Articles for category: Afrika

Defining Climate Justice in the African Human Rights System

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On 2 May 2025, the Pan African Lawyers Union – in collaboration with the African Climate Platform, the Environmental Lawyers Collective for Africa, Natural Justice, and resilient40 – submitted a request to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights for an advisory opinion on States’ obligations in relation to climate change. As the climate crisis intensifies across the continent, exacerbating inequality, displacing communities, and threatening ecological systems, the need for principled, coherent, and rights-based legal guidance has never been greater. In addressing this request, the Court has the chance not only to align with emerging global jurisprudence but to contribute a distinctly African vision of climate justice.

2. Juli 2025

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Das neue Sonderstraftribunal für Gambia

Am 15. Dezember 2024 wurde auf der 66. ordentlichen Sitzung der Behörde der Staatsoberhäupter der Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft der westafrikanischen Staaten (ECOWAS) die Einrichtung eines Sonderstraftribunals zur Verfolgung von Menschenrechtsverletzungen und völkerrechtlichen Straftaten während der Diktatur von Yahya Jammeh beschlossen. In dem Ersuchen wurde die ECOWAS um Unterstützung bei der Errichtung eines Straftribunals gebeten, das nationale und internationale Standards bei der Strafverfolgung inkorporieren sollte. Für die Aufarbeitung von Diktaturen in Westafrika stellt der Beschluss einen Meilenstein dar.

9. Januar 2025

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Gender as a Trade Concern

The African continent is currently witnessing the creation of the largest regional free trade area in the world. The African Continental Free Trade Area represents a significant milestone in Africa’s socio-economic development. However, this development is also significant in another respect: A recently adopted special Protocol on Women and Youth in Trade has the potential to blaze the trail for gender-transformative intra-African trade. The protocol thus confirms a general trend in international economic law to acknowledge and address the gendered nature of trade.

21. März 2024

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A Win for LGBT Rights in Namibia

In the recent case of Digashu and Seiler-Lilles the Namibian Supreme Court held that denying the recognition of same-sex spouses under the Immigration Control Act 1993 was not only a violation of the right to dignity under the Namibian Constitution, but also amounted to unfair discrimination. While limited in scope, the judgement is a win for the rights of LGBTQIA+ persons in a jurisdiction where they remain mostly unrecognized. It is also notable for its use of comparativism as a deliberative resource.

29. Mai 2023

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Restitutionsbegehren, Recht und Provenienzforschung

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Die Frage der Restitution sowohl von sog. menschlichen Gebeinen als auch von sog. Raubkunst hat in den letzten Jahren zunehmend mehr Aufmerksamkeit bekommen. Unter Restitution versteht man dabei die Verpflichtung, den Zustand wiederherzustellen, der vor der Rechtsverletzung bestand, z.B. durch die Freisetzung widerrechtlich gefangen gehaltener Personen, aber eben auch in Form von Rückgaben von Gegenständen. Der Workshop „Restitutionsbegehren vor deutschen Gerichten“ am European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) hat Wissenschaftler*innen verschiedener Disziplinen zusammengebracht, um darüber nachzudenken, welche Rolle das Recht für die Aufarbeitung von kolonialem Unrecht und Kolonialverbrechen spielt.

1. Dezember 2022

The Terrible Plight of Internally Displaced Persons in Central Africa

In a never-ending humanitarian crisis, Central Africa is host to the largest community of internally displaced persons (IDPs). In early November, thousands of new IDPs, including a high number of children, found shelter in overcrowded and unsanitary camps in Goma and Lubero, in the North Kivu provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) fleeing violence in the area, caused by the intensifying fighting between the Congolese armed forces and non-state armed group M23. It is for this reason of permanent insecurity in the area that I argue that the adoption of a specific binding legal instrument could ease the management of the IDPs in the region. The adoption of such an instrument would find one of its foundations in the concept of “solidarity”.

18. November 2022

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Contextualisation over Replication

The EU is notorious for using regulatory solutions like the DSA to dominate and pre-empt global digital standards. Often, the major conversations on the international impacts of EU laws have oscillated between capture and actually providing normative leadership on thorny aspects of digital regulation. African countries should develop their own content regulation rules by paying more attention to their contexts and consider aspects of the DSA only where they will improve such local rules.

3. November 2022

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The Ogiek Struggle for Recognition in Kenya

In a judgment handed down in Arusha on 23rd June 2022, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) affirmed its 2017 ruling that the Ogiek people are indigenous to the Mau Forest and that they are its ancestral owners, granting them a collective title to be achieved through delimitation, demarcation and registration of their land. The reasoning by the Court will have a significant bearing on the struggles of other indigenous peoples seeking to secure their land and livelihoods.

29. Juni 2022

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The Continental Voice

The recent coup in Sudan is the fourth completed military takeover on the African continent in 2021, after Mali (May), Chad (May), and Guinea (September). This is a blow not only to the democratic aspirations in these countries, but also to the African Union (AU), which has invested a lot of prestige in – and received a lot of praise for – its zero-tolerance approach to coups.

5. November 2021

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The Africanization of International Investment Disputes – from Past to Present

The depiction of Third World resistance to investor-state dispute settlement as a homogeneous one is an oversimplification. While the plurality of Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship is emphasized by its name (“Approaches”), descriptions such as ‘Third World’ and ‘Global South’ tend to leave room for generalization and simplification. Such a simplification may easily discourage flows of much needed capital into African states. I will show that African states have been rather instrumental in shaping today’s ISDS regime and outline an African approach to international investment law.

23. Juli 2020

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