The Africa Advocacy Group

Launched in January 2004, the AAG is a joint initiative with the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, the Center for Environment and Development in Cameroon, the DR Congo-based Action contre l’impunite pour les droits humains, and US-based Environmental Defense. 

The AAG’s goal is to create a global governance system that recognises, adheres to and is ultimately accountable to international human rights norms. Our focus is on the resource-rich, Central African countries that are experiencing rapid natural resource-driven development or in the case of the DR Congo, is on the threshold of rapid development of its extractive industries sector.

The AAG is also tackling one of the major weaknesses in global civil society: the lack of a strong southern voice in global decision-making. The AAG is helping to build up expertise among NGOs to advise, assist and train other NGOs on issues to do with corporate accountability, such as how to use the OECD Guidelines and/or environmental sampling to hold companies to account for facilitating human rights abuses or causing environmental pollution.