Assembly/AU/Decl.1(XXVII)Rev.1 Page 2 Convinced that the AU Organs with a human rights mandate are well positioned to fulfil their mandate to promote and protect human and peoples’ rights in Africa as stipulated in the Human Rights Strategy for Africa of 2011; Further convinced that the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and their regional institutions constitute the building blocks in the promotion and protection of human and peoples’ rights in Africa based on the African Shared Values; Mindful that the Continent still faces many challenges in promoting and protecting human and peoples’ rights as well as ratifying, domesticating and implementing human rights instruments and recognizing that there are a number of obstacles that need to be overcome in furtherance of the Africa Shared Values; Now, hereby: 1. AFFIRM that Human Rights and the rights of women in particular are a Collective Responsibility of all in Africa; 2. COMMIT ourselves to enhancing efforts aimed at entrenching and reinforcing deeper understanding of the culture of human and peoples’ rights, in particular the rights of women, and their promotion and popularization amongst the African peoples by declaring the next ten years as “the Human and Peoples’ Rights Decade in Africa” and it’s Action Plan; 3. RE-COMMIT ourselves to expedite the ratification, domestication and implementation of all human and peoples’ rights instruments, in particular the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in African (Maputo Protocol), and call upon the African Union Commission (AUC) to put in place measures and modalities to support Member States to establish the required capacities and processes for monitoring and review of the domestication efforts; 4. REITERATE our unflinching determination to promote and protect human and people’s rights and all basic freedoms in Africa and the need for the consolidation and the full implementation of human and peoples’ rights instruments and relevant national laws and policies as well as decisions and recommendations made by the AU Organs with a human rights mandate; 5. UPHOLD firmly the principles of universality, objectivity and non-selectivity in the consideration of human rights and elimination of double standards and politicisation; 6. ALSO UPHOLD our common position that the promotion and protection of human rights should be based on the principle of cooperation and genuine dialogue aimed at strengthening the capacity of Member States to comply with their human rights obligations;