¹ The Agreement was signed on 23 June 2000 and came into force on 1 April 2003. It replaced the Lome Conventions which had regulated the ACP-EU relationship for over 25 years. The full text of the Cotonou Agreement is available in OJ L 317, 15 December 2000 [hereinafter the Cotonou Agreement]. For an overview of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement see The European Union and the Developing Countries: The Cotonou Agreement (O. Babarinde/G. Faber eds., 2005); S. D. Salama/C. M. Salama, The New EU ACP Partnership Agreement, 14 J. Int'l Dev. 899 (2002); Karin Arts, ACP-EU Relations in a New Era: The Cotonou Agreement, 40 Com. Mark. L. Rev. 95 (2003); Bernd Martenczuk, From Lome to Cotonou: The ACP-EC Partnership Agreement in a Legal Perspective, 5 Eur. For. Aff. Rev. 461 (2000).Google Scholar

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³ The ACP group was founded in 1975 with the signing of the Georgetown Agreement. The ACP group is composed of the following Countries: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Cook Islands, Cote d’ Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Equitorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Micronesia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Niger, Nigeria, Niue Palau, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, St Kitts and Namo, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands,Google Scholar

Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It is worthy of note that Cuba is a member of the ACP Group but is not a signatory to the Cotonou agreement.Google Scholar

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⁵ Cotonou Agreement (note 1), Article 9. Article 9(3) makes good governance a fundamental element of the Agreement and any breach will attract the measures stipulated in Article 97.Google Scholar

⁶ When negotiations are successfully concluded, it is expected that the EPA will regulate the trade relationship between the ACP countries and the EU, effective as of 2008.Google Scholar

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Cooperation shall be directed towards development centered on man, the main protagonist and beneficiary of development, which entails respect for and promotion of all human rights. Cooperative operations shall thus be conceived in accordance with the positive approach, where respect for human rights is recognised as a basic factor of real development and where cooperation is conceived as contributing to the promotion of these rights.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ The ACP Countries are Equitorial Guinea, The Gambia, Liberia, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, Togo, and Zaire.Google Scholar

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⁵⁰ Membership is based upon Cotonou Agreement (note 1), Article 94, which provides that membership will be considered for any “independent State whose structural characteristics and economic situation are comparable to those of the ACP States.”Google Scholar

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⁶⁰ Ambassador Mary Whelan of Ireland recently declared: “On behalf of the European Union, I wish to reiterate our commitment to the Right to Development, as set out in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. It is also a commitment that is manifested in the development cooperation partnerships and agreements that we have with countries throughout the world.” See address delivered by Ambassador Mary Whelan, Ambassador of Ireland to the United Nations, on the Right to Development at the 60^th Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights on 23 March 2004. See also Karin Arts, Implementing the Right to Development? An Analysis of European Community Development and Human Rights Policies, in Human Rights in Developing Countries Yearbook, 59 (P. Baehr ed., 1996).Google Scholar

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