Bending to the will of the Executive Council of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, whose mandate it is to safeguard human rights, has revoked the observer status of the Coalition of African Lesbians. The coalition is the only regional, membership-based organisation that works for the advancement of all women's broader rights in Africa.
In a communication by the Secretariat of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) to the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL) on 8 August 2018, the organisation conveyed its decision to revoke CAL's observer status. They stated that the decision was based on compliance with the AU Executive Council's decisions of 2016 and 2018. This development puts CAL several steps back, after it was appropriately given a seat at the table in 2015, after decades of the coalition's activism at the ACHPR in defence of women's rights and sexual rights.
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