The African Court: Too little, but not too late

Source: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 14:08 GMT 

Author: Brendan Boyle 

Course trainers Brendan Boyle and Royston Martin with participants outside the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. 

The African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights is under-funded, under-resourced and under-powered, but it is the continent’s best hope for a credible alternative to international justice for its brigands and bullies. 

Housed in the borrowed headquarters of Tanzania’s national parks authority on the outskirts of Arusha, the court has limited authority, but soaring ambitions which few get to read about because of its low profile and remote location. 

The Thomson Reuters Foundation chose Arusha for the third in its new series of court-reporting courses exactly because it is the seat of this African Union-mandated court. 

Apart from the African Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which sits elsewhere in Arusha, the town is quiet – mainly an assembly point for expeditions to Mount Kilimanjaro and a marketing centre for the Tanzanite mined nearby. 

Twelve experienced reporters from across Tanzania, South Sudan, Kenya and Zimbabwe were selected from more than 50 applicants to spend a week honing their skills with Reuters alumni Royston Martin and Brendan Boyle, who launched the series in Johannesburg last year. 

The course included a visit to the AfCHPR and briefings from media chief Sukhdev Chhatbar and a senior legal officer who argued unconvincingly that his job was too sensitive for him to be quoted by name. And that is where the court’s challenges emerged. 

Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya was one of the African Union’s main funders until his regime was toppled in 2011, leaving the African Court’s budget constrained in proportion to the reduced income of the AU. The library that the 11 judges rely on has only two online journal subscriptions and buys far fewer books than it should; 

Only 28 of the AU’s 54 members have ratified the AU protocol on which the court relies for its authority; 

Only seven of those have deposited the necessary declaration to open the court to applications by NGOs and individuals from those countries; 

Apart from the current judge president, Judge Augustino Ramadhani of Tanzania, the judges are not permanently based in Arusha. The court sits for only about 12 weeks divided across four sessions a year; 

And according to the secretive senior legal officer, many of the 25 matters concluded since the court opened its doors in 2008 have been largely ignored because the AfCHPR relies entirely upon member states to enforce its decisions. It has no power of its own. 

Zimbabwe and its nonagenarian president, Robert Mugabe, who is the AU’s current chairman, have not ratified the protocol and effectively ignore the court. The country also has ignored a three-year-old request to stage a promotional tour to advertise the court in Zimbabwe. 

Questions from reporters who were less than overwhelmed with what they saw and heard established, however, that the AfCHPR is preparing a proposal for the next AU summit in Johannesburg in May or June calling for greater independence and some form of authority to enforce its own rulings. 

The AU is also weighing the extension of the court’s powers to include criminal matters, which could include genocide charges of the sort currently being probed by the separate Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Only five of the necessary 15 countries have so far approved that extension and then only with the proviso that sitting heads of state and serving senior officials will be exempt from its reach. 

Africa has a long way to go to convince the world that it can and will handle its own human rights protection, but there are 12 reporters out there with a much better understanding of the issues and the will to put them firmly on the world’s agenda. (SOURCE: THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION)