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Mariya Badeva-Bright specializes in Information Technology and legal research. She is also the director of the AfricanLII.
I work on content and policy development at the African Legal Information Institute.
Two cases involving convictions and heavy sentences for rape have been heard by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Both cases originate in Tanzania and both show that legal rights of the accused were not observed by the state. In one, the accused was not given free legal representation though he faced a mandatory 30 years behind bars. In the other, an appeal was filed three days after sentence, but it took almost 16 years before the authorities provided the records needed for the appeal.
Read the Mallya judgment
Read the Goa judgment
The case of Benedicto Mallya tells a story that will distress anyone with a human rights conscience.
Even if Mallya had not ultimately been exonerated, his case would still be a poor reflection on the legal system of his home country, Tanzania.
At the time of sentence he was just 15. Nothing in the judgment of the African Court indicates that he was treated any differently from an adult accused by the Tanzanian justice system.
SA’s ex-president, Jacob Zuma, already in hot water with pending corruption charges and a court order that he must personally pay some of his massive legal costs, has again become the target of serious criticism from SA’s Constitutional Court. This time the country’s highest court was considering an application to set aside Zuma’s decision backing the dissolution of the SADC Tribunal, a crucial regional rights forum, based in Windhoek, Namibia.
Read the full judgment on SAFLII
WHEN the SADC Tribunal, set up to protect the rights of everyone in the region, was summarily given the boot at the instance of Zimbabwe’s then president, Robert Mugabe, it came as a great shock to people in SA that the president at the time, Jacob Zuma, joined in the demolition party.
CONTENTS
List of editors and authors............................................................................... v
List of abbreviations ...................................................................................... vii
List of cases..................................................................................................... xi
List of legal instruments.................................................................................. xv
Following the conclusion of the 31st AU Summit held in Nouakchott, Mauritania from the 25th of June to 2nd July 2018, the key activities, decisions and declarations of the Summit are provided below.
Following the conclusion of the 31st AU Summit held in Nouakchott, Mauritania from the 25th of June to 2nd July 2018, the key activities, decisions and declarations of the Summit are provided below.
PRESS RELEASE
Arusha, 13 July 2018: The just-ended 31st African Union (AU) Heads of State and Government Ordinary Session in Nouakchott, Mauritania, has appointed three Judges as members of the African Court and re-appointed one Judge to serve for a final six year term.
The three newly elected Judges are: Hon Imani Aboud from Tanzania; Hon Stella Isibhakhomen Anukam from Nigeria and Hon Blaise Tchikaye from Congo.
Hon Justice Ben Kioko from Kenya, the current Vice President of the African Court, was re-appointed for a second term of six years.
IN what is being hailed as a “monumental” decision for the continent, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has ruled that Tanzania arbitrarily deprived a man of his Tanzanian nationality. The judgment, likely to affect many “stateless” people in Africa, stipulates that a decision to strip someone of nationality may only be taken after a fair judicial process, and that arbitrary deprivation is in breach of the University Declaration of Human Rights.
WHEN Anudo Anudo went to his local police station to sort out all the papers he needed to get married, he could not have guessed that he was about to have his nationality taken away, be made stateless – and then become the unlikely hero of a landmark decision by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
Africa’s Free Movement Protocol will open up the continent for easy travel and big business. (Photo: Shutterstock)
Ricarda Rösch's article discusses the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights first indigenous rights case dealing with the expulsion of the Ogiek from their ancestral lands in the Kenyan Mau forest. The article highlights the judgement’s most interesting features in light of the ongoing debates surrounding indigenousness and indigenous rights in Africa.
In May 2017, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights delivered its first indigenous rights case dealing with the expulsion of the Ogiek from their ancestral lands in the Kenyan Mau forest. The article highlights the judgement’s most interesting features in light of the ongoing debates surrounding indigenousness and indigenous rights in Africa.
In this paper Stefan Salomon inquires, first, what legally might remain of self-determination in a postcolonial context by focusing on the case law of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR). Second, it asks what might be the lessons for Europe by gazing at the development of the legal concept of self-determination in Africa.
Looking at self-determination in contemporary Europe, one finds self-determination lumped together with the question of a possible right to remedial secession, either passionately defended or fervently rejected. Lumping self-determination and secession together tends to reduce self-determination to a territorial meaning. Such a territorial meaning indicates a larger geographical bias in international law.
