AFRICAN COURT BOSS IN DIPLOMATIC OFFENSIVE FOR SUPPORT

 

The president of the African on Human and People's Rights (AfCHPR), Lady Justice Imani Daud Aboud is on a  drive to enable the Court to win more supporters.

Her ambition is to deepen the public trust across the continent in the judicial organ of the African Union (AU).

Recently she was in Benin on a sensitization programme aimed at increasing awareness of the Arusha-based Court.

Last week she visited Niger where the country pledged to sign a declaration allowing its individuals and NGOs to file cases directly before AfCHPR.

The vast country on the edge of the Sahara Desert, is among the 31 AU member countries which have ratified the protocol that established the Court.

President Mohamed Bazoum said his country would consider appending signatures to the Declaration in a bid to improve his country's human rights credentials.

"We will consider all processes towards that end", he said, noting that his country strongly supported the mandate of the Court as a continental judicial organ.

"Niger is a constitutional democracy that embraces the rule of law and fundamental freedoms as prime governance standards", he said.

Lady Justice Aboud said it was high time Niger and other countries signed the Declaration allowing NGOs and individuals to file cases directly to the Court after recently ratifying its creation.

Justice Aboud,the former Judge of the High Court of Tanzania,was elected AfCHPR boss in June this year and pledged to reach out to countries in order to win support.

She is the second Tanzanian to win the post after the late Judge Augustino Ramadhani who served in the position from 2014 to 2016.

"Our ambition is to deepen greater public confidence in the African Court, being the citizens,states and institutions", she said after taking over.

Other groups that would be reached out are the human rights institutions, NGOs, bar associations, Parliaments, academia and the media.

Since 2016, six AU member countries, including Tanzania, had pulled out of a Court's Declaration allowing NGOs and individuals to file cases directly before it. 

That left only six countries as parties to the contentious Declaration, further isolating the Court from the majority of countries which signed a protocol for its creation in 1998.

The African Court would also seek ways to actively seek out new ways to strengthen the complementarity nature of its human rights protection mandate.

The court started operations in Addis Ababa, the AU headquarters  and relocated to Arusha in 2007, three years after Tanzania ratified the protocol establishing it.

To date only 31 countries out of 55 African Union (AU) member states have ratified the protocol that created the Court in 1998.

According to the Court records, about 90 percent of about 160 rulings made so far have not been implemented by state parties.