African Commission Still A Vital Platform for Highlighting Human Rights Concerns

The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) on May 22^nd concluded its 60^th Ordinary Session in Niamey, Niger.  The session ran from 8^th May. 

While preparing for the main session of the commission, NGOs met at the NGO Forum, a three day engagement from 4^th where organizations from across the continent shared information and adopted resolutions that were presented to the Commission at the main Session.

The general focus of this month’s NGO Forum was Engaging young people, especially women in human rights and democracy in Africa in line with the African Union (AU) theme for 2017: Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through Investments in Youth.

It was aimed at reviewing the implementation related to the African Youth Charter On Youth Participation In The Promotion And Protection Of Human Rights, Democracy, And The Rule Of Law In Africa.

While contributing to these deliberations, I made a widely peculiar proposition - that any discussion about youth and women premised on the grounds that their most immediate concern is economic is false and meant to disorient them.

As it is, the youth and women in Africa have a lot of potential. Potential to be repressed by the remnants of repressive policies of the decomposed postcolonial African states that are still visible in most states’ Penal Codes and other statute books.

It is impractical to assume that the youth and women will thrive in an environment where increasingly, they can’t express themselves as freely, cant access essential information that should be made public, and the cost of movement, as a part of the cost of life, is getting higher across the board.

To be young is to be spontaneous, to have an uncontainable spirit, and to have the wildest dreams and ambitions.

It is these very things that are being clamped down on by majority states in Africa through repressive freedom of expression, right to information, right to association, and assembly legislative frameworks.

These concerns cannot be replaced by general statements of youth and women inclusion in an environment where increasingly, our governments are warry of those who seek to politically empower citizens through civic education.

We are creating a continent where the political machinery of the state is depriving the social domain of the much needed civic enthusiasm needed to criticize dysfunctional authority. 

If we retain much of the expression regimes as they are now, repressed, we risk having a generation of 200 million people who will age under an environment of self-censorship leading to a more censored expression regime for future generations.

We ought to appreciate that the increasing xenophobic, homophobic, racist, and sexist impulses reverberating through the continent among African themselves obtain from the bad, repressive, and backward leadership that we have been subjugated under for long.  

As such, freeing up the continent’s shrinking civic space is first essential to unlocking the youth and women’s political, economic, and social potential in the continent.

On the brighter side, defragmented advocacy at the ACHPR by CSOs across the continent has progressively influenced human rights, and consequently freed up the space for youth and women in the continent in several ways.  

First, there has been the creation and adoption of model laws that have significantly impacted improvement of countries’ legal frameworks around freedom of expression, right to information, digital rights, right of assembly, and association.

In 2013, the ACHPR, during its Extra-Ordinary Session, adopted the African Union Model Law on Access to Information. For the past four years, it has positively influenced the adoption of progressive and well considered right to information laws in countries like Kenya and South Sudan.

The ACHPR’s Resolution 362 on the Right to Freedom of Information and Expression on the Internet in Africa adopted in November 2016 is already an authority citation for digital rights policy specialists in the continent and beyond.

At the just concluded session, amongst the adopted soft laws are the Guidelines on Freedom of Association and Assembly in Africa and Guidelines on Combatting Sexual Violence and its Consequences: adopted subject to amendments.

It is hoped that where applicable, governments, CSOs and other actors will now adopt and expand the sound legal provisions in these laws to formulate reform-minded expression provisions in their constitutions.

Second, through submission of collated records of cases of harassment and attacks on human rights defenders and journalists from across the continent, CSOs have been able to highlight the grave culture of impunity that has now gripped the continent and threatens to drawback on the freedom of expression gains made recently.

It is for these reasons therefore that more organizations should apply to be granted observer status at the commission to be able to make interventions for human rights at this high level.