African Court’s contribution to realization, objectives of AU still misconstrued, underutilized
Banjul, Gambia (PANA) - Justice Sylvain Ore, president of the African court on human and people’s rights(ACHPR), said here Monday the court’s contribution to the realization of objectives of the African Union was still misconstrued and underutilized.
Justice Ore made the statement at the opening of 65th Ordinary Session of the ACHPR at the Kariaba hotel, 17 km outside Banjul.
He noted that after slightly more than a decade of operation, the African Court had developed unquestionable expertise on several issues relating directly to the implementation of objectives of the African Union.
He said judgment so far rendered by the court had provided solutions to issues relating directly to socio-political justice and the achievement of peace in the regions.
In this regard, he said the court’s judgment on the right to political participation in Tanzanian and Cote d’Ivoire did not concern isolated national crises but rather transversal situations existing or which might occur at any moment in many other countries of the continent.
Justice Ore revealed that nationality was rather a regional problem identified by the African Union itself as a matter of major concern.
The same logic, he said, applied to the rights of women in the Maputo Protocol, notably on equal access to inheritance to the age of marriage which, far from being limited causes for concern to the family code of Mali were regional problems which called for a regional and not national approach.
Ambassador Minata Samate Cessouma, AU Commissioner for political affairs, said the African continent had witnessed decades of numerous human rights challenges resulting from a diverse range of factors, such as war, poverty, corruption, autocratic governance and exclusion of women.
“It is against this background that the AU Member- States of all the then Organization of African Unity (OAU), solemnly resolved to promote and safeguard freedom, justice, equally and human dignity in Africa by putting in place instruments and mechanisms to enforce these values,” he said.
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