Southern African Public Law

Special Issue: Twenty years of the African Court’s operations

The year 2026 marks twenty years since the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights began its operations. In its two decades of existence, the Court faced increased State-led backlash mainly on account of sovereignty. Contestations that ensued, particularly in the second decade of the Court’s operations, have ranged from challenges to the jurisdiction of the Court to wholesale threats to its legitimacy and existence. Reasons advanced by States in this regard revolve largely around contentions that the judicial operations of the Court threatened their sovereignty whether from socio-political, economic or societal standpoints. There has been wide agreement among stakeholders, as crystalized prominently in scholarly work, that encroachment on State sovereignty thus became one of the main grounds for contestation which affected the Court’s operations particularly in its second decade of existence.

The impact became perceptible in the years following massive withdrawal of declarations recognizing the Court’s jurisdiction, and manifested through the sharp drop in incoming applications owing to the closure of access for individual and NGO litigants. Beyond access closure, State sovereignty has consistently featured in respondent states’ submissions before the Court, through objections to its jurisdiction, to the admissibility of cases, and even to the merits and reparation claims made by applicants.