Lost in Transition? The Anatomy of the Merged African Court of Justice and Human Rights

Abstract

The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has been in transition for several years now. The locus of this transition has been an attempt to merge the Court with the African Court of Justice, created in 2003, into a single judicial institution. Established slightly over a decade ago by a Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Court was finally elected in 2006, two years after its constitutive Protocol came into force. Three years later, it is yet to commence its operations. When and if it commences its work, it will only be for a transitional period since the African Union recently adopted a Protocol establishing a single Court, the African Court of Justice and Human Rights. While this is a significant development in establishing institutions to lever human rights protection in Africa, questions have been raised on procedural and substantive aspects of the merger, the speedy nature of the two courts’ transition into a single judicial institution and, more practically, whether the new Court will ‘finally’ ordain a transition into an effective system of human rights protection in Africa. This article compares the Protocol establishing the new African court with the 1998 Protocol establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

Keywords: Merged African Court, Complementarity, African Union, African Human Rights System, Jurisdiction, Locus/Jus Standi

JEL Classification: K33