On the occasion of the 10th African Union summit, the Executive Council will analyze the status of current negotiations of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) would like to seize this opportunity to draw the attention of African heads of state and government to the potential adverse effects of these agreements on social and economic rights in African countries, in particular on the human right to food, the right to health, the right to work and the right to development.
Over the past weeks, a number of so-called Interim Economic Partnership Agreements have been initialled between the European Commission and a number of African countries. These agreements were initiated by the European Commission to replace the existing trade preferences for African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries’ exports under the Cotonou Agreement, which are deemed to be phased out under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements, since the waiver authorizing them has expired at the end of 2007. The interim agreements are meant to be followed in 2008 by comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreements.
FIDH is particularly concerned about:
– The scope and pace of African countries market opening requirements: the interim agreements commit ACP countries to liberalizing up to 97% of their trade with the EU over 10 to 15 years; with, for some countries, tariff liberalization deadlines as short as two years;
– The insistence by the European Commission on the removal of export taxes, used by several African countries to raise revenue. This is likely to affect their public spending including in vital areas such as health and education;
– Regional ‘disintegration’: many countries have signed Interim Agreements as individual countries which is likely to affect trade relations with other countries of their region; the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and Southern African Customs Union (SACU) are already severely divided as the result of the negotiations. This is in contradiction with one of the proclaimed aims of the EPAs: building upon and reinforcing regional integration;
– Inadequate safeguard clauses (lack of flexibility, heavy procedures, limited duration) which fail to provide adequate protection for agriculture and fragile industries;
– Insistence by the European Commission to include commitments on services and investment, making the texts more stringent than required under WTO rules.
FIDH would also like to emphasize that there are particular dangers associated with the negotiation of trade and investment agreements in a regional or bilateral context, which may not exist, or may not exist to the same extent, in the multilateral framework of the WTO. Therefore ACP States, in particular African States, should not be forced to agree to provisions in regional or bilateral agreements which impose ‘WTO-Plus’ commitments, in areas such as services liberalization, the lowering of tariffs on agricultural products, or a strengthened protection of intellectual property rights, especially as regards patents on plants.
Therefore, and considering the haste with which these agreements have been concluded and the failure to duly analyze their potential negative impacts on economic and social rights and on economic development in Africa as a whole, FIDH calls on African heads of state and government, on the occasion of 10th African Union summit, not to sign these agreements until :
– They have had the assurance that the provisions thereof do not violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights;
– Comprehensive human rights impact assessments of the agreements proposed are prepared, by independent experts on human rights and development issues, and through methodologies including the participation of stakeholders, and in particular representatives of small-scale farmers and other civil society organizations and unions;
– A mechanism is in place to monitor these impacts after these agreement have come into effect.