The African Human Rights Architecture: Reflections on the Instruments and Mechanisms within the African Human Rights System

摘要

This article examines and summarizes the normative and institutional mechanisms within the African human rights system. The article identifies some of the challenges facing the young human rights system in Africa such as lack of proper coordination, avoidable overlaps and duplication of functions, as well as limited capacity of, and limited access to, the various human rights protecting institutions. Against the backdrop of proliferation of human rights treaties and bodies on the African continent under the guise of creating binding instruments and judicial human rights bodies, the article argues that international human rights law has grown beyond the “hard law” versus “soft law” debate where only legally binding treaties and judgments of judicial tribunals alone create legal obligations for states; and that the solution to the protection of human rights in Africa has little to do with the number or nomenclature of the protection mechanisms but rather their effectiveness. This article is significant in view of the proliferation of human rights instruments and protection mechanisms in Africa and the challenge posed to the effectiveness of the mechanisms as a result of poor coordination and overlap of functions.