.
This calls for policy actions focused on strengthening capacity, awareness and understanding of citizens on how they can engage the state-based judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, with additional access for victims to operational-level grievance mechanisms established by businesses to provide redress avenues for human rights abuses.
MS. Obonyo, who spoke at the AU forum on Business and Human Rights in Accra on Thursday said that clear actions on what a state commits to do to strengthen the state-based judicial and non-judicial mechanisms while ensuring effective access to these mechanisms by victims, should come out strongly in the policy document.
According to her, this can only be done when there is coherence in the legal and policy framework from the national, and regional to a global level.
She said that everyone should amplify our common goal and speak one language underpinned by the respect and protection of human rights.
“AFCFTA has come as a benefit to Africa but we need to be alive to the human rights gaps that need to be addressed, to ensure that this development advancement in the right direction is transparent, inclusive and is cognisant of human rights for all”, she said.
The programme officer, however, said the AFCFTA presents numerous opportunities for the African people, and that if implemented in alignment with the existing national, regional and international policy and law, then significant gains will be made.
She added that the duty of the states was to protect human rights and ensure they put in place specific policy actions, measures, and strategies that would address the effective access to remedy when it comes to state-based judicial and non-judicial systems that existed at the state or national level.
