The African Regional Human and Peoples´ Rights: 40 years of progress and challenges

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the African regional human rights system, emphasizing both its innovations and remaining challenges. To this end, a literature review of primary sources, as well as the jurisprudence of the human rights bodies of the African system, will be analyzed. Although this system did not start functioning until the decade of the eighties of the 20th century, it has evol- ved considerably once the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights was adopted. Thus, several other treaties followed it, of which the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples› Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa can be pointed out. And even though initially only the creation of protection and control mechanisms was foreseen –the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child– after 1998, the African Court on Human and Peo- ples’ Rights was added, which has progressively adopted a protectionist and growing jurisprudence; but also that, as its predecessors, will face different challenges, among which the reform process of the judicial bodies of the African Union themselves. In any case, the main conclusion of this article is that the innovations of the system are considerable (and largely unknown), although outstanding challenges need to be addressed to ensure the effecti- veness and development of the system.