Are we really on the same page? Understanding the distortion of human rights law in Africa by anti-rights actors
Posted: 16 March, 2026 Filed under: Lakshita Kanhiya, Michael Gyan Nyarko | Tags: African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African values, anti-rights actors, anti-rights backlash, challenges, constitutionalism, culture, family, human rights law, morality, national sovereignty, regional norm-setting, religion, religious fundamentalism, shrinking civic space, strategic litigation, the human rights mechanisms, transnational funding Leave a comment |
Author: Lakshita Kanhiya Legal Associate, Initiative for Strategic Litigation (ISLA) in Africa |
 |
Author: Michael Gyan Nyarko Deputy Executive Director, Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA) |
Too much ‘progress’ too soon?
For the past two and half decades, Africa’s human rights architecture has steadily expanded normatively, institutionally, and jurisprudentially. From the most beginnings of African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and ‘baby’ steps of its monitoring body the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in the 1990s, the turn of the new millennium saw an increase in the number of norms as well as institutions mandated by the African Union to promote and protect human rights, including the establishment and operationalisation of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. Even which all the institutional, political and other challenges that regional these institutions have faced, they have contributed to relatively progressive human rights landscape, influencing progressive decisions of national courts and regional bodies, and contributed to embedding the language of dignity, equality, and freedom in legal and political discourse across the continent. Constitutionalism, regional norm-setting, and strategic litigation have strengthened the visibility and legitimacy of human rights principles in both legal and public arenas.
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and the Accountability Gap in Africa’s Regional Human Rights Architecture
Posted: 3 March, 2026 Filed under: Selamawit Tsegaye Lulseged | Tags: accountability gap, AU-CEVAWG, conflict-related sexual violence, CRSV, customary international law, enforced sterilisation, forced abortion, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, forced prostitution, humanitarian law, international human rights, legal standards, rape, regional human rights mechanisms, Sexual and Gender Based violence, sexual slavery, sgbv, systemic failures, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Leave a comment
Author: Selamawit Tsegaye Lulseged
International Human Rights Professional
Introduction
Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) remains one of the most serious yet under reported and prosecuted violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. The term “Conflict-Related Sexual Violence” refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilisation, forced marriage, and any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls, or boys that is directly or indirectly linked to a conflict. As one form of Sexual and Gender Based violence, (SGBV), CRSV is both a manifestation and a tool of gendered power imbalances. It’s frequently employed as a weapon during conflict/violence to assert control over populations, enforce ethnic cleansing, or punish perceived adversaries, with women and girls disproportionately impacted. It further constitutes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and can amount to a war crime, crime against humanity, or constituent element of genocide under international criminal law. The prohibition of rape and other forms of sexual violence during conflict is not only widely accepted as part of Customary International Law, but it’s also considered a jus cogens norm – a peremptory norm from which no derogation is permitted (ICC, Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda, 26 Jan 2017, para. 3).
Digital Public Infrastructure Through an Open Government Lens
Posted: 11 February, 2026 Filed under: Hlengiwe Dube | Tags: access, accountability, AI registers, algorithmic bias, Algorithmic Impact Assessment (AIA) framework, automated social protection, data exchange platforms, Democratic Legitimacy, digital identity systems, Digital Public Infrastructure, digital service delivery, digital transformation, DPI, e-government, government reform, inclusion, oversight, public participation, Public Trust, transparency Leave a comment
Author: Hlengiwe Dube
Senior digital rights and policy expert
Abstract
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is rapidly being deployed worldwide, yet its governance is a significant blind spot in open government reform. While governments focus on digital service delivery, the underlying systems that determine access, inclusion, and fairness often operate without transparency, accountability, or public participation. This article argues that DPI must be governed through open government principles to prevent systemic harm such as exclusion from essential services, algorithmic bias, and eroded public trust and to realize its potential for public good. Using global cases, it shows how integrating transparency, oversight, and participatory design into DPI can turn digital infrastructure into a force for democratic accountability, rather than hidden control. Finally, the article calls for explicit inclusion of DPI governance into frameworks like the Open Government Partnership, ensuring that digital transformation encodes democratic values, not just technical efficiency, into the infrastructure of the state.
International Privacy Day 2026: Why Privacy Is Africa’s Democratic Imperative in the Age of Data, AI, and Surveillance
Posted: 28 January, 2026 Filed under: Hlengiwe Dube | Tags: Access to Information, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and sustainable development, data protection authorities, democratic governance, digital age, digital infrastructure, Digital Transformation Strategy For Africa, dignity, e-government systems, freedom of expression, Guidelines for Integrating Data Provisions into Protocols on Digital Trade, human dignity, international human rights framework, International Privacy Day, Malabo Convention, private life, public participation, The Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa 1 CommentAuthor: Hlengiwe Dube
Senior digital rights and policy expert
Each year, International Privacy Day invites reflection on the protection of personal data, particularly as the world becomes increasingly digitised. In Africa, this reflection takes on renewed and specific urgency. Governments, corporations, international agencies, and other actors are accelerating digital transformation, through biometric identity systems, AI-driven public services, fintech platforms, and expanding surveillance infrastructures, among other initiatives. Consequently, privacy is emerging as a technical concern and at the same time, a core democratic and human rights imperative.
Privacy underpins freedom of expression, access to information, public participation, human dignity, and other human rights. This understanding is firmly embedded in the African and international human rights framework. Although the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights does not explicitly reference privacy, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) has consistently interpreted the Charter as protecting private life, dignity, and personal autonomy. In the digital age, these protections take on renewed and enhanced significance.
Contextualising the right to development in the mineral beneficiation discourse
Posted: 17 December, 2025 Filed under: Nasubila Ng’ambi | Tags: African Charter, African Mining Vision, cultural rights, economic differences, foreign exploitation, Global North, Global South, human rights, industrialisation, infrastructural development, international monopolies, Keba M’baye, Mineral beneficiation, mineral wealth, New International Economic Order, raw commodities, sub-Saharan Africa, The Right to Development, value-added processing Leave a comment
Author: Nasubila Ng’ambi
LLM (cum laude), University of Pretoria
It’s time for Africa
Home to approximately 30% of the world’s critical raw minerals, Africa holds a highly coveted position in the low carbon transition. However, at present Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) development index is an alarming 0.568, with 0.5 being the lowest index and 0.9 being the highest, demonstrating that the region is living far below the privileges that could be afforded by its resource endowments. Several African countries have taken steps to capitalise on their mineral wealth, with Malawi being the most recent African jurisdiction to impose a ban on the exportation of raw minerals.
However, what is the legal, rights-based justification for these measures? This article offers the right to development (RTD) as grounding for the recent measures taken to compel external actors to engage in domestic mineral beneficiation.
Read the rest of this entry »
Courting Dignity: The East African Court of Justice and the Jurisprudence of Silence
Posted: 20 November, 2025 Filed under: Carolyn W. Gatonye | Tags: cited torture, civil war, crimes against humanity, EAC, East Africa, East African Court of Justice, enforced disappearance, fundamental freedoms violation, gender equity, harassment, human dignity, human rights defenders, human rights violations, jurisdiction, jurisprudence, political sensitivities, rising repression, silence of justice, unlawful arrests, unlawful imprisonment 3 Comments
Author: Carolyn W. Gatonye
Kabarak University
The silence of the East African Community (EAC) in the face of rising repression in Tanzania is deafening. Yet, this is hardly new thunder in the EAC bloc. Time and again, the region has watched storms gather over its neighbors; tremble, then retreat. Its response to human rights violations has slowly been morphing into a modern norm, where crises within partner states are met with studied indifference. No meaningful condemnation, no show of solidarity with those whose rights are violated, just mere silence, setting a dangerous precedent that suggests member states may violate fundamental freedoms without fear of regional scrutiny. It’s from this refusal to speak out, that the EAC risks complicity in the very injustices its Treaty seeks to prevent.
Spotlighting Female Genital Mutilation: An Insidious International Human Rights Crisis
Posted: 6 October, 2025 Filed under: Amanda Janell DeAmor Quest | Tags: 200 million girls, Africa, Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women, Convention on the Rights of the Child, female genital mutilation, fgm, global public health concern, human rights violation, initiation ritual for women and girls, international human rights law, nation-wide outrage, no benefits, physical force, prerequisite for marriage Leave a comment
Author: Amanda Janell DeAmor Quest
Commonwealth Caribbean Lawyer
On August 11, 2025, the BBC reported the death of a one-month-old baby girl who had been subjected to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the Gambia—a country that is one of 10 countries with the highest rates of FGM despite the practice having been outlawed there since 2015. This incident incited nation-wide outrage against FGM and decidedly affirmed its status as one of the most egregious manifestations of gender-based violence in the world today. FGM encompasses “all procedures that involve altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons” and is mostly performed on girls between the ages of 5 and 9. For this reason, FGM is “recognised internationally as a violation of the human rights, the health and the integrity of girls and women” Unfortunately, despite its deleterious effects on the lives, health, safety, and well-being of approximately 200 million girls and women worldwide, FGM continues to be reverenced as a “cultural tradition” in adherent societies.
AUCEVAWG: A missed opportunity in the fight against violence towards women and girls in Africa
Posted: 22 September, 2025 Filed under: Lakshita Kanhiya | Tags: African Union (AU) Assembly, AUCEVAWG, combat violence, Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (CEVAWG), displaced women, ensuring gender-responsive budgeting, free from violence, harmful labour, human rights, older women, questionable consultations, religious fundamentalism, right of women and girls, sexual and gender minorities, shrinking civic space, state obligations, travaux préparatoires, Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), vulnerable groups, women with disabilities 11 Comments
Author: Lakshita Kanhiya
Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA)
Introduction
In February 2025, the African Union (AU) Assembly adopted the Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (CEVAWG), a landmark instrument that seeks to strengthen the continent’s response to one of its most pervasive human rights challenges. The Convention affirms the right of women and girls to live free from violence (Article 2) and extends protection across both public and private spheres, including cyberspace and conflict settings (Article 3). It prescribes comprehensive state obligations from enacting laws to combat violence, ensuring gender-responsive budgeting, and establishing coordinated support services for survivors (Articles 4–5), to protecting particularly vulnerable groups such as displaced women, women with disabilities, and older women (Article 7). The text also contains progressive provisions on the world of work (Article 8), safeguards for girls against harmful labour (Article 9), preventive measures that outlaw customs or traditions invoked to justify violence (Article 10) and guarantees of access to justice and protection for human rights defenders (Articles 11–12).
Objection! The AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, and the Question of Participatory Legitimacy
Posted: 18 September, 2025 Filed under: Mariam Kamunyu | Tags: ACHPR, advocacy, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African feminists, Akina Mama wa Afrika, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls, AUCEVAWG, civil society actors, ethical implications of exclusion, Fòs Feminista, feminist movements, gender-based violence, international law, legality, Participatory Legitimacy, power imbalances, ravaux préparatoires, Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, women and girls in Africa 2 Comments
Author: Dr Mariam Kamunyu
British Academy International Fellow, School of Law and Politics , Cardiff University
In February 2025, the African Union (AU) adopted the African Union Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls (AUCEVAWG), hailed in some corners as a historic legal instrument addressing gender-based violence across the continent. And yet, for many African feminists, the moment was shocking and bittersweet. The adoption marked the culmination of a drafting process that, by most accounts, was characterised by exclusion and opacity, particularly of the very feminist movements whose decades of advocacy laid the groundwork for such a treaty. This article proffers that the lack of meaningful participation by a cross-section of civil society actors undermines the convention’s political and normative legitimacy, even if its legal validity remains intact.
AfricLaw 
Corporal punishment as a public health concern: Breaking the cycle of violence against children in Africa
Posted: 25 September, 2025 | Author: AfricLaw | Filed under: Nqobani Nyathi | Tags: 1.2 billion children, Africa, African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, Children with disabilities, corporal punishment of children, dropout rates, General Comment 9, global public health concern, Guidelines on Ending Violence Against Children in Africa, no benefits, physical force, public health crisis, religion, religious traditions, tradition, violence, World Health Organisation (WHO) | 1 CommentDoctoral Candidate, Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
On 20 August 2025, the World Health Organisation (WHO) launched a report declaring corporal punishment of children a global public health concern. By definition, corporal punishment is any punishment where physical force is used with the intention of causing some degree of discomfort or pain, however light.
The statistics are staggering. An estimated 1.2 billion children around the world are subjected to corporal punishment at home every year. Children exposed to such violence are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and emotional instability. These effects often persist into adulthood, increasing the risk of alcohol and drug use, and violent behaviour. In schools, corporal punishment contributes to dropout rates and poor educational outcomes.
Read the rest of this entry »