Finally, in response to a challenge from the ECOSOC Secretariat, - and committed to the implementation of the Millennium Forum and Summit Declaration, in which Africa is a central focus - CONGO organized last Friday (13 July) an NGO Forum to contribute to this High-Level Segment.

You, Mr. President, and some of your distinguished colleagues from the Secretariat, underlined the crucial importance of cooperation with us, with civil society in helping to promote, implement and monitor not just another initiative but the New African Initiative to which African leaders have committed themselves. You all spoke of the needed partnership with civil society to ensure that globalization will benefit the maximum number of people and not only the private sector.

Our Forum addressed in panel discussions the following themes:

• Impact of HIV/AIDS on Sustainable Development
• Armed Conflict and Women as Peace Brokers
• Financing for Development, Poverty Eradication and African Debt Relief
• Food Security and Environment Protection and Conservation

1. HIV/AIDS:

African NGOs urge support for the Declaration of the recent Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on HIV/AIDS. They call to mind: 1) that poverty affects health, family, economy and is a continuum on which HIV/AIDS has appeared not as an accident but as a consequence, and now a cause; 2) that African women still have limited access to the power to control their lives, to achieve dignity and escape from poverty.

They call for new funding, not loans, to help confront the pandemic, which is now Africa's greatest development crisis.

They urge

• that funding and other assistance exploit creative forms of cooperation involving regional entities, governments and civil society and particularly help support the abundant resources that exist in Africa's local communities.
• that there be no distinction between prevention and care,
• that there will be higher quality of care, whether the problems they confront come from war situations, HIV/AIDS, poverty or other causes of vulnerability,
• that there be a strong gender perspective and
• that people who have HIV/AIDS become respected and valued parts of the fight, remembering that "If I feel marginalized, I can't take responsibility to prevent the spread."

2. Women in Peacemaking and Conflict resolution:

Most peace-making -brokering mechanisms established in Africa have been entirely composed of and run by men. Half of the population affected by the conflicts have been excluded from their solution, as have aged persons who could bring wisdom to the process since they constitute the moral guarantors of African societies. NGOs recommend that:

• Women should be given every opportunity to use their participatory mechanisms, their nurturing skills and natural desire for peace to speak to governments and engage in peace processes. Such efforts should be given visibility so that they might be replicated.
• African states should be encouraged to expedite approval of the Draft Optional Protocol on Women's Rights to the African Charter on Human and People's Rights and mainstream gender in program and policy making at all levels. Whether it is avoiding being beaten at home, having full access to health and education or being able to help set policy priorities, women's rights are human rights that bring necessary perspectives to the development of human beings, communities and societies, not only in Africa, but everywhere.

3. Poverty Eradication and Debt Cancellation:

20% of the world's population consume 83% of the world's resources.

• Debt should be cancelled as laid down in the Jubilee Campaign (unconditionally) for African countries. As all alternatives proposed and tried in the past have been abject failures, cancellation is the only way to renew economic viability and bring closure for creditors, most of whom are now prepared to absorb their losses. From the standpoint of global justice, cancellation is necessary to help reverse the continued outflow of wealth from African nations to the richest ones via debt service. Only through cancellation can African countries devote significant resources to the basic human needs of their peoples, instead of servicing loans promoted by international lenders to misguided and often corrupt regimes of the past.
• Future loans should be approved by national bodies where all stakeholders including civil society are present.

4. Food Security and environment protection:

The opening of markets poses questions for the survival of small agricultural producers, and African countries may need to choose between WTO rules and World Bank requirements.

• Agricultural practices and energy consumption must be reoriented to sustainability, otherwise the environment will not be able to withstand the pressure of population growth, desertification, pollution and /or reduction of water sources and climate change.
• Food safety, preservation, transport and storage must be safeguarded to ensure food security for every age.

Mr. President

There was consensus that the role of ECOSOC as a forum for discussion of all major economic and social issues should be further enhanced and strengthened. As a more democratic and transparent body than any of the Bretton Woods institutions or the World Trade Organization it has the broadest participation of world civil society and NGOs feel that it is their home. Furthermore, it is the only worldwide, representative body with a mandate over the entire range of economic and social concerns. This character gives it a unique basis for legitimacy at a time of globalization, when economic and social concerns are recognized as being interdependent.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Mr. President, we have been encouraged by this High-Level-Segment, by the sheer wealth of commitments and support for African-owned recovery, as well as by the frank and open discussions at all levels. But we have also been challenged, not least during the Breakfast Round Tables, by donor countries and UN agencies alike on coordination of issues and sustained follow up.

We as CONGO are committed through our outreach program to give visibility to and form strategic alliances with independent African regional, national and local NGOs to strengthen their voices, foster and facilitate their work regionally and sub-regionally. We leave today, Mr. President, energized by hearing a new African vision for the future, and we look forward to partnerships with African NGO leaders in helping to contribute to that future, as they in turn enrich us with their own perspectives and understanding.

I thank you for your kind attention.