BY GRACE MACHA IN ARUSHA
A special funding mechanism to sustain the operations of the African Court on Human and People's Rights (AfCHPR
) has been proposed.
) has been proposed.
Establishment of a Trust Fund for the Court has been adopted by the judicial organ of the African Union (AU) but has yet to take off.
This emerged here on Wednesday as the Arusha-based Court launched its fourth edition of training of counsels to handle its myriad of cases.
"A study on the establishment of a Trust Fund for the Court has been adopted by the Court", revealed Victor Lowilla, the organ's legal officer.
He told the advocates from across Africa that the proposal had been submitted to the relevant authorities "but is yet to be adopted by the policy organs".
He said the proposed financing mechanism is expected to increase the financial resources for the Court by at least 50 percent from the current level.
As an organ of the AU, AfCHPR is financed by the continental body but largely from the funds raised by a host of the development partners.
The Protocol that established the Court was signed by the African Heads of States during a summit held in Burkina Faso in June 1998.
It started operations in Addis Ababa, the AU seat,in 2006 and relocated its headquarters to Arusha, Tanzania in 2007.
Mr. Lowilla added that sustainable financing remains one of the four priority areas of focus under the Court's 2016-2020 strategic plan.
The three others are enhancement of judicial procedure, outreach and cooperation and development of institutional capacity.
"Insufficient sustainable funding remains one of our pitfalls", he said, adding that the situation has been compounded by "limited state cooperation".
Launching the training at an Arusha hotel, the President of the Court Lady Justice Imani Aboud said a sensitization campaign to woo more AU members to ratify the Court's protocol was underway.
She said the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the latest country to ratify the protocol, bringing to 31 all states which have appended their signatures to it.
AU has a total of 55 member states, all of whom signed for the establishment of the Court that handles cases pertaining to human rights violations in the continent.
She said the training was aimed to enhance the skills of the lawyers to effectively and expeditiously deal with cases (applications) filed before the Court.
In doing so, they will assist the Court in "administering human rights justice and the African human rights system as a whole", she explained.
The advocates are also being made abreast with the technical peculiarities of the international human rights litigation in the African context.
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