Information Center: united nations, 2003

The present report has been prepared pursuant to resolution 2002/48 of the Commission on Human Rights. It presents and analyses information on the situation of the right to freedom of opinion and expression received by the Special Rapporteur before and during his visit to Equatorial Guinea, from 2 to 7 December 2002, from officials, individuals, non-governmental organizations and in the reports of the former Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights on the human rights situation in the Republic of Equatorial Guinea.

The demise of Spanish colonialism in Central Africa has to be understood as part of the general process of African decolonization. In accepting the methodological framework proposed by some historians for studying the collapse of European domination in the continent, we can explain the independence of Equatorial Guinea, in 1968, as a result of the interaction between three different factors: international, metropolitan and colonial. This article delineates the decolonization of the only Spanish colony south of the Sahara, its main argument being that, in the case of Equatorial Guinea, the international factor – specifically, the role of the United Nations – is fundamental to the understanding of the timing, the actors' strategies and the results.