Safeguarding Human Rights in Africa’s Digital Transformation: The Role of the ACHPR in DPI Governance
Posted: 23 March, 2026 Filed under: Hlengiwe Dube | Tags: African Charter, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, digital identity systems, digital payment ecosystems, Digital Public Infrastructure, DPI, human rights, Human Rights Impact Assessments, interoperable service platforms, M-Pesa, Malabo Convention, mass surveillance, national identity systems, public services, state reporting, vulnerable populations Leave a comment
Author: Hlengiwe Dube
Senior digital rights and policy expert
Across Africa, governments are digitising public services. From national identity systems to interoperable service platforms and digital payment ecosystems, these initiatives promise greater efficiency, financial inclusion, and citizen engagement. However, while digital public infrastructure (DPI) offers remarkable opportunities, it also brings unprecedented risks. Poorly governed digital systems can exclude vulnerable populations, enable mass surveillance, and concentrate power in ways that undermine democratic participation.
In this evolving digital landscape, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) has a significant role to play. As the continental body mandated to promote and protect human rights, in terms of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the ACHPR can provide guidance, oversight, and accountability in the deployment of DPI. Civil society organisations (CSOs) across Africa, meanwhile, are uniquely positioned to act as intermediaries between citizens and the state, leveraging ACHPR frameworks to ensure digital governance aligns with human rights standards.
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 Officer, Initiative for Strategic Litigation (ISLA) in Africa |
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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 humble 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 with 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).
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