Last months, AEFJN co-organised two webinars bringing together key actors in advocacy work in Africa. The “Our Land is Our Life” platform met on 2 February to reflect on our experiences as church and non-church actors working together, to share our advocacy experience in Africa and to develop strategies for our future efforts.
In the first session of our discussion, we listened to experiences from different regions highlighting what has worked well in our networking and coalition building efforts.
In the second session, the discussion focused on priorities for 2021: information gathering to develop evidence for advocacy, good governance (UN binding treaty), environmental issues, land and extractive industries, land and agro-ecology and Laudato Si.
A breakout session was organised in four thematic areas: AU-EU partnership, UN binding treaty, UN Food Systems Summit and Cop 26. The webinar concluded with remarks from Fr Chika who stressed that it is valuable for church actors to continue working with the Civil Society. We should also carry out more organised actions among Church actors.
The second webinar was organised by AEFJN and CIDSE on the UN binding treaty on business and human rights. The objective of this workshop was to help church actors in Africa to understand the Treaty, the process and the relevance of their engagement as actors in their countries. The webinar reflected on how to take joint advocacy initiatives that can contribute to the success of the Treaty as well as promote actions to engage African national governments to support the Treaty.
The meeting was divided into four working sessions: Introduction to the Treaty process, scope of the Treaty, access to justice for victims and ended with a breakout session on how to strengthen the Church’s efforts to move the Treaty process forward.
