BACKGROUND

Globally, in 2015, UN adopted the sustainable development agenda 2030.  The SDGs provide an important reference point for many development actors, including NGOs, governments and donors. However, they are still set within a neo-liberal economic framework, itself largely responsible for the multiple crises the world faces, including climate change, which by UN estimates is expected to push over 120 million people back into poverty by 2030 significantly affecting their human rights. Generally, multinational corporations have been cited in gross human rights violations in Africa, and respective governments have been cited as immediate beneficiaries of these violations manifested as unlawful and forceful land evictions in the name of investments and creating jobs that hardly comply with the internationally recognized labour standards.  The doubts recently expressed by some influential world leaders about the science and reality of climate change present a major concern in this respect.

Despite its limitations, the SDGs will for the next 10 years remain a guiding framework for global development planning. 

Climate change is creating forceful and unwanted migration within and out of Africa yet migration, citizenship, visa and residency policies in Africa and across the globe remain mixed and costly. In 2018, UN member countries adopted the Global Compact for Migration anchored on several instruments and conventions that seek to address issues of human rights, migration, refugees as well as labour. These include among others; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and... Read More!