A guide to the African human rights system: Celebrating 30 years since the entry into force of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights 1986 - 2017 Edited by Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria 2017 ISBN: 978-1-920538-70-5 Pages: 80 Print version: Available Electronic version: Free PDF available About the publication A Guide to the African human rights system has been conceived as an accessible and informative introduction to the human rights system established under the auspices of the African Union (AU). This Guide provides an overview of developments related to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, its supervisory body, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, as well as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and its supervisory body, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. It is launched on 2 November 2017, commemorating the date, 30 years earlier, on which the African Commission was inaugurated. The Guide aims to both chart the most salient historical developments and provide an accessible introduction to the African human rights system, and is continuously revised. The Centre for Human Rights is both an academic department and a non-governmental organisation (NGO) accorded observer status with the African Commission. The Centre teaches academic programmes and engages in research, advocacy and training on human rights, with a specific focus on Africa. Its flagship programmes are the Master’s in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa and the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition. For more information on the Centre for Human Rights, visit www.chr.up.ac.za Table of Contents The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and further standards The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child List of abbreviations Bibliography

Violence against women remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations in the world today, and it permeates every society, at every level. Such violence is considered a systemic, widespread and pervasive human rights violation, experienced largely by women because they are women. Yet at the international level, there is a gap in the legal protection of women from violence. There is currently no binding international convention that explicitly prohibits such violence; or calls for its elimination; or, mandates the criminalisation of all forms of violence against women. This book critically analyses the treatment of violence against women in the United Nations system, and in three regional human rights systems. Each chapter explores the advantages and disadvantages coming from the legal instruments, the work of the monitoring systems, and the resulting findings and jurisprudence. The book proposes that the gap needs to be addressed through a new United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence against Women, or alternatively an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women. A new Convention or Optional Protocol would be part of the transformative agenda that is needed to normatively address the promotion of a life free of violence for women, the responsibility of states to act with due diligence in the elimination of all forms of violence against all women, and the systemic challenges that are the causes and consequences of such violence.

This exciting Research Handbook combines practitioner and academic perspectives to provide a comprehensive, cutting edge analysis of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), as well as the connection between ESCR and other rights. Offering an authoritative analysis of standards and jurisprudence, it argues for an expansive and inclusive approach to ESCR as human rights.

A Guide to the African human rights system has been conceived as an accessible and informative introduction to the human rights system established under the auspices of the African Union (AU). This Guide provides an overview of developments related to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, its supervisory body, the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, as well as the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and its supervisory body, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. It is launched on 2 November 2017, commemorating the date, 30 years earlier, on which the African Commission was inaugurated. The Guide aims to both chart the most salient historical developments and provide an accessible introduction to the African human rights system, and is continuously revised.The Centre for Human Rights is both an academic department and a non-governmental organisation (NGO) accorded observer status with the African Commission. The Centre teaches academic programmes and engages in research, advocacy and training on human rights, with a specific focus on Africa. Its flagship programmes are the Master's in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa and the African Human Rights Moot Court Competition. For more information on the Centre for Human Rights, visit www.chr.up.ac.za.

The African human rights system has undergone some remarkable developments since the adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, the cornerstone of the African human rights system, in June 1981. The year2011 marked the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the African Charter. It also marked 25 years since the African Charter entered into force on 21 October 1986.This book aims to provide reflections on most of the major human rights issues in the past 30 years of the African human rights system in practice and discussion on the future: the African Charter s impact and contribution to the respect, protection and promotion of human rights in Africa; the contemporary challenges faced by the African Human rights system in responding adequately to the demands of rapidly evolving African societies; and how the African human rights system can be strengthened in the future to ensure that the human rights protected in the African Charter, as developed in the jurisprudence of the African Commission since the Commission was inaugurated in 1987, are realised in practice.The chapters in this volume bring together the work of 20 human rights scholars and practitioners, with expertise in human rights in Africa, under the following general themes: rights and duties in the African Charter; rights of the vulnerable under the African system; implementation mechanisms for human rights in Africa; and towards an effective African regional human rights system.

Human rights offer a vision of international justice that today’s idealistic millions hold dear. Yet the very concept on which the movement is based became familiar only a few decades ago when it profoundly reshaped our hopes for an improved humanity. In this pioneering book, Samuel Moyn elevates that extraordinary transformation to center stage and asks what it reveals about the ideal’s troubled present and uncertain future. For some, human rights stretch back to the dawn of Western civilization, the age of the American and French Revolutions, or the post–World War II moment when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was framed. Revisiting these episodes in a dramatic tour of humanity’s moral history, The Last Utopia shows that it was in the decade after 1968 that human rights began to make sense to broad communities of people as the proper cause of justice. Across eastern and western Europe, as well as throughout the United States and Latin America, human rights crystallized in a few short years as social activism and political rhetoric moved it from the hallways of the United Nations to the global forefront. It was on the ruins of earlier political utopias, Moyn argues, that human rights achieved contemporary prominence. The morality of individual rights substituted for the soiled political dreams of revolutionary communism and nationalism as international law became an alternative to popular struggle and bloody violence. But as the ideal of human rights enters into rival political agendas, it requires more vigilance and scrutiny than when it became the watchword of our hopes.

Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and other regional instruments: Soft law and human rights in Africa Edited by Ololade Shyllon 2018 ISBN: 978-1-920538-87-3 Pages: 255 Print version: Available Electronic version: Free PDF available About the publication The adoption in 2013 of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is an important landmark in the increasing elaboration of human rights-related soft law standards in Africa. Although non-binding, the Model Law significantly influenced the access to information landscape on the continent. Since the adoption of the Model Law, the Commission adopted several General Comments. The AU similarly adopted Model Laws such as the African Union Model Law on Internally Displaced Persons in Addressing Internal Displacement in Africa. This collection of essays inquires into the role and impact of soft law standards within the African human rights system and the AU generally. It assesses the extent to which these standards induced compliance, and identifies factors that contribute to generating such compliance. This book is a collection of papers presented at a conference organised by the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, with the financial support of the government of Norway, through the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Pretoria. Following the conference, the papers were reviewed and reworked. Table of Contents Acknowledgments Preface Contributors Abbreviations and acronyms PART I: THE MODEL LAW AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ACCESS TO INFORMATION IN AFRICA Introduction Ololade Shyllon The impact of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa Fola Adeleke Implementing a Model Law on Access to Information in Africa: Lessons from the Americas Marianna Belalba and Alan Sears The implementation of the constitutional right of access to information in Africa: Opportunities and challenges Ololade Shyllon PART II: COUNTRY STUDIES The Model Law on Access to Information for Africa and the struggle for the review and passage of the Ghanaian Right to Information Bill of 2013 Ugonna Ukaigwe The impact of the Model Law on Access to Information for Africa on Kenya’s Access to Information framework Anne Nderi The Sudanese Access to Information Act 2015: A step forward? Ali Abdelrahman Ali Compliance through decoration: Access to information in Zimbabwe Nhlanhla Ngwenya PART III: INFLUENCE OF SOFT LAW WITHIN THE AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS SYSTEM Soft law and legitimacy in the African Union: The case of the Pretoria Principles on Ending Mass Atrocities Pursuant to Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act Busingye Kabumba The incorporation of the thematic resolutions of the African Commission into the domestic laws of African countries Japhet Biegon General Comment 1 of the African Commission of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights: A source of norms and standard setting on sexual and reproductive health and rights Ebenezer Durojaye The African Union Model Law on Internally Displaced Persons: A critique Romola Adeola Selected bibliography