Dakar, Dec. 11 (APS) – The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) has granted observer status to the Pan-African Institute for Citizenship, Consumers and Development (CICODEV), APS learned on Saturday from this consumer organization.
The decision of the ACHPR was notified to the President of CICODEV, Amadou Kanouté, by a letter from Lindiwe Khumalo, the Executive Secretary of this institution in charge of human rights.
The observer status was granted to the consumer organization at its request, according to the correspondence of which APS obtained a copy.
Ms. Khumalo reminds us that all organizations that have observer status with the ACHPR must submit a report on their activities to the ACHPR once every two years.
It is an opening that will allow us to strengthen our advocacy on socio-economic rights: health, food, energy, sanitation, hygiene, telecommunications, etc. These are fundamental rights for every human being,” said Amadou Kanouté, CICODEV’s Executive Director. These are fundamental rights for every human being,” said Amadou Kanouté, Executive Director of CICODEV.
With this status, we will be able to hold our states accountable to citizens at the national and international levels, because we will present alternative reports to the ACHPR on citizens’ access to energy, to healthy and nutritious food,” he added in an interview with APS.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights being an organ of the African Union, Amadou Kanouté stressed, “we are very happy with this status because it will extend our advocacy at the national level to a continental scale.
The mission of CICODEV is, according to a press release, to “inform, defend, protect, educate and represent citizen-consumers with particular emphasis on the most disadvantaged among them”.
The consumer organization intervenes in health, social welfare and energy policies.
Its areas of intervention include water, sanitation, information, budget transparency, gender, nutrition, land management and telecommunications.
CICODEV, a partner of the National Agency for Universal Health Coverage in Senegal, says it is working to achieve “massive adherence” of the population to mutual health insurance in order to ensure proper health and medical care.