Wednesday, June 20, 2012

The Africa Day

What:              Celebration of Africa Day

Theme:           Accelerating Progress towards Sustainable Development in Africa

When:             June 19, 2012

Where:            Rio-Centro

Who:               Organized by the Republic of Congo jointly with the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP). 

Objectives:    The Africa Day is to provide a high level plat form to deliberate on Africa’s progress towards sustainable development, and identify strategies and measures necessary to accelerate progress; and to mobilize strategic partnerships around Africa’s key priorities and concerns, with a view to facilitating Africa’s negotiations at the conference, and ensure that they are adequately reflected in the outcomes of Rio+20.

Background: The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution to organize the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development(UNCSD), otherwise referred to as Rio+20, at the highest possible level, including Heads of State and Government.

To ensure Africa’s effective participation at Rio+20, the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Union commission (AUC) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) in partnership with Regional Economic Communities (REC’s), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) have established a regional preparatory process.

The highlight of the Africa regional preparatory process was the convening of the Africa Preparatory Conference for RIO+20 in 2011.The conference adopted the African Consensus Statement to Rio+20 as Africa’s common position on the objectives and themes of Rio+20. The Statement constituted Africa’s collective input to the zero draft of the Rio+20 outcome document and was subsequently approved by the 18th Summit of the African Heads of State and Government held in January 2012 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 
The endorsement of the Africa Consensus Statement to Rio+20 by the AU Summit while significant, is only a first step towards ensuring that Africa’s priorities and interests feature prominently in the Rio+20 outcomes. The attainment of this objective calls for, among other things, an in-depth reflection on Africa’s sustainable development priorities, and strengthening strategic alliances and partnerships. Towards this end, an Africa Day will be held under the theme Accelerating Progress towards Sustainable Development in Africa.
Participants:  The Africa Day will be attended by Africa’s political leaderships and partners, including at the level of Heads of States and Government, Heads of Delegations from other regions of the world, Heads of UN Agencies, bilateral and multilateral development partners and major Groups.  

More information on:
http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/
 

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