African Regional Tribunals

Of the over 40 permanent judicial and quasi-judicial international and regional courts worldwide, at least 15 are in Africa or limit their jurisdiction to African countries and territories. Of these, two exercise criminal jurisdiction: the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the more recent Special Court for Sierra Leone. There are also seven existing or contemplated regional courts of justice, including the Courts of Justice of the Common Market of East and Southern Africa; the East African Community, ECOWAS; and the Union Economique et Monetaire Ouest-Africaine, and the Tribunal of the Southern African Development Community.

Apart from these, three human rights courts and tribunals stand out: the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights established under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; the yet-to-be-established African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights contemplated by a 1998 Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, established under the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1991) and inaugurated in 2002.

Throughout 2003, the Justice Initiative pursued advocacy in collaboration with leading African and international NGOs to secure sufficient ratifications for the establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Our involvement in this work, which included facilitating regional meetings of senior officials of the governments of East, West and Southern African States, helped garner six additional ratifications for the Protocol establishing the Court. As a result, the Protocol attained trigger ratification on December 30, 2003 and came into force on January 25, 2004.

In addition to promoting litigation before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, we are developing cases with transnational teams of African lawyers for submission to little-used sub-regional mechanisms, such as the ECOWAS Court of Justice (located in Abuja, Nigeria) and the Common Market Court of Justice of East and Southern Africa (located in Lusaka, Zambia). Through these efforts, the project aims to contribute to the construction of Africa’s legal architecture, and demonstrate tangible results flowing from the resolution of significant cases vindicating fundamental human rights.