Justice 2015: African Perspectives on a New Development Agenda

What kind of development does the world need? How should we set our priorities after 2015, the target date for the fulfillment of the UN Millennium Development Goals? In the videos above, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, President Macky Sall of Senegal, and other leading African policy experts discuss the importance of justice.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Elected president of Liberia in 2005, and joint coordinator of the High Level Panel on the post-205 development agenda established by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

“Human security at all levels should be one of the new goals. And certainly, that should include justice.”

Macky Sall

President of Senegal since 2012. A former prime minister and head of the national assembly, he defeated a bid by his predecessor Abdoulaye Wade to win a controversial third term:

“There are new challenges, regarding the safety and security of nation states, with the development of terrorism, which has moved from Asia to Africa and settled in the Sahel region.

Neville Gabriel

Head of the Southern Africa Trust, an anti-poverty group that promotes coordination between governments and independent groups, and board member of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa:

“We need to be addressing issues of justice in the economic sphere, of justice in the governance and political sphere, to be ensuring that the benefits of economic growth, progress, natural resources, are distributed more evenly across the societies so that everyone benefits.”

Aminata Touré

Senegal’s minister of justice in 2012, she previously directed the human rights policy of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA); her career has included leading work in Africa on reproductive health, gender and HIV:

“The MDGs were lacking a human rights lens …. I believe that for the next decade we need to come up with a set of goals which are more inclusive, and more ambitious.”

Thierno Kane

Founder of a number of grass-roots organizations in Senegal, specializing in issues of popular participation:

“I think the issue of justice is a critical element which needs to be taken into consideration, because if we develop health care, or a number of other issues, without justice or fairness, where are we heading?”