Solomon Dersso
In this period of rising populism, nationalism, and various forms of bigotry as well as the assertion of statist policies of sovereignty and national interests, amid intensifying rivalry among global actors, numerous questions arise about the impact of these global developments on the human rights situation in Africa. Indeed, as a region that is often affected by major shifts in the international system, Africa may not be spared from the global tensions and trends affecting the protection of human rights. In examining whether and how these global developments threaten human rights in Africa, three variables merit consideration.
The first relates to how existing trends endogenous to the continent affect the human rights agenda and how the human rights institutions function in the context of these trends. Many of the challenges facing the African human rights system arise from the existence of conditions that cast doubt on its relevance to the lived experiences of most of the continent’s population, given the perpetration of human rights violations and abuses by governments and other actors, often with impunity.[1] At a time when this system has become more essential than ever as a platform for the promotion and protection of human rights as a result of declining democratic governance, the reduction of civic space, and the persistence of conflict and terrorism, organizations charged with defining and defending human rights have come under enormous pressure from governments. In particular, states have exerted pressure on the region’s premier human rights body, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Commission or Commission), invoking, among others, African values and sovereignty.
The second variable is the kind of human rights issues that the adverse developments in the global arena give rise to on the African continent. During the forty years since the adoption of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Charter, or Charter), the founding treaty establishing the African human rights system, changes in the international environment from the Cold War to the so-called global war on terror have had a direct impact on the conduct of states vis-à-vis human rights, in turn profoundly affecting the human rights landscape on the continent.
The third factor is how adverse global developments interact with and affect existing challenges to human rights in Africa. In a context of deepening contestations, perennial institutional challenges, and calls by states for the institutional reform of the African Union (AU), the combination of these adverse global trends and regional developments—some but not all related to global trends—could severely undermine human rights in the continent. The various threats to the African human rights system and consequently to political, civil, economic, and social rights risk becoming more acute in the maw of a changing global system.
The African Human Rights System: A Brief Overview
The African Charter is the founding human rights treaty on which the edifice of the regional system was built.[2] Right from the start, this system was more than a regional manifestation or articulation of international human rights.[3] It was a product of the historical, political, socioeconomic, and cultural experiences of the continent, and it has evolved. This can be gathered not only from the equal legal status that it has accorded to civil and political rights and to economic, social, and cultural rights, but also from the place of honor it has accorded to peoples’ collective rights and its enunciation of the duties of individuals.[4]
One of the major achievements of the African Charter at the time of its adoption, and in later developments, was the establishment of a legal regime, as part of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) system (now the African Union), for the promotion and protection of human rights. This is significant in two major ways.
First, in making human rights a matter of continental concern and hence not merely subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of states, it established the first paradigmatic departure in the OAU’s conception of the principles of state sovereignty and noninterference.[5] The African Charter not only enunciated the catalog of rights and freedoms by which states parties to the Charter consented to be legally bound, it also established a mechanism for the monitoring and implementation of these rights and freedoms and for holding states accountable.[6]
Second, in embracing human rights and extending their scope and articulation, the Charter ended the debate about whether human rights were “non-African.” This is of particular importance as the African Charter opens further avenues for the recognition and articulation of human rights at both the continental and national levels. It inspired the adoption of various human rights and democracy and governance norms within the OAU and its successor, the AU. This also accounts for the huge space given to human rights in the AU’s founding treaty, the Constitutive Act.[7] The African Charter and the various other human rights instruments that succeeded it also served as sources of inspiration in the elaboration of national bills of rights and various laws giving effect to specific human rights. The African human rights system also contributed to the recognition of the legitimacy of the work of civil society organizations, human rights defenders, political opposition, and the media, despite the increasing assault to which they have been subjected in recent years.
Apart from establishing the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR, the African Commission), the African Charter paved the way for the establishment of other human rights institutions. In 1990, under the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the African Child, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (The Child Rights Committee) was constituted, dedicated to securing the rights of children. The 1998 Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights established the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR) to complement the African Commission. While the latter has a wide mandate covering the monitoring, investigation, promotion, and quasi-judicial adjudication of human rights, the African Court’s mandate is exclusively limited to receiving and adjudicating complaints on violations of human rights. These three institutions, supported by national human rights institutions and civil society organizations, make up the human rights bodies of the African human rights system.[8] And together they have become an avenue to hear and respond to human rights violations affecting various sectors of African citizens.[9] Despite initial doubts about whether they could hold governments accountable, first the African Commission and later the other two human rights bodies have become important sites for exposing human rights violations in African states and supporting the human rights work of civil society organizations and the media.
The Existing Bleak State of Human and Peoples’ Rights
Despite the achievements of the African human rights system, particularly at a normative level and even in holding states accountable, there remains a major gulf between the richness of the legal instruments and the practice of states and the lived realities of people on the continent. There is no doubt that even on this score the African human rights system has registered some gains. During the past four decades of its development and implementation, direct colonial rule and apartheid have ended. One-party and military dictatorships have fallen. Despite recent regression (in the practice of states), democracy has gained traction as the only legitimate system of government, and human rights are widely accepted. Yet, the challenges of implementation and noncompliance, as well as institutional problems, continue to pose serious dilemmas. Against this background, the recent global trends toward assaults on human rights amid rising tensions make efforts to promote and protect human and peoples’ rights highly fraught.[10]
To understand how these global trends weaken support and provide space for greater violation of those rights, it is necessary first to look at the current political and human rights environment within Africa, which is being shaped by four trends: democratic regression, a spike in the number and intensity of conflicts, an appalling increase in levels of poverty and socioeconomic deprivation, and the increased strain on the human rights system itself.
Democratic Regression
According to an Afrobarometer survey conducted across thirty-four African countries, 71 percent of people now support and demand a democratic system of government.[11] This is consistent with some key trends on the continent including popular support for the work of civil society groups, human rights defenders, and the media. Most importantly, it closely tracks demographic changes centered around the majority of an increasingly literate and politically engaged youth population.
Nevertheless, despite growing public support for democratic governance and human rights, the continent, like other parts of the world, has continued to witness the shrinking of civic space.[12] Governments have been using both legal and extralegal measures in a major assault on freedom of expression, freedom of association and assembly, and freedom of the press. The legal regimes they use include the adoption of laws with requirements that limit access to foreign funds and entail cumbersome registration processes. As the 2018 report by the German Institute for Global and Area Studies pointed out, since the turn of the century, the number of governments in Africa imposing restrictions on the operations of civil society organizations (CSOs) has been on the rise.[13] For example, Angola, Benin, Burundi, Eritrea, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe have all adopted policies to restrict foreign funding for domestic civil society groups, while Ethiopia’s 2009 law prohibiting CSOs and charities from receiving more than 10 percent of their funding from foreign sources resulted in the closure of the majority of these bodies. A paper by Afrobarometer in 2019 highlighted that, apart from laws, governments also resort to the use of “an ever-expanding array of tools and tactics, including suspension of Internet access, surveillance systems, licensing requirements, prohibitive fees, and even raids, arrests, and government violence.”[14] As some of these tactics make clear, in the context of the public’s mobilization online to exercise rights and hold officials accountable, the manipulation of digital technology has also become a frontier for authoritarian control.
Another manifestation of the continent’s democratic governance deficit is the rise of authoritarianism and the decline of democracy and good governance.[15] As in other parts of the world, democratization in Africa has continued to deteriorate.[16] According to the 2021 Freedom House report, the number of countries in Africa that are “not free” increased from fourteen in 2006–2008 to twenty in 2021, and in that year only seven countries, mostly small island states, were ranked “free,” the lowest figure since 1991. The 2020 Mo Ibrahim African Governance Index found that over the past decade, twenty countries, home to 41.9 percent of Africa’s population, had experienced declines in indicators that measure security and the rule of law (-0.7) and participation, rights, and inclusion (-1.4), even while achieving progress in human development (+3.0), and foundations for economic opportunity (+4.1).[17]
The prevalence of what political scientists call “constitutional coups” has deepened the regression in the process of democratization.[18] The enthusiastic embrace by thirty-eight African states of constitutional clauses limiting presidential terms during the third wave of democratization in the 1990s has been reversed in recent years, creating a wave of executive consolidation and perpetuation of power through constitutional manipulation. Since the early 2000s, at least sixteen countries removed or weakened constitutional limits on terms of office of presidents in pursuit of prolonging their grip on power indefinitely.[19] Together with the recent spike in military seizure of power, as witnessed in Chad (2021), Guinea (2021), Mali (2020 and 2021), and Sudan (2019 and 2021), these developments, compounded by the AU’s wavering in its long-standing zero policy against coups,[20] have cast a shadow on its ban on unconstitutional changes of government.[21]
Another sign of the slide in democracy in Africa is the decline in popular confidence in elections. According to a poll by Afrobarometer in 2020, “while most Africans believe in elections as the best way to select their leaders, popular support for elections has weakened.”[22] With leaders perfecting the art of “winning” elections that they convene for the sole purpose of legitimizing themselves—characteristic of what Fareed Zakaria has called “illiberal democracies” or of Kenneth Roth’s “zombie democracies”—many countries are “stuck with ageing leaders or family dynasties” or electoral monarchies or authoritarians.[23] At the same time, elections are increasingly being held in an environment characterized by insecurity, fear, and violence, often deliberately created as a means of winning elections.[24]
The rise of political violence is also further testimony to the waning observance of democratic and human rights principles, a phenomenon to which state violence contributes significantly. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), in over one-third of African countries in 2020, state forces were the most active agent engaging in political violence.[25] Just as the so-called global war on terror was instrumentalized and abused to stifle fundamental freedoms and imprison, assault, and torture political dissidents, opposition political leaders and supporters, human rights defenders, and journalists, so the COVID-19 pandemic has also been misused for attacking these sectors of society.[26]
Spike in the Number and Intensity of Conflicts
Mirroring the global spike in the number of conflicts has been an upsurge in African conflicts in recent years.[27] A report by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Uppsala University showed an increase from twelve conflicts observed within ten countries in 2007, to thirteen countries affected by eighteen civil wars involving the state as one of the parties by 2017.[28] Both figures have risen since then, with twenty-one conflicts in 2018 and even more in 2020, when Africa was the only continent to witness an increase in the number of conflicts.[29] The most dramatic rise relates to nonstate conflicts, mostly reflecting the spread of terrorist actors on the continent.[30] Whereas in 2011 there were twenty-four nonstate conflicts, in 2017 the number had soared to fifty.[31]
It is indicative of the changes in the demographic structure of countries, and the increasing expression of discontent about the abysmal political and socioeconomic conditions affecting the majority of Africans, that protests and riots (a total of 5,660 in 2017) have now become the leading conflict events on the continent.[32] While not all these incidents amount to conflicts that pose a threat to international peace and security, in certain instances they are the precursors to and manifestations of such conflicts, as witnessed in Burundi in 2015.[33]
What is of particular significance and concern in the context of human rights is that, as a recent study by the African Commission established, the vast majority of victims of these conflicts and violence are civilians, including children.[34] The tragedies underscore the pervasive lack of regard for human rights and guarantees of international humanitarian law.[35] The African Commission and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, in a joint statement issued in February 2020, lamented that “Violent conflicts, whose frequency, geographic scope and lethality increased in 2019, have led to the most serious of violations of human and peoples’ rights in Africa including mass murder, mutilations, sexual violence particularly against women, and destruction of property and livelihoods, and displacement of millions of peoples in which children are most affected, with indelible marks left on their lives.”[36]
Scandalous State of Poverty and Socioeconomic Deprivation
The vast majority of people on the continent lead an existence stripped of the essential conditions for a dignified life. In 2020, the number living in extreme poverty (which according to the World Bank is less than $1.90 per day) jumped to over half a billion. What this means is that some 520 million people lack the income and other resources necessary to meet basic needs.[37] Living in places susceptible to violence and crime and lacking social services and sanitary conditions, they suffer from ill health, lack of social capital, and severe material deprivation.[38]
The pervasiveness of such conditions of poverty and socioeconomic deprivation makes the normative and institutional progress of human rights in Africa hollow for a large percentage of the population. This crisis of legitimacy of the human rights system is not merely a result of the gulf between the promise of the human rights agenda and the lived experiences of the peoples of the continent, but also stems from the failure to make these structural conditions of deprivation priority areas of concern. The persistence of these appalling conditions is, of course, also a consequence of the trinity of burdens weighing on Africa, namely the burden of the democratic governance deficit and failure of governments, the burden of history, and the burden of the deeply skewed power structure of the international economic system.[39]
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the scandalous magnitude of these conditions and their ramifications. First, and not surprisingly, despite commitments that African states made in 2001 under the Abuja Declaration to allocate 15 percent of their annual budgets to health, the health care systems of most, if not all, countries on the continent were poorly equipped to respond to any health crisis, let alone a pandemic of COVID-19’s unprecedented scale. According to a survey undertaken by Reuters, despite some variations, most countries in Africa “have severe shortages of medical personnel, especially critical care nurses and anesthesia providers,” and Africa “averages less than one intensive care bed and one ventilator per 100,000 people.”[40] Second, many people lacking access to water, sanitation, health care, and decent shelter have been unable to comply with the elementary requirements of regular handwashing and social distancing.[41] Third, in the global structure of power in which 99 percent of Africa’s vaccines are imported, the lack of access to ingredients for COVID-19 vaccines and the technology for their generic manufacture on the continent mean that populations are deprived of the most effective route to ending the pandemic and its disastrous consequences.[42]
Although not specific to the COVID-19 crisis, gender-based violence reached epidemic proportions during the pandemic, highlighting the pervasiveness of gender oppression on the continent. The sense of despair engulfing the unemployed and the young has also deepened. It is not surprising that, despite the death of nearly 20,000 migrants between 2014 and 2018,[43] “turning the Mediterranean Sea into a graveyard,”[44] increasing numbers of mostly young people, desperate to find a better life elsewhere, continue to embark on the perilous journey across the Sahara to reach Europe. Others hand themselves over to smugglers in the Horn of Africa and Sinai to be thrown onto dangerous boats crossing the Red Sea to the Gulf countries and Israel.
A Human Rights System under Increasing Strain
Beyond the dire human rights environment in which the African human rights system operates, as highlighted above, the institutions charged with implementing and enforcing the rights and freedoms recognized in this system face a number of institutional and structural challenges. The African Commission, as the premier human rights body, is legally dependent on the African Union Commission (AUC), the administrative and technical arm of the AU. According to Article 41 of the African Charter, the authority to appoint the secretary of the African Commission is vested in the (secretary-general) chairperson of the AUC. The effect of this is that the African Commission does not have control over the recruitment, administrative, and financial management of its Secretariat. Dependent on the AUC’s notoriously slow and unpredictable recruitment process, the Commission operates with a chronically understaffed Secretariat.
Additionally, all the members of the Commission operate on a part-time basis. The Commission and other human rights bodies are underfunded by the AU’s core budget. The result of this is that all the organizations charged with human rights in the AU have to rely on external support for the implementation of their mandates. This financial dependence, with its supply-heavy pressure, has had the unwanted consequence of eroding the autonomy of these institutions in executing their mandates and in setting their priorities.
At the same time, the staffing, actions, and decisions of the Commission, the Court, and other institutions charged with protecting human rights depend on the political organs of the AU. These include the Permanent Representatives Committee, the Executive Council, and the Assembly of Heads of State and Government, all bodies made up exclusively of member states. The AU’s Executive Council, in which the foreign ministers of AU member states are represented, is charged with the election of the members of the human rights bodies and the consideration of their activity reports, thereby politicizing the work of the institution and others like it. Article 59 of the African Charter stipulates that the African Commission must submit its reports to the Assembly. And while the Constitutive Act of the AU stipulates under Article 23 that the Assembly may impose sanctions for noncompliance with AU decisions, the latter has never invoked this authority for the failure of states to implement the legal recommendations and decisions of the human rights bodies, including those of the African Court. This has created a huge gulf between the promise of the actions and decisions of the human rights organs to defend victims and deliver justice, and their translation to concrete outcomes on the ground.
It is not uncommon for states to oppose or even reject these recommendations and decisions. Unlike in the OAU era, during which the Assembly routinely “authorized” the publication of the African Commission’s report without any significant discussion or debate, since the early 2000s state representatives on AU political bodies contest and even demand revisions of those recommendations, at times alleging that the human rights bodies have unsavory motives.
The Pressures of Global Trends
The most defining post–Cold War global trends have been the end of the United States’ “ ‘unipolar’ moment,” the rise of emerging powers (most notably China), and the advance of technology.[45] But another has been the resurgence of nationalism and populism accompanying ‘ “the unravelling of the international order.”[46] Of particular significance in this respect are the implications of these changes for human rights and the human rights system. There are concerns that in the context of the growing rivalry resulting from the so-called retreat of Western liberalism, as Edward Luce put it, and the rise of China and resurgence of Russia, the rules governing the operation of the international system (including human rights) since World War II have come under increasing pressure.[47]
In the face of the decline of the United States and its European allies, and the declining delivery of the liberal peace agenda, the international system’s support for democracy and human rights has weakened as well.[48] In the context of the post–Cold War winds of change that led to the rise of democratization in Africa, the United States and the European Union (EU) have since the early 2000s, in particular, pursued strategies for promoting human rights and democracy.[49] They have employed various instruments oriented to the use of carrots (such as political dialogue, democracy aid, and increased development assistance) rather than sticks (sanctions and other forms of negative conditionality). Their relative decline in shaping global governance has compounded the challenge to the liberal agenda posed by existing questions about the efficacy of the instruments and the normative coherence of democracy and human rights promotion by these global powers. This created the opportunity for African governments such as Uganda that lack commitment to democratization and human rights to sustain forms of collaboration with the United States and the EU focusing mainly on those reform areas that do not affect the power of the incumbent.
China outpaced the United States to become Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009. Its investment on the continent also more than doubled, to 40 billion dollars, in the five years from 2011. Beyond the economic sphere, the rivalry also involves competing models of political systems and development. In contrast to Africa’s traditional partners, which advocate democracy and a private capitalist-based model of political governance and economic development, China, drawing on the successes of its own “authoritarian capitalism,” presents autocratic and technocratic forms of political and economic development models with a heavy state role as a viable option for African countries.[50] This has increased the tendency of African governments not to go beyond paying lip service to democracy and human rights; they may signal ostensible respect for them to the United States and the EU but only with limited, often cosmetic, policies.
While these trends have evolved over the years, a more challenging aspect of multipolarity for human rights and democracy in Africa is the deepening polarization and rivalry between Western powers and China and Russia. If this rivalry descends into a zero-sum game in which each seeks to achieve dominance of influence in Africa, it could have serious repercussions for human rights and democracy. First, the space for concerned African countries to maneuver shrinks as the rival geopolitical powers struggle to line up allies, increasingly forcing states to take sides. This potential binary choice eliminates the capacity for states and leaders to balance cooperation with the United States and the EU on democracy and human rights with support for infrastructural development cooperation with China.[51]
Second, the growing rivalry could have adverse impacts for human rights and democratization similar to those of the Cold War era. Most notably, it carries the risk of strengthening the existing democratic and human rights challenges by lending support to authoritarian tendencies. As Chester Crocker, a former US diplomat, pointed out and Africa’s Cold War experiences attest, great-power competition and a reduced focus on development can lead to “western firms and governments more interested in commercial access and ‘getting along’ with existing governments than with durable political and economic development.”[52]
Third, the most disturbing aspect of great-power contestation is its impact on peace and conflict on the continent. This was particularly evident when the “new Africa strategy” of the United States was launched in December 2018. When unveiling the strategy, John Bolton, then national security adviser to the Trump administration, pointed out, following the logic of the U.S. Defense Strategy, that the greatest threat to U.S. interests came not from poverty or Islamist extremism but from China and Russia.[53] This prompted the New York Times to publish an editorial with the caption “Bolton outlines a strategy for Africa that is really about countering China.”[54] But under Joe Biden’s presidency, there has been no change in the U.S. approach to China and Russia. If anything, the United States seems more determined to contain these two powers and recoup some of its losses on the continent. From a human rights perspective, the fundamental flaw of the condescending framing of this Africa strategy about “countering China” is that it treats Africa as a mere theater of great-power struggle, ignoring the agency of a continent of 1.3 billion people.
Making this picture even more complicated, great-power rivalry over Africa is aggravating a “new scramble,”[55] with countries of varying levels of economic and security power, including from Asia and the Middle East, actively seeking to expand their political and security influence across the continent.[56] This does not bode well for stability and human rights. As one example, the rivalry among the Gulf countries for influence in the Horn of Africa has given Eritrea a unique opportunity to break out of its isolation, providing a much-needed breathing space and external validation to President Isaias Afwerki’s authoritarian rule.[57]
One of the implications of this deepening rivalry in Africa will be the risk of internationalizing conflicts, with various powers giving support to opposing parties. A scenario that exemplifies this point has emerged in Somalia. While the federal government has sided with Qatar and Turkey, various states of the country’s federation have aligned themselves with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This has exacerbated existing tensions between the federal government and regional governments, further undermining the precarious security situation in the country.[58] Moreover the current rivalry between Russia and France in the Central African Republic is stoking political instability and aggravating conflict and insecurity there.
If such rivalry were to involve the major powers as happened in Syria, it would not only paralyze the prospect of peaceful resolution, conflicts would also degenerate further into theaters of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This has been the case in the large-scale displacement and refugee flows in Syria and to a lesser extent Yemen. At the same time this renewed big-power competition has hamstrung the UN Security Council, preventing it from taking collective action against insecurity and the attendant violations of human rights and humanitarian law in conflict situations, including those in Africa.[59]
Apart from the shift in global power relations and the adverse ramifications of the rise of competition between the major powers, many parts of the world have seen a resurgence in nationalism and populism. This period has now become characterized as “the sovereign backlash.”[60] From Brexit to Trump, “populist sovereignism” has challenged the role of the human rights system and international human rights enforcement mechanisms. Under the Trump administration, the United States withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council. It also denied U.S. entry to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), targeting particularly African members of the Office of the Prosecutor. In the United Kingdom, it was in the name of “taking back control” or sovereignty that the “leave” camp won in the referendum on continued EU membership. Meanwhile, in Europe, major gains were made by right-wing populist parties in national politics.[61] These internal political developments have shifted the EU’s priority in its partnership with Africa to the so-called migration crisis. Apart from the lack of mutuality and congruence between the EU and Africa on the nature of the migration problem, the policy approaches that the EU has sought to pursue have not only led to breaches of human rights, international humanitarian laws, and refugee laws, but also exposed the hypocrisy in the EU’s advocacy for human rights in Africa.[62]
Not surprisingly, Africa did not escape the global spread of nationalism and populism. This contagion effect has led to the rise of populist authoritarianism in the continent, evidenced by the tactics of leaders in Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and potentially Tunisia. A second, related consequence has been the enthusiastic reception by strong leaders in Africa, China, and Russia of President Donald Trump’s dictum that “it is the right of all nations to put their own interest first.”[63]
The defense of sovereignty has also been used in Ethiopia’s pushback, supported by Russia and China, against the call of the EU, the United Kingdom, and the United States for an end to the conflict in Tigray. When the UN humanitarian chief announced that “there is famine now in Tigray,” Western countries, the UN, and other humanitarian agencies called for a humanitarian ceasefire.[64] On the same day, China’s foreign minister, in a telephone conversation with his Ethiopian counterpart, stated that “China opposes foreign interference in Ethiopia’s internal affairs.” He added, echoing Ethiopia’s demand for Western countries to respect its sovereignty by insisting that the situation in Tigray was a domestic matter: “Ethiopia’s domestic issues should be resolved primarily through the efforts of the Ethiopian government.”[65] Similarly, the Russian ambassador to Ethiopia said that “Russia has repeatedly stated its position that this [situation in Tigray] is an exclusively internal affair of Ethiopia.”[66]
In the elections in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Tanzania, and Uganda, the incumbent leaders used various instruments to orchestrate their retention of power. In all four elections, state security forces unleashed violence on opposition leaders and their protesting supporters. Expressions of concern by the United States and the EU, for instance, with respect to the election-related violence in Uganda, did not induce any change of behavior. In Somalia, in a display of his authoritarianism, President Abdulahi Formajo ignored the political agreement on the convening of national elections that was reached among rival political forces on September 27, 2020. He used the lower house of Parliament to announce the extension of his term for two years, bringing the country to the brink of major violence.[67]
Technology has also allowed autocrats to consolidate their power and trample on various rights, leaving human rights norms and bodies struggling to keep up. The adverse impact of this can be seen in at least two ways. First, surveillance technology and internet disruptions or suspension of specific platforms, as happened in the Ugandan elections early in 2021, have been used to target dissidents and stifle civic space. Second, governments have also manipulated technology to influence public opinion, especially around elections. Illustrating this trend, on June 16, 2021, Facebook announced that it had removed sixty-five Facebook accounts, fifty-two pages, twenty-seven groups, and thirty-two accounts on Instagram for violating its policy against coordinated inauthentic behavior.[68] Facebook’s investigation linked the coordinated operation to individuals associated with the Ethiopian government’s Information Network Security Agency.
Another, broader impact of new technology on human rights relates to the theft of personal information and its sharing by big tech companies that harvest such data to shape the market and people’s political preferences. As Kofi Yeboah pointed out, the data—conversations, thoughts, decisions, consumption patterns, fears, concerns, and emotions—thus collected “can be used to inundate citizens with targeted misinformation about political opponents. For example, one month prior to Kenya’s election, Kenyans woke up to an online video titled Raila 2020 which communicated that Kenya would become extremely violent, food would be scarce, there would be water shortages and so on if Raila Odinga was allowed to be president.”[69]
There is thus an increasingly urgent need to address the various human rights issues arising from big tech through measures such as robust data protection laws and effective regulation of the industry, in line with international human rights law.
The African Human Rights System Faces
the “Sovereign Backlash”
Under the African Charter, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights reports to the AU Assembly. While the power of the Assembly to “consider” African Commission reports was delegated to the Executive Council in 2003, in more recent years the Commission’s reports are in practice considered by the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC), a body made up of the permanent representatives of all AU member states.[70] The growing interest of AU member states, particularly since early 2000s, in closely “considering” the report by debating its contents has been a welcome development. Unfortunately, it has not been without its downsides. As Frans Viljoen pointed out, this increased engagement was accompanied by “increasing attempts at bedeviling and thwarting scrutiny.”[71] The result has been encroachment on the power of the Commission.
When the Executive Council was considering the report of the African Commission in June 2004, Zimbabwe’s foreign minister objected to its publication on the grounds that his country had not had an opportunity to respond to the Commission’s fact-finding report on it. Anticipating future frictions, the Executive Council withheld authorization for the publication of the Commission’s entire report. Considering that the African Charter only empowers the AU Assembly to “consider’ ” the report, the withholding of authorization to publish the report lacked firm legal basis and undermined the mandate of the Commission.
Over the years, the session to consider the African Commission’s report has become a platform for member states to contest the legitimacy of unfavorable Commission pronouncements on countries’ human rights situations. The report often triggers a reaction in the overwhelming majority of AU members. For example, representatives of over thirty member states reacted to the report submitted during the February 2021 AU Summit. On various occasions, contestation over the report has been punctuated by acrimony and heated pushback, with member states insisting that the Commission review its report to water down unfavorable references or even erase concerns completely.
In invoking sovereignty and in the resultant pushback against the AU’s progressive norms and the African human rights system, member states have been employing the language of “African values.” Such was the case when several member states sought a reversal of the Commission’s decision to grant observer status to the Coalition of African Lesbians (CAL), a South African gay advocacy civil society organization. In June 2015 this culminated in a decision by the AU’s Executive Council on the Activity Report of the Commission to withdraw the observer status it had granted to CAL.[72] In justifying its decision, the Executive Council, mirroring the reasoning of cultural conservativism often used by populists, urged “the ACHPR to take into account the fundamental African values, identity and good traditions,” and expressed its opposition to the African Commission’s granting of observer status to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) “who attempt to impose values contrary to the African values.” This also came at a time of increased campaigning in parts of Africa by conservative religious groups, notably U.S. evangelical movements (see also Melani McAlister’s chapter 7).[73]
This has understandably given rise to legitimate concerns that, were this decision to be implemented, then the Executive Council might have other African Commission decisions withdrawn or reversed. CAL and the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria filed a joint request for an advisory opinion before the African Court in November 2015, requesting it to provide an interpretation of the scope of the supervisory powers of the political organs of the AU vis-à-vis the African Commission.
By the time the African Court declined the request on procedural grounds, the relationship between the African Commission and some member states was at a breaking point.[74] When the African Commission presented its forty-third Activity Report at the January 2018 Summit, the issue of CAL became the flashpoint for member states seeking to severely curtail the Commission’s independence. The report noted that the decision to grant CAL observer status was “properly taken” and that it was the duty of the Commission to protect the rights in the African Charter “without any discrimination because of status or other circumstances.” Accusing the Commission of refusing to implement a clear decision of the Executive Council, several member states floated a proposal to establish an open-ended committee of the PRC that would be charged with getting the issue of CAL conclusively finalized and defining criteria for granting observer status to NGOs, as well as addressing other issues including a revision of the Commission’s working methods, the criteria for the appointment of its members, development of a code of conduct for the Commission and its members, and the need to adopt appropriate measures to avoid third-party interference in its work.
Initially, with the issue of CAL having been used to stir homophobic sentiments, the proposal received the support of a number of AU member states. It was accordingly captured as one of the proposals in the PRC’s draft report on its consideration of the African Commission’s report. However, by the time the PRC’s report was considered at the AU Executive Council level, successful diplomatic work by the delegation of the African Commission meant that all but one of the states that had supported the proposal at the PRC level changed their position on the establishment of the ad hoc open-ended group. Instead, the Executive Council decided that the African Commission and the PRC should convene a joint retreat on the issues affecting the relationship between the Commission and AU member states. This was held from June 4 to 6, 2018, in Nairobi, Kenya.
The African Commission avoided the most intrusive measures for which some AU member states had initially advocated.[75] However, the Executive Council persisted in demanding that the Commission implement its decision on the withdrawal of CAL’s observer status. Against the background of worrying developments on the continent—notably the decision of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to permanently disband the SADC Tribunal, following a number of unfavorable decisions the subregional court had adopted against Zimbabwe—the African Commission finally relented and caved in to this request.[76] At its twenty-fourth extraordinary session held from July 30 to August 8, 2018, the Commission adopted a decision withdrawing CAL’s observer status.
Although this regrettable incident led to widespread legitimate condemnation of the African Commission by civil society organizations, it has not stopped the Commission from calling for the protection of the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer (LGBTIQ) persons, insisting that the rights in the African Charter belong to all human beings irrespective of their status, and that violating the rights of LGBTIQ persons on account of their status would be contrary to the Charter’s standards.
This type of backlash is not unique to the African Commission. The African Court has faced a similar challenge. In response to various unfavorable decisions it took, four out of the ten states parties to the Court Protocol that made up the Article 34(6) declaration have withdrawn their declaration, thereby denying their citizens direct access to the Court. In its 2020 report on the state of the African human rights institutions, Amnesty International characterized this development as “threatening to push the [Court] towards the edge of an existential crisis.”[77] Out of the thirty states that ratified the Court Protocol, only Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Tunisia have made the declaration under Article 34(6) accepting the Court’s competence to receive cases directly from individuals and NGOs. Direct access previously accounted for nearly all the cases that the Court had received from individuals and NGOs.[78]
The Court had started to face a backlash in 2016. Following its decision with respect to Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza v. Republic of Rwanda, Rwanda withdrew its Article 34(6) declaration, arguing that it “was being exploited and used contrary to the intention behind its making” by providing a platform for “convicted genocide fugitives.” Rwanda also raised the issue of the human rights bodies attempting to operate like appellate courts, hence exceeding their authority. In 2019, Tanzania, the host of the Court, followed suit under the authoritarian drift of the administration of President John Magufuli. While the vast majority of cases with the African Court are from Tanzania, its withdrawal seems to have been inspired as much by the issue of the Court seemingly operating as an appellate court reviewing the decision of national courts as by the unfavorability of its decisions of the state.
In April 2020, two other countries, Benin and Côte d’Ivoire, announced the withdrawal of their Article 34(6) declarations. Both used the sovereignty justification for their decision. Benin accused the Court of “interfer[ence] in issues related to state sovereignty and issues that do not fall within its jurisdiction.” Similarly, Côte d’Ivoire argued the Court’s “serious and intolerable” actions not only undermine its sovereignty but are also “likely to cause a serious disturbance of the internal legal order of State” and to “undermine the foundations of the rule of law by establishing genuine legal uncertainty.”
Conclusion
The African human rights system still plays a key role in supporting the efforts of national institutions and civil society organizations to create the conditions for the enjoyment of human and peoples’ rights and to hold perpetrators of human rights violations accountable. By developing new and powerful bodies of precedence and jurisprudence, as well as through advocacy and promotion, and the documentation and condemnation of incidents of human rights violations, the system has proven wrong those who thought that it was too weak to hold states accountable. Despite serious challenges to the protection of human rights, it has contributed to the widespread and increasing acceptance of human and peoples’ rights on the continent.
In recent years, this system has sought to address existing and emerging human rights challenges in the face of the deteriorating political and security situation across the continent and the added pressure of global trends. The regression of democratization has weakened the support of states and the political and institutional context for the effective promotion and protection of human rights. These conditions underscore the necessity for the African human rights institutions to expose and condemn violations, including attacks against civil society, opposition groups, and the media. They should also deepen their engagement and close working relationship with national human rights commissions and other constitutional bodies such as ombudspersons, electoral commissions, and police oversight bodies. As recent experiences of the role of the judiciary in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and Zimbabwe have shown, the African human rights system can also contribute to arresting democratic backsliding in Africa by supporting and leveraging the role of the judiciary.[79]
There is also a need to leverage and systematically support the role of civil society organizations and the Network of African National Human Rights Institutions. Apart from supporting one another and enhancing their coordination within the AU framework, including through the African Governance Architecture, the African human rights institutions could safeguard the space for their effective operation by working closely with states willing and able to lend diplomatic support for their work. Within the context of the AU, they should adopt a coordinated approach to engagement in the AU institutional reform process to ensure that their independence and autonomy are safeguarded and their capacity and working arrangements are strengthened. They should also use and expand existing mechanisms for dialogue with AU policy bodies and member states, which are critical channels for addressing the situation in which recent reversals have been witnessed.
Despite the challenge of exerting the level of influence required to change the conditions that result in increased conflict and insecurity, the African human rights institutions should use all available avenues to ensure that human rights violations in conflict situations are addressed. They can do this by supporting, participating in, and initiating the deployment of human rights monitors and fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry to investigate human rights violations in conflict situations. The African Commission’s experience in undertaking a human rights investigation in Burundi in 2015, and its recent establishment of a Commission of Inquiry on the Situation in Tigray, Ethiopia, serve as useful precedents to learn how best to initiate and deploy such mechanisms. At the institutional level, states and activists need to build on the consultative meeting between the African Commission and the AU Peace and Security Council (PSC) and that between the Child Rights Committee and the PSC. As highlighted in the African Commission’s study, this should in particular lead to a more systematic consideration of the human rights dimension of conflicts in the PSC’s deliberations and policy decisions on each conflict situation with which it engages.[80]
Generally, it is critical that the African human rights institutions elevate their game in the promotion and protection of human and peoples’ rights by ensuring that their actions always have a solid technical and legal basis and resonate with the needs of the public; this will help to limit the impact of their exposure to attacks that could severely erode their role. Additionally, apart from enhancing complementarity among themselves and with international bodies, including through joint actions, African human rights institutions should work to raise their public profile and enhance their support base among the African public. Equally important are the quality and intensity of their outreach to state actors, and the close working relationships that they maintain with independent national human rights institutions. In terms of the contemporary global trends challenging human rights, as I have pointed out elsewhere, “There is no other time than today for the regional and global multilateral platforms to elevate their role and importantly forge ever stronger partnership in upholding the ideals of human and peoples’ rights.”[81]
The public legitimacy of the human rights system also depends on the extent to which it addresses the challenges of crippling poverty and inequality affecting the majority of the population suffering from increasingly systematic socioeconomic deprivation. There is a need to expand the approach to human rights work beyond court litigation and reactive expressions of outrage. Equally important is prioritizing the focus on the promotion and fulfillment of socioeconomic rights. As Mark Malloch-Brown aptly observes, governments, multilateral organizations, and civil society need “to address the challenges people actually face, looking beyond narrow political rights to address the deeper causes of economic and social exclusion.”[82] This will be the key factor determining whether people’s faith in human rights and the international and regional institutions built to defend them will deepen or suffer further erosion in the years to come.
Notes
1. The mainstream human rights discourse and practice reduce the threats to human rights largely to the level of the state, thereby ignoring or paying little attention to other serious conditions of unfreedom. See Solomon Dersso, Speech at the Dialogue between Regional Human Rights Protection Commissions in the Context of the Pandemic Hosted by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, August 12, 2020, www.achpr.org/public/Document/file/English/Statement%20at%20the%20dialogue%20between%20regional%20human%20rights%20systems%20.pdf; Mark Malloch-Brown, “The Fight for Open Societies Begins Again,” Project Syndicate, July 7, 2021, www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/renewing-the-fight-for-democracy-human-rights-open-societies-by-mark-malloch-brown-2021-07.
2. The African Charter was adopted at the Eighteenth Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) at Nairobi in July 1981, and entered into force on October 21, 1986, ILM 21 (1982) 58.
3. It is worth noting that the African Charter reiterates the OAU Charter’s recognition of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Importantly, it affirms in its Preamble “that fundamental human rights stem from the attributes of human beings, which justifies their international protection.”
4. On social and cultural rights, see ACHPR Communication 155/96, “The Social Economic Rights Action Centre and the Centre for Social and Economic Rights v. Nigeria.” On collective rights, see ACHPR, “State Reporting Guidelines and Principles on Articles 21 and 24 of the African Charter” (2018); Solomon A. Dersso, “The Jurisprudence of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights with Respect to Peoples’ Rights,” African Human Rights Law Journal 6, 2 (2006), https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC52059; Makau Mutua, “The Banjul Charter and the African Cultural Fingerprint: An Evaluation of the Concept of Duties,” Virginia Journal of International Law 35 (1995), p. 339.
5. See African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the Centre for Human Rights, Celebrating the African Charter at 30: A Guide to the African Human Rights System (Pretoria University Law Press, 2011), p. 7. Subsequently, with the adoption of the Constitutive Act of the African Union, this approach was encapsulated in Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act mandating the AU’s intervention in its member states in cases of “grave circumstances, namely genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.” For more, see “The Role of the African Human Rights System in the Operationalization of Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act,” in Africa and the Responsibility to Protect, edited by Dan Kuwali and Frans Viljoen (Oxford, U.K., and New York: Routledge, 2014).
6. For a more recent review of the role of the African Commission, see Manisuli Ssenyonjo, “Responding to Human Rights Violations in Africa: Assessing the Role of the African Commission and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (1987–2018),” International Human Rights Law Review 7, 1 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1163/22131035-00701003.
7. See Konstantinos D. Magliveras and Gino J. Naldi, “The African Union: A New Dawn for Africa?,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 51, 2 (2002), https://www.jstor.org/stable/3663236; Abadir M. Ibrahim, “Evaluating a Decade of the African Union’s Protection of Human Rights and Democracy: A Post-Tahrir Assessment,” African Human Rights Law Journal 12, 1 (2012), www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S1996-20962012000100003&script=sci_abstract.
8. See Amnesty International, “The State of the African Regional Human Rights Bodies and Mechanisms 2019–2020,” October 21, 2020, www.amnesty.org/en/documents/afr01/3089/2020/en/. On the role of national human rights commissions and NGOs, see Nobuntu Mbelle, “The Role of Non-Governmental Organizations and National Human Rights Institutions at the African Commission,” in The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: The System in Practice, 1986–2006, edited by Malcom Evans and Rachel Murray (Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 289.
9. See, in general, Ssenyonjo, “Responding to Human Rights Violations in Africa.”
10. “Basic Freedoms under Assault, Secretary-General Tells Human Rights Council, Launching Call to Revive Respect for Dignity, Equality amid Rising Tensions,” UN Press Release SG/SM/19985, February 24, 2020, www.un.org/press/en/2020/sgsm19985.doc.htm.
11. Robert Mattes, “Democracy in Africa: Demand, Supply and the Disaffected Democrat,” Afrobarometer Policy Paper 54 (2019), https://afrobarometer.org/publications/pp54-democracy-africa-demand-supply-and-dissatisfied-democrat.
12. David Kode, “Conflict Trends 18/01: Civic Space Restrictions in Africa,” ACCORD, May 31, 2018, www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/civic-space-restrictions-in-africa/; for an article on how this is happening in the rest of the world, see Jean Bossuyt and Martin Ronceray, “Claiming Back Civic Space: Towards Approaches Fit for the 2020s,” European Centre for Development Policy Management, May 18, 2020, https://ecdpm.org/publications/claiming-back-civic-space-towards-approaches-fit-for-2020s/.
13. Hannah Smidt, “Shrinking the Civic in Africa: When Governments Crackdown on Civil Society,” German Institute for Global and Area Studies, GIGA Focus Afrika 4 (November 2018), www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publications/11568057-shrinking-civic-space-africa-when-governments-crack-down-civil-society/.
14. Carolyn Logan and Peter Penar, “Are Africans’ Freedoms Slipping Away?,” Afrobarometer Policy Paper 55 (2019), p. 23, https://afrobarometer.org/publications/pp55-are-africans-freedoms-slipping-away.
15. Chester A. Crocker, “African Governance: Challenges and Their Implications,” Governance in an Emerging New World Order 119 (January 2019), www.hoover.org/research/african-governance-challenges-and-their-implications.
16. Freedom House, “Freedom in the World, 2019: Democracy in Retreat,” https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2019/democracy-retreat.
17. Ibrahim Index of African Governance, Mo Ibrahim Foundation, November 25, 2020, https://mo.ibrahim.foundation/news/2020/2020-ibrahim-index-african-governance-key-findings.
18. See André Mbata B. Mangu, “South Africa’s Contribution to Constitutionalism, Rule of Law and Democracy,” in Regional Integration in Africa: What Role for South Africa?, edited by André Mbata B. Mangu (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, the Netherlands, and CODESRIA, Dakar, Senegal 2020), pp. 15–52.
19. Joseph Siegle and Candace Cook, “Circumvention of Term Limits Weakens Governance in Africa,” Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, September 14, 2020, https://africacenter.org/spotlight/circumvention-of-term-limits-weakens-governance-in-africa/.
20. The AU Peace and Security Council argued that Chad’s security situation required special treatment when it did not sanction the unconstitutional seizure of power by the military. This position is clearly contrary to the terms of the AU norm banning unconstitutional military seizure of power. See Amani Africa, “Consideration of the Factfinding Mission on Chad,” May 10, 2021, https://amaniafrica-et.org/consideration-of-the-fact-finding-mission-on-chad/.
21. See Solomon Ayele Dersso, “Defending Constitutional Rule as a Peacemaking Enterprise: The Case of the AU’s Ban of Unconstitutional Changes of Government,” International Peacekeeping 24, 4 (2017), https://doi.org/10.1080/13533312.2017.1345314.
22. Fredline M’Cormack-Hale and Mavis Zupork Dome, “Support for Elections Weakens among Africans, Many See Them as Ineffective in Holding Leaders Accountable,” Afrobarometer Dispatch 425 (February 9, 2021), https://afrobarometer.org/sites/default/files/publications/Dispatches/ad425-support_for_elections_weakens_in_africa-afrobarometer_dispatch-7feb21.pdf.
23. See Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76, 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1997), pp. 22–43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20048274; Kenneth Roth, “The Age of Zombie Democracies: Why Autocrats Are Abandoning Even the Pretense of Democratic Rituals,” Foreign Affairs, July 28, 2021, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2021-07-28/age-zombie-democracies; Tonny Onyulo, “How These African Leaders Subvert Democracy to Cling to Power for Life,” USA Today, October 23, 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/10/23/haging-african-leaders-cling-power-through-corruption-constitutional-changes-and-fraudulent-election/771984001/.
24. Sarah Jenkins, “The Politics of Fear and the Securitization of African Elections,” Democratization 27, 5 (2020), www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13510347.2020.1742112.
25. Clionadh Raleigh and Roudabeh Kishi, “Africa: The Only Continent Where Political Violence Increased in 2020,” Mail and Guardian, February 1, 2021, https://mg.co.za/africa/2021-02-01-africa-the-only-continent-where-political-violence-increased-in-2020/.
26. Solomon Ayele Dersso, “We Need an Outpouring of Outrage about Africans Being Killed by Security Forces,” Mail and Guardian, June 10, 2020, https://mg.co.za/africa/2020-06-10-we-need-an-outpouring-of-outrage-about-africans-killed-by-security-forces/.
27. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), “Ten Conflicts to Worry about in 2020,” January 2020, www.acleddata.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ACLED_TenConflicts2020_Final.pdf.
28. Ingrid Vik Bakken and Siri Aas Rustad, “Conflict Trends in Africa, 1989–2017,” Conflict Trends 6 (Oslo: PRIO, 2018).
29. Raleigh and Kishi, “Africa: The Only Continent.”
30. Solomon Ayele Dersso, “African Peace and Conflict Diplomacy in Uncertain Times,” in Diplomacy and the Future of World Order, edited by Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Georgetown University Press, 2021), p. 124.
31. Crocker, “African Governance.”
32. Olawale Ismail, Reforming for Peace: The State of Peace and Security in Africa 2018, Tana Forum, April 17, 2018, p. 8.
33. It was disputes over the announcement on the third-term candidacy of the incumbent president of the country that triggered the political crisis in April 2015, which degenerated into a dangerous violent confrontation. For details, see ACHPR, Report of the Delegation of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on its Fact-Finding Mission to Burundi, 7–13 December 2015 (2016), https://www.achpr.org/news/viewdetail?id=198.
34. ACHPR, Addressing Human Rights Issues in Conflict Situations: Towards a More Systematic and Effective Role for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 2019, www.achpr.org/public/Document/file/English/ACHPR%20Conflict%20Study_ENG.pdf, https://www.achpr.org/public/Document/file/English/ACHPR%20Conflict%20Study_ENG.pdf.
35. The nature of the violence targeting civilians in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado Province and in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region manifested “gratuitous degradation [that] was a marked feature in many of the incidents of brutality” in the South Sudan civil war during 2013–2015, as documented in the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan. See AU, “A Separate Opinion” by Mahmood Mamdani, a member of the AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, October 20, 2014, p. 9, www.peaceau.org/uploads/auciss.separate.opinion.pdf.
36. ACHPR and ACERWC, Press Statement on the Occasion of the Thirty-Third Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union, www.acerwc.africa/press-statement-on-the-occasion-of-the-33rd-assembly-…-african-union/.
37. On the multidimensionality of poverty going beyond income, see generally, Blessing Gweshengwe and Noor Hasharina Hassan, “Defining the Characteristics of Poverty and Their Implications for Poverty Analysis,” Cogent Social Sciences 6, 1 (2020), www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23311886.2020.1768669.
38. Ibid.
39. See Solomon Ayele Dersso, “Taking Stock of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Forty Years On,” The Elephant, July 23, 2021, www.theelephant.info/long-reads/2021/07/23/taking-stock-of-the-african-charter-on-human-and-peoples-rights-forty-years-on/.
40. Katharine Houreld, Davice Lewis, Ryan McNeill, and Samuel Granados, “Virus Exposes Gaping Holes in Africa’s Health Systems,” Reuters, May 7, 2020, https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/AFRICA/yzdpxoqbdvx/.
41. In a remark that exposes the scandalous lack of access to essential services such as water, communities in a province in South Africa expressed their “thanks to the virus” when the government started to provide water as part of the effort to counter the pandemic. See Mandla Khoza, “ ‘We Thank Virus for the Water’ Say Grateful Mpumalanga Community,” Sowetan Live, April 7, 2020, www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/south-africa/2020-04-07-we-thank-virus-for-water-say-grateful-mpumalanga-community/.
42. Solomon Ayele Dersso, “African Union Wants Vaccine Patent Waiver,” Mail and Guardian, February 10, 2021, https://mg.co.za/africa/2021-02-10-african-union-wants-vaccine-patent-waiver/; Dersso, “Taking Stock of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Forty Years On.”
43. “Over 20,000 Migrant Deaths in Mediterranean since 2014—IOM,” InfoMigrants, March 9, 2020, www.infomigrants.net/en/post/23295/over-20-000-migrant-deaths-in-mediterranean-since-2014-iom.
44. “Europe Has Turned Mediterranean into Migrant Graveyard, NGO President Claims,” InfoMigrants, February 21, 2020, www.infomigrants.net/en/post/22931/europe-has-turned-mediterranean-into-migrant-graveyard-ngo-president-claims.
45. Jean-Marie Guéhenno, “International Organizations–Down but Not Out,” in Diplomacy and the Future of World Order, edited by Crocker, Hampson, and Aall, pp. 31, 34.
46. Robert Malley, “Ten Crises to Watch in 2019,” Foreign Policy, December 28, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/28/10-conflicts-to-watch-in-2019-yemen-syria-afghanistan-south-sudan-venezuela-ukraine-nigeria-cameroon-iran-israel-saudi-arabia-united-states-china-kurds-ypg/.
47. See Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017); Dersso, “African Peace and Conflict Diplomacy,” p. 124.
48. Joanne Wallis, “Is There Still a Place for Liberal Peacebuilding?,” in Hybridity on the Ground in Peacebuilding and Development: Critical Conversations, edited by Joanne Wallis et al. (Australian National University Press, 2018), p. 83.
49. Christine Hackenesch, “Not as Bad as It Seems: EU and US Democracy Promotion Faces China in Africa,” Democratization 22, 3 (March 2015), p. 421, https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2014.1002476.
50. Ibid.
51. Ethiopia and Rwanda have sought to do this since the mid-2000s. See Christine Hackenesch, The EU and China in African Authoritarian Regimes: Domestic Politics and Governance Reforms (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Intro. and ch. 3 and 4.
52. Crocker, “African Governance.”
53. Mark Landler and Edward Wong, “Bolton Outlines a Strategy for Africa That’s Really about Countering China,” New York Times, December 13, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/us/politics/john-bolton-africa-china.html.
54. Ibid.
55. Solomon Ayele Dersso, “Africa: From Scramble to Theatre of Rivalry for Global Superpowers,” Addis Fortune, February 9, 2019, https://addisfortune.news/africa-from-scramble-to-theatre-of-rivalry-for-global-superpowers/.
56. Alex Vines, “Continental Drifts towards Africa,” Mail and Guardian, January 4, 2019, https://mg.co.za/article/2019-01-04-00-continental-drifts-towards-africa/.
57. Harry Verhoeven, “Amid Red Sea Rivalries, Eritrea Plays for Independence,” United States Institute of Peace, March 11, 2020, www.usip.org/publications/2020/03/amid-red-sea-rivalries-eritrea-plays-independence.
58. In a report that he submitted to the Peace and Security Council of the AU, the AU Commission chairperson noted in March 2018 that federal member states had started security initiatives (supported by the UAE) that were at variance with the Somalia Transitional Plan. Amani Africa, “Briefing on the Horn of Africa,” Insights on the Peace and Security Council, November 21, 2018, http://amaniafrica-et.org/images/Reports/BriefingonHoA.pdf.
59. Richard Gowan, “A Decade after Failing to Stop Massacres in Sri Lanka, What Has the UN Learned?,” World Politics Review, March 19, 2019, www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/27664/a-decade-after-failing-to-stop-massacres-in-sri-lanka-what-has-the-u-n-learned.
60. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, “A Challenging Time for Peace and Conflict Diplomacy,” in Diplomacy and the Future of World Order, edited by Crocker, Hampson, and Aall, pp. 3, 8.
61. See Stephan de Spiegeleire, Clarissa Skinner, and Tim Sweijs, The Rise of Populist Sovereignism, The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, 2017, https://hcss.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-rise-of-Popular-Sovereignism-what-it-is-where-it-comes-from-and-what-it-means-for-international-security-and-defense.pdf.
62. See Eric Reidy, “The Legal Battle to Hold the EU to Account for Libya Migrant Abuses,” The New Humanitarian, August 10, 2020, www.thenewhumanitarian.org/analysis/2020/08/10/Libya-migrant-abuses-EU-legal-battle; Joe Penney, “Europe’s Outrage over the African Migrant Slave Trade in Libya Is Hypocritical,” Quartz Africa, November 29, 2017, https://qz.com/africa/1140661/libya-slave-trade-african-migrant-trade-outrage-by-eu-is-hypocritical/.
63. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe welcomed Trump’s sovereignism when he told the state television that “America for America, America for Americans—on that we agree,” and added “Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans.” The authoritarian leaders of Burundi and Uganda were among the first to congratulate Donald Trump on his election. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda expressed his “love for Trump.” Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi praised Trump “on his unique personality.” See Solomon Ayele Dersso, “African Peace and Conflict Diplomacy,” in Diplomacy and the Future of World Order, edited by Crocker, Hampson, and Aall.
64. “Ethiopia’s Tigray Crisis: UN Aid Chief Says There Is Famine,” BBC News, June 10, 2021, www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57432280.
65. “China Opposes Foreign Interference in Ethiopia’s Internal Affairs: Chinese FM,” CGTN, June 11, 2021, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-06-11/China-opposes-foreign-interference-in-Ethiopia-s-internal-affairs-10ZT2IcYfPa/index.html.
66. “Russia Will Continue to Be Reliable and Loyal Partner of Ethiopia: Amb Evgeny Terekhi,” Fana Broadcasting Corporate, June 11, 2011, www.fanabc.com/english/russia-will-continue-to-be-reliable-and-loyal-partner-of-ethiopia-amb-evgeny-terekhin/.
67. “Somalia’s Parliament Votes to Extend Embattled President’s Term,” Al Jazeera, April 12, 2021, www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/4/12/somalias-parliament-votes-to-extend-embattled-presidents-term.
68. Facebook, “Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from Ethiopia,” June 16, 2021, https://about.fb.com/news/2021/06/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-from-ethiopia/.
69. Kofi Yeboah, “How AI Is Transforming Africa’s Political Landscape,” in Decoding Digital Democracy in Africa, edited by Nic Cheeseman and Lisa Garbe (Democracy in Africa/Digital Civil Society Lab, 2020), pp. 17–20, at p. 18, http://democracyinafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Decoding-Digital-Democracy-Booklet_Final_loRes-2_WITHEDIT.pdf.
70. AU Doc Assembly/AU/Dec.II(II).
71. Frans Viljeon, International Human Rights Law in Africa, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 187.
72. AU Doc EX.CL/Dec.887(XXVII), decision on the 38th Activity Report of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted during the Twenty-Seventh Ordinary Session of the AU Executive Council, June 7–12, 2015, Johannesburg, South Africa.
73. See Siri Gloppen and Lise Rakner, “The Perfect Enemy: From Migrants to Sexual Minorities,” Chr. Michelsen Institute, CMI Brief 2019:05, www.democraticbacklash.com/the-perfect-enemy-from-migrants-to-sexual-minorities.
74. African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), “Request for Advisory Opinion by the Centre for Human Rights of the University of Pretoria and the Coalition of African Lesbians, Application 002/2015,” September 28, 2017, www.african-court.org/en/images/Cases/Judgment/002-2015-African%20Lesbians-%20Advisory%20Opinion-28%20September%202017.pdf.
75. For a discussion on the decision of the Executive Council on the outcome of the joint retreat, see Japhet Biegon, “The Rise and Rise of Political Backlash: African Union Executive Council’s Decision to Review the Mandate and Working Methods of the African Commission,” European Journal of International Law (blog), August 2, 2018, www.ejiltalk.org/the-rise-and-rise-of-political-backlash-african-union-executive-councils-decision-to-review-the-mandate-and-working-methods-of-the-african-commission/.
76. Erika de Wet, “Reactions to the Backlash: Trying to Revive the SADC Tribunal through Litigation,” European Journal of International Law (blog), August 5, 2016, www.ejiltalk.org/reactions-to-the-backlash-trying-to-revive-the-sadc-tribunal-through-litigation/.
77. Amnesty International, “The State of the African Regional Human Rights Bodies and Mechanisms,” (2020), p. 6.
78. Based on the Court’s statistics reported as of September 2019, of the 238 applications it had received, individuals made 223 applications and NGOs made 12 applications. See Nicole De Silva, “Individual and NGO Access to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, The Latest Blow from Tanzania,” EJIL: Talk!, December 16, 2019, https://www.ejiltalk.org/individual-and-ngo-access-to-the-african-court-on-human-and-peoples-rights-the-latest-blow-from-tanzania/.
79. Nic Cheeseman, “Can the Courts Protect Democracy in Africa?,” Africa Report, May 21, 2021, www.theafricareport.com/90612/can-the-courts-protect-democracy-in-africa/.
80. ACHPR, Addressing Human Rights Issues in Conflict Situations.
81. Solomon Ayele Dersso, Remarks on the Occasion of the AU–UN High Level Dialogue on Human Rights, African Union Headquarters, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, April 24, 2018, www.achpr.org/public/Document/file/English/comm_dersso_remarks_on_au_un_dialogue_.pdf.
82. Malloch-Brown, “The Fight for Open Societies Begins Again.”
