In 2017, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung office in Geneva developed an ex ante human rights impact assessment (HRIA) of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Prepared at the outset of the negotiation process for the AfCFTA Agreement, this HRIA sought to provide an evidence base and policy recommendations to ensure the design and implementation of the AfCFTA align with human rights and development commitments and priorities.

The present report evaluates the extent to which the 2017 HRIA recommendations are re- flected in the legal text of the Agreement, in the AfCFTA negotiations, and in the broader pol- icy ecosystem of activities, institutions and initiatives. The result is a series of scorecards that provide interpretable high-level performance markers describing the progress being made against these recommendations. Though each point is necessarily far more complex than can be expressed by a traffic-light score, the intention here is to raise red flags where human rights may be being overlooked, while celebrating areas where they are being considered and respected. Finally, the report extends the perspective of human-rights analysis to new and emerging issues, including trade developments at the global and regional levels, as well as the upcoming Phase II of the AfCFTA protocols.