Addis Ababa, November 7 (WIC) - The third conference of African National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) will be held in Banjul, Gambia, from 8-10 November 2009.

The conference is looked forward to coming up with a road-map for facilitating and reinforcing collaboration between the African Union Commission (AUC), African Union (AU) Organs with human rights mandate and the NHRIs.   

According to a press release the African Union Commission (AUC) sent to WIC, the conference is expected to review, among others, activities of the African NHRIs to facilitate experience sharing on the protection of human rights while examining the study on relations between the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and African NHRIs.   

The conference is also anticipated to be a forum to share best practices.   

Third conference of African National Human Rights Institution is a follow up to the first and the second AU conferences held in Addis Ababa and Banjul in 2004 and 2006 respectively.   

In a related development, the extraordinary conference of African Union Ministers in charge of communication and Information technologies (CITMC) concluded in Johannesburg.  The one day conference of Ministers was preceded by a meeting of experts in ICT which was held from 2-4 November.   

The Ministerial conference ended with the adoption of the Oliver Tambo Declaration, Johannesburg 2009 which lays out commitments by Member States of the African Union in the development of ICT, recommendations for the way forward and directives for the AU to follow up.