AU WATCH

Civil Society Organisations & NHRI’s

For the African human rights system, civil society(individual petitioners and NGOs) is the primary catalyst. By bringing cases, providinginformation on general situations of mass violations in a country or region, and pressing forfull implementation, civil society provide the African human rights system with the inputs itneeds to generate decisions, resolutions, and reports. Civil society also plays the indispensablerole of increasing access to justice to the African human rights system. As a human rightswatchdog, civil society can provide early warning signs and serve as a human rightmonitoring in emergencies where the State may not otherwise have the access and resourcesto investigate. And as civil society members often develop expertise on a particular issues or countries, civil society can play an advisory role and offer technical and legal expertise to theAU organs and institutions. Civil society is also in the best position to increase interactionbetween States and the supervisory bodies.