Resolution on NEPAD

Proposed by the Democratic Alliance, South Africa

The Executive of Liberal International meeting in Casablanca on 28 March 2003:

• Acknowledging NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) as the most positive and constructive plan for sustainable development yet to emerge from Africa,
• Recording its appreciation of the important role that President Wade has played in the formulation and promotion of NEPAD during its initial stages,
• Mindful that NEPAD is an Africa initiated and Africa owned programme and is a pledge by African leaders, “based on a common vision and a firm and shared conviction, that they have a pressing duty to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, both individually and collectively, on a path of sustainable growth and development, and at the same time to participate actively in the world economy and body politic,”
• Noting further that African leaders have pledged “to work both individually and collectively to promote peace, security, democracy, good governance, human rights and sound economic management are conditions for sustainable development.”
• Welcoming the strengthening of multi party democracy and sound economic governance in many African countries of which Senegal, Ghana and Kenya are examples,
• Contrasting this with
  1. The armed conflicts that ravage some regions of the continent and
  2. Systematic destruction of democracy and the rule of law that is taking place in Zimbabwe

Therefore resolves:

1. While realizing that there are practical problems that have to be overcome to wish Africa success both in overcoming the many practical problems that lie ahead and in implementing its ambitious NEPAD programme,
2. To urge countries of the North to respond in a positive way to Africa’s call for “a new relationship of partnership between Africa and the international community, especially the highly industrialised countries, based on shared responsibility and mutual interest and designed to overcome the development chasm that has widened over centuries of unequal relations.”