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African Union

Declarations & Resolutions from the 5th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union

African Union

4 - 5 July 2005

Sirte, Libya

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We, the Heads of State and Government of the Member States of the African Union, meeting at the Fifth Ordinary Session of our Assembly, in Sirte, Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, on 4 and 5 July 2005;

Recalling that the Millennium Declaration and the MDGs adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in September 2000 was a laudable initiative by the international community in eradicating poverty, accelerating human development, integrating the African continent into the 21st century global economy and making globalization more beneficial to the people of Africa;

Considering that we have devoted our resources and taken far-reaching decisions and policy reforms in the political, social, economic, environmental and cultural domains in favor of eradicating poverty, achieving rapid sustainable and socio-economic development, as well as accelerating the integration of our peoples;

Aware that although some progress has been made in several countries, more needs to be done in order to attain the MDGs within the deadline;

Convinced that the achievement of these goals requires the cooperation of the private sector, civil society, the international community and other stakeholders and solidarity with Africa in various fields;

Conscious of the fact that gender equality and women's empowerment are essential for poverty eradication and for the achievement of all other MDGs;

Determined to eradicate poverty and to improve the socio-economic conditions of the peoples of our continent, and having undertaken a review of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), in order to assess the progress made thus far and the challenges confronting our individual and collective efforts;

Determined further to fulfill our commitments to the Millennium Declaration and the achievement of the MDGs within the deadline;

Reaffirming our strong commitment to the implementation of the Decisions and the Declaration of the 2004 Ouagadougou Summit on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa, particularly, youth employment;

Decides to adopt the Common African Position on the Review of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals to constitute Africa's input into the Review of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals, to be submitted to the UN General Assembly in September 2005.

We therefore resolve to:

  1. Redouble our efforts at the national, regional, continental and international levels and to strengthen interstate cooperation and joint activities toward meeting the MDGs by the target deadline;


  2. Enhance investment and development in Africa by promoting peace and security and create a conducive environment by ensuring good governance in our countries through:

    1. strengthening and ensuring that regional and continental mechanisms, in particular, the Peace and Security Council (PSC) of the African Union play a central role in bringing about peace, security and stability on the continent;


    2. addressing conflict and political instability on the continent, with the aim of achieving a conflict-free Africa by 2010 by prioritizing and allocating more resources to conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction and peace-building and to fully collaborate with regional and continental mechanisms, to ensure the speedy operationalization of the Continental Early Warning System (CEWS) and the African Stand-by Force (ASF);


    3. becoming parties to regional, continental and international instruments relating to the prevention and combating of terrorism, transnational organized crimes, drug trafficking, the illicit trade in and proliferation of small arms and light weapons and landmines, corruption and money laundering and ensuring the effective implementation of such instruments; and


    4. deepening transparency and effective participatory forms of governance and strengthening democratic institutions and processes in our countries. We URGE all Member States of the Union to join, as a matter of priority, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as soon as possible and to strengthen the APRM process for its efficient performance.

  3. Continue to develop and effectively implement economic and social policies which are of benefit to the poor segment of the population through:

    1. adopting employment-oriented and poverty reduction strategies, in particular the creation of decent work for the youth;


    2. promoting rural economy and agriculture to raise the level of productivity, improve food security and enhance living conditions in rural Africa;


    3. promoting the private sector, with particular emphasis on small and medium-scale enterprises;


    4. Pursuit of industrial development strategy;


    5. Enhancement of the competitiveness of African economies;


    6. Increased investment required for the development of infrastructure and services of transport, telecommunications and energy;


    7. Prudent management of natural resources and the environment;


    8. Mainstreaming of gender into national development strategies and in particular, addressing the persistent and high levels of poverty among women through the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action;


    9. Mainstreaming trade policy into national development strategies;


    10. Promoting ICT and enhancing investment in the development of physical and human capital, particularly in science and technology;


    11. Investment in strengthening health systems including access to reproductive and sexual health services to ensure sustained and long-term improvement in maternal, new born and child health;


    12. Enhancing social development including by giving priority to improved access and quality education, health and sanitation;


    13. Combating the HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria and other diseases;


    14. Designing and integrating social protection and social safety net programmes within broader national social policy frameworks and national development strategies; and


    15. building of statistical capacity for policy and programme design, implementation and monitoring.

  4. Mobilize additional domestic resources for financing of MDGs, thus CALL on the private sector in Africa to contribute more substantially to development on the continent and to efforts of meeting the MDGs in Africa;


  5. Include in the MDGs framework, transport targets and indicators adopted by the African Ministers in charge of transport and infrastructure in April 2005 with a view to accelerating the achievement of the MDGs;


  6. Mobilize international support and strengthening partnership with the international community. In this regard, we:

    1. CALL ON the international community, particularly the United Nations and our development partners to complement our efforts, in particular, to fulfill the commitments that they have made in support for development in Africa,


    2. URGE the international community especially the G8 to fully embrace the comprehensive recommendations of the Commission for Africa and act expeditiously on them;


    3. REQUEST the developed countries and development partners to expedite the process of total debt cancellation for Africa by the year 2007. In this regard we acknowledge the recent proposal from G8 Ministers of Finance with respect to the cancellation of the debt for 14 African countries and encourage them to extend those proposals to all African countries with regard to all components of the external debt;

  7. FURTHER URGE the developed countries to improve aid quality through, among others:

    1. delinking aid from the trade and geopolitical interests of donors;


    2. better coordination, harmonization and simplification of aid operational procedures;


    3. making aid pro-poor;


    4. stronger linkage of aid to the MDGs, the NEPAD programme and the PRSP process;


    5. strengthened ownership of aid by African beneficiaries and greater policy space in the utilization of aid;


    6. meeting of the commitment to increase ODA flows to internationally agreed 0.7 percent of GNP with greater predictability; and


    7. reducing the delay between the financial commitment and the effective disbursement.

  8. CALL ON the international community to establish a fair and equitable trading system and to facilitate Africa's access to their markets, through:

    1. ensuring that multilateral trade rules provide adequate policy space for achieving MDGs;


    2. the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers;


    3. requesting the Bretton Woods Institutions to streamline their policies and programmes in Africa to be more MDGs-friendly;


    4. the elimination of trade distorting subsidies and domestic support especially in agricultural sector;


    5. assistance to African countries to integrate more effectively with the global trading system through increased support for capacity building, environmental conservation, regional integration, cross-border infrastructure, and development of pro-poor growth policies and institutions;


    6. provision of assistance and adjustment support to mitigate the adjustment costs of trade liberalization in Africa;


    7. dealing with commodity crises arising from fluctuations and collapse of prices through manufacturing, improving value addition and diversification of production and trade.
WE REITERATE our conviction that the implementation of these strategies will result in Africa achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.


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