Haki Zetu: ESC Rights in Practice

The Haki Zetu handbook series is a practical toolkit for local NGOs and CBOs working with communities to realise their economic, social and cultural rights. This toolkit aims to support local activists and development workers who use a rights-based approach to tackle economic and social problems.

The handbooks provide information and tools with which local activists and NGO/CBO workers can raise awareness, monitor and advocate for an improved access to economic, social and cultural rights. The framework for this series was developed in consultation with an advisory committee of experts and ESCR practitioners in Africa. Each handbook is written by a topical expert. The Main Book is co-published with ACORD (Pan-Africa), Hakijamii Economic and Social Rights Centre (Kenya), Uganda Debt Network (Uganda), and Foundation for Human Rights and Democracy (Liberia).

Haki Zetu | Main Book Part I +II

The Lees ook: Download Haki Zetu | Main Book part 1 provides basic information about human rights, ESC rights, obligations of states and non-state actors and some current efforts to improve ESC rights.

Lees ook: Download Haki Zetu | Main Book part 2 provides a general framework and a step-by-step plan for working with ESC rights (engaging with communities, gathering information, monitoring and engaging with government and non-state actors, regional and international actors).

The separate booklets on ESC rights contain sections on understanding the situation and the right itself (e.g. how it is enshrined in treaties and laws), and on actions to realise the right (incl. checklists and other tools). They also contain appendices with references to international laws and standards, sources and resources, contacts of expert institutions and NGOs, and other references. Booklets on specific rights can only be used in conjunction with the Main Book.

Haki Zetu | The Right to Adequate Housing

The Lees ook: Download The Right to Adequate Housing assists NGOs and CBOs to monitor laws and policies around housing and shelter, to monitor evictions, and slum upgrading projects.

Haki Zetu | The Right to Adequate Food

The Lees ook: Download The Right to Adequate Food explains the right to be free from hunger, access to land and water, trade, nutrition, and provides tools to monitor access to adequate food, to productive land and resources, the impact of agribusiness, nutrition and Social Cash Transfers. This booklet is co-published with FIAN.

Haki Zetu | The Right to Adequate Water and Sanitation

The Lees ook: Download The Right to Adequate Water and Sanitation provides information and guidelines to monitor the right to water for drinking, cooking and washing, and the right to sanitation and hygiene, with specific attention to informal settlements and women’s rights to water and sanitation. This booklet is co-published with COHRE.

Haki Zetu | The Right to Health

The Lees ook: Download The Right to Health explains about health systems, facilities, goods and services, sexual and reproductive health rights, mental health, healthy natural and workplace environments, prevention, treatment and control of diseases. It gives guidelines for awareness-raising, monitoring facilities, goods and services, monitoring underlying determinants, and specific actions for sub-topics.

Haki Zetu | The Right to Education

The Lees ook: Download The Right to Education assists NGOs and CBOs to monitor free and compulsory primary education, availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of education (the 4As), standards of teaching and school governance. This booklet is co-published with ActionAid’s Right to Education project.

Haki Zetu | The Right to Work and Livelihoods

This Lees ook: Download The Right to Work and Livelihoods (and the right to be protected from forced labour, debt bondage and child labour), protection against unemployment and promotion of ‘decent work’, the right to form and join trade unions, cooperatives or other workers’ associations, and just and favourable conditions of work. As the majority of Africans are self-employed in farm work and the informal sector, the booklet provides the perspective of work as a means of livelihood, and how informal workers can also claim protection from deprivation of their means of livelihood, rights to organise and to just and favourable conditions of work.

Haki Zetu | Land and human rights

Land conflicts, “land grabbing” and women’s limited access to land are major problems in Africa. In these processes, human rights are often trampled upon. Though land rights are not enshrined in human rights treaties, human rights standards can be called upon to address these violations. Lees ook: Download Land and Human Rights indicates which rights and mechanisms are available, and how local activists and organisations can defend these rights, monitor land policies and violations, advocate, campaign and seek redress.