African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights: A Court for States or for Adjudicating Individual Human Rights Violations?

Abstract

This paper aims at dissecting, using a purely legalistic approach, the jurisprudence of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights  (the Court) as it manifests in its decided cases. The aim is to show how the Court has dealt with the state’s consent and validity of its  seizure as a prerequisite for its jurisdiction. This is important in showing how the Court has fulfilled or failed to fulfill the objective of  providing justice to individuals against actions of the state as the primary objective of its establishment. The review considered those  cases that are available online on the Court’s website¹ , and those reported in the African Court Law Reports.2 The paper concludes that  African states, as history has it, have been reluctant to submit to supranational monitoring and scrutiny of their human rights records  and behaviour. This state of affairs is worsened by the unchecked freedom of states to make and withdraw declarations entitling  individuals to access the Court. It is therefore recommended that the aspects in the Protocol that establishes the Court, especially those  relating to the competency of the Court to receive individual complaints be reassessed so as they are couched in a manner and terms that facilitate the achievement of the primary objective for the establishment of the Court.