According to Panapress, he United Nations will soon launch its 10-year action plan aimed at strengthening the work of the African Union (AU) on peacekeeping, human rights, poverty, climate change and industrialization issues, a senior UN official said on Sunday. The Executive-Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa Abdoulie Janneh said in Addis Ababa that the world body was ready to roll out its 10-year plan to increase the AU’s human rights institutions in line with the requirements of the NEPAD vision. Janneh said efforts to implement the UN-AU cooperation strategy started last year with a high-level meeting of both bodies at the AU’s seat of power to discuss the finer details of the action plan, including supporting framework accords on various issues of interest. The UN is implementing its joint action plan with the AU through what Janneh called an “inter-agency collaboration mechanism” steered by UN’s top diplomat, Asha-Rose Migiro, the former Tanzanian Foreign minister who was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the UN when Ban-Ki Moon took over last year. “We hope to support the efforts of the AU Commission and regional economic communities in tackling challenges relating to poverty, climate change, AIDS, industrialization, trade, peace and security and human rights,” Janneh said. The UN official, who spoke during the opening of the 12th session of AU’s Executive Council, bringing together foreign ministers from 53 states, said the first ever joint session of the ECA-AU finance ministers would be held in March this year. He decried the growing global food prices and the high cost of oil internationally, saying these developments were likely to hurt African states in the long-run, including the cost of imports while climate change risks also threatened the continent’s environment. “The quality of support to Africa is still very weak. African countries are still weighed down by the debts. That is why we are calling for quality support for Africa,” he said.
