African Human Rights Complaints Handling Mechanisms

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the various regional and sub-regional complaint handling mechanisms in Africa that deal or might deal with human rights issues. In general, the analysis of each mechanism includes information on purpose, organisation, jurisdiction, human rights mandate, procedure, enforceability, and cooperation. For the sake of completeness, all African sub-regional economic communities (RECs) are included, but only limited information is provided with respect to RECs without a court that could arguably play a role with respect to human rights. The last organisation, Organisation for the Harmonisation of Business Law in Africa (OHADA), is not an REC, but since it has an active international court, it is nevertheless included.

AU has established other organs and mechanisms than the African Court, the Commission and the Child Committee to further human rights on the African continent. Since such organs and mechanisms are not complaints handling mechanisms, they fall outside the scope of this report.