The African
Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) has canvassed for more openness and
inclusiveness in the activities of the Specialised Technical Committee on
Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment (STC-ARDWE), reports
NaijaAgroNet.
Arising from
the meeting of the African CSOs Working Group (AWG) at the on-going inaugural
conference of the STC on Rule of Procedure held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, NaijaAgroNet
gathered that the group called for a review of the Rule 14 on “Open and Closed
Sessions.”
According to
the chairman of the group, Mr. Martin Tsoukeu, in a working group report, said
that Rule 14 should better be put the other way round by stating that all
sessions are open but a decision could be made whether any of these shall be
closed.
They also
expected that STC-ARDWE recommends to the Ministerial Meeting to reconsider the
idea of alleged abolishing of existing Ministerial conferences, in addition to
the long-standing request submitted by the African Ministerial Conference on
the Environment (AMCEN), with regards to their relationship with the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The African
Working Group urged that the STC on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and
Environment should be designed in a spirit that could make it an effective
coordinating body, rather than a political representation organ.
In addition,
AWG, Tsoukeu said, should be made to compliment the functionalities of the
existing Ministerial conferences to be renamed or reconstituted, because
Ministerial conferences have shown obvious effectiveness.
These, AWG emphasized
should be maintained and fully capitalized on in the new STC operating format.
+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia +NEPAD CAADP CAADP
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