AFRICAN UNION UNION AFRICAINE UNIÃO AFRICANA Addis Ababa, ETHIOPIA P. O. Box 3243 Telephone 517 700 Fax 517844 website: www.africa-union.org THIRD ORDINARY SESSION OF THE LABOUR AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS COMMISSION OF THE AFRICAN UNION 18-23 APRIL 2005 JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA LSC/EXP/5 (III) DRAFT SOCIAL POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR AFRICA

GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1. The question of human and social development in Africa featured among the concerns of the defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU) as set out in 1994. As a matter of fact, to ensure Africa's coordinated participation in the World Summit on Social Development which took place in Copenhagen in 1995, an African Common Position was developed to combat the various scourges hampering social development in the Continent. The World Summit on Sustainable Development organized in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2000 provided a useful forum for exchange of views on the results obtained since Copenhagen 1995. It was observed on that occasion, as in the past, that Africa remains the only region of the world where the lack of social development raises the most concern (ignorance, poverty and disease). The Continent is home to the greatest number of poor people in relative terms, and this number has been on the increase since 1990; whereas in other parts of the world, a lot of progress was recorded in terms of attaining the 2015 Millennium Development Goals sometimes at quite impressive rate1. The major causes of this problem is social exclusion, while the secondary causes include: inadequate human resource development, inadequate and unstable economic growth, exclusion from the labour market, lack of access to the basic social services, lack of satisfaction of basic human needs, exclusion from human rights, precarious welfare infrastructure, high fertility, morbidity and mortality rates, etc.2. 2. As a reflection of its Vision on this issue, the African Union devoted fourteen (14) of the objectives as contained in Article 3 of its Constitutive Act (2000) to the question of human and social development. Additionally, the Vision of the African Union (2004) as a lead agent of change, places at the core of its 2004 - 2007 Strategic Framework, advocacy for and harmonization of social policies. This Vision is anchored on a plan based on close cooperation with the Regional Economic Communities, networking, feasibility, value added/impact, among other things.download