| 2023 | ||
| Friday, November 3rd | ||
|---|---|---|
| 8:30 AM |
Philip A. Olayoku, University of Ibadan Virtual 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM At its 18th Ordinary Session in 2012, the African Union adopted the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) among 54 Member States (approximately 1.3bn people), allowing free movement of people, goods and services and removing tariffs by up to 90% on goods over a 10 year period for the least developed countries. Designed to leverage collaborative policies, economize production, infrastructure development, information sharing and financial and market integration, if successful, AfCFTA will achieve a GDP of ca. US$3.4bn. In June 2022, the World Bank projected that women’s wages would rise by 11.2% due to industrial expansion. 53% of Africa’s population are women, necessitating prioritization of egalitarian political, institutional, social and financial inclusion when applying the AfCFTA. Equal stakeholding and accountability for policy implementation can only be achieved if development finance instruments and policies mainstream inclusion of vulnerable and marginalized populations, particularly women. This panel will engage the stakes of policy makers, academics, financial experts and development practitioners to explore the potential of enshrining a justiciable Pan-African framework for inclusive policy implementation amongst AfCFTA signatories. The protocol for free labor migration and moving the continent towards more valuable production through the creation of visa-free zones will be examined focusing on gender responsiveness. In particular, the context of women’s vulnerability in conflict and/or post-conflict circumstances would necessitate specialized legal provisions in order for the AfCFTA to create sustainable trade corridors. We will assess how intra-continental bilateral trade relations can be brokered to boost income to US$450bn in the next decade - void of neocolonial interference – and realize the goal of lifting 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty, prioritizing women’s access to local, regional and bilateral development finance; as well as what measures could be taken to manage the cultural and language barriers to trade across Lusophone, Francophone and Anglophone Africa. |
|
| 8:30 AM |
Challenges of Using Human Rights to Foster a More Just African Continental Free Trade Area Brenda Kombo Virtual 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM Skepticism towards free trade is often rooted in the perception that its proponents tend to pursue it at the expense of many of the very people whose lives it is meant to improve. Critiques often leveraged against free trade include its uneven distribution of gains among winners and losers, its undemocratic nature, and its prioritization of trade liberalization over other social values such as human rights. However, Article 3(e) of the Agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) provides that it seeks “promote and attain sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development, gender equality and structural transformation”. Seemingly portending a different approach to free trade, the Preamble to the AfCFTA Agreement alludes to the “importance” of human rights in this endeavor. Nevertheless, the relationship between human rights and the AfCFTA is unclear, and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights recently called for a “human rights-based approach” to the AfCFTA in Resolution 551 (LXXIV). After considering the trade-human rights relationship within the AfCFTA, this paper draws on critical legal scholarship and legal anthropology to reflect on three related challenges of using human rights discourse and practice in an effort to promote a more just AfCFTA. The first challenge is the ideological challenge reflected in debates about the trade-human rights nexus which significantly predate but are nonetheless relevant to the AfCFTA. The second stems from the existing AfCFTA legal architecture which is largely modeled after that of the World Trade Organization. The third challenge has to do with human rights itself, and addressing it requires taking seriously some of the critiques of human rights discourse. Although human rights might be an important tool in efforts to foster a more just AfCFTA, I contend that human rights actors should also leave space for other vocabularies and practices of social justice. |
|
Discussant: Serges Alain Djoyou, University of Free State Law, South Africa
