Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2023
Publication
Rutgers International Law and Human Rights Journal
Volume
4
Abbreviation
Rutgers Int'l L. & Hum. Rts. J.
First Page
83
Abstract
In the late 1970s, the Organization of African Unity (“OAU”) committed to drafting and adopting a human rights instrument that would uphold African values and traditions—those aspects of African culture that were unique and praiseworthy and, in the opinion of many African leaders, superior to those of Europe. The resulting document, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (“the African Charter” or “the Charter”), included numerous provisions intended to do just that. However, in the decades following the African Charter’s adoption, African lawyers, judges, and tribunals produced little jurisprudence applying and further defining those uniquely African values and traditions. This article offers a historical and legal analysis of what the African Charter’s drafters intended and where things went wrong. It argues that certain uniquely African human rights problems – including the alarming loss of African ancestral land resulting from Western-inspired land titling schemes—should be addressed by applying the sort of African human rights the Charter’s drafters thought they had created.