Angola’s Law and Justice Reform Commission: an opportunity for broader and more robust reforms?
Posted: 31 August, 2020 Filed under: Eduardo Kapapelo | Tags: Angola, Angolan Constitution, Angolan government, constitutional democracy, constitutional imbalance, forms of domination, Joao Lourenço, judicial system, Law and Justice Reform Commission, reform, rights violations, the Commission for Law and Justice Reform, WHO Report, World Report on Violence and Health 1 Comment
Author: Eduardo Kapapelo
Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria
In May 2020 Angolan President Joao Lourenço through Dispatch 72/20 established the Commission for Law and Justice Reform (the Commission). The Commission has the mandate to reforming Angola’s law and justice institutions. At first glance the Commission is in line with achieving continental objectives such as the African Union’s Agenda 2063 which stresses that key to achieving Africa’s developmental needs requires ‘democratic values, culture practices, universal principles of human rights, gender, equality, justice and the rule of law are entrenched’.
The Commission has within its scope of work to reform Angola’s judicial system with a particular focus on amending the organic laws of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the Court of Auditors, the State House, the Attorney General’s Office and the Angolan Bar Association. The exact nature and concrete steps of such reform are still to be seen.
In the commission’s first meeting, Angola’s minister of justice and human rights Francisco Quiero who also serves as coordinator stated that, the establishment of the Commission attested the to the interest of ‘maintaining and reinforcing the institutional cohesion of Angola’s sovereign organs in the promotion of justice and in the construction of justice’. Ironically enough and though Angola’s law and justice reform is of vital importance, the approach in which such reforms are being proposed seem to raise a number of eyebrows.
COVID-19, Darfur’s food security crisis and IDPs: From ruins to ruins
Posted: 4 August, 2020 Filed under: Gursimran Kaur Bakshi | Tags: chemical attacks, children, conflict, COVID-19, crimes against humanity, Darfur, displacement, famine, Human Rights Watch, human tragedy, IDPs, internally displaced persons, International Criminal Court, Kampala Convention, Land of Killing, London Declaration, Omar Al-Bashir, pandemic, State-Sponsored Terrorist(SST), Sudan, war 1 Comment
Author: Gursimran Kaur Bakshi
Student, National University of Study and Research in Law, Ranchi, India
Background
Darfur, a region in the west of Sudan is known as a ‘Land of Killing’. Since 2003, more than 300 000 people have been killed, and over 2.7 million have been forcibly displaced as a result of a genocide that has left the legacy of displacement and destitution. The war was initiated by the government-backed armed groups known as ‘Janjaweed’ militants in 2003, who have been accused of systematic and widespread atrocities, such as murdering and torturing of the civilian population, including raping their women and intentionally burning their villages.
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