Doctor Legum - LLD / The principle of complementarity forms the basis upon which the International Criminal Court (ICC) exercises its jurisdiction. This principle of international law first appears in the Preamble to the Rome Statute and then the admissibility provisions under Article 17 of the Rome Statute, which outline that the Court will declare a case inadmissible where it is being investigated or prosecuted by a state which has jurisdiction over it; unless the state is unwilling or unable to genuinely carry out the investigation or prosecution. Alternatively where the case has been investigated by a state which has jurisdiction over it and the state has decided not to prosecute the person concerned, unless the decision resulted from the unwillingness or inability of the state to genuinely prosecute. This principle implies that the ICC is a court of last resort and will therefore not intervene in a case where the state of commission is either able or willing genuinely to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of grave crimes. It is common cause that Africa has been the staging area of mass atrocities for decades. The indictment of Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta’s’ and his deputy William Ruto, Hissene Habre case, and the indictment and issuance of an arrest warrant against the Sudanese President Omar El-Bashir are instructive in this regard. The ICC’S actions created the perception of bias, injustice and inequity. This prompted a sharp reaction from African states, which threated a mass withdrawal from the Rome Statute in 2013. The one positive spin off from the AU reaction was the expansion of the jurisdiction of the merged court to include a criminal chamber in 2014, thus creating Africa’s first international criminal court, the African Criminal Court (ACC). This development was the result of the discontent and frustration of the African continent towards the work of the ICC, which was perceived as focusing only on African cases, whilst ignoring the litany of cases coming from other regions of the world.

"The study is divided into five chapters. Chapter one provides the context in which the study is set, the focus and objectives of the study, its significance, and other preliminary issues including the hypothesis and literature survey. Chapter two first seeks to briefly portray the current state of human rights in Africa. In the second part, history and development of the African Union is traced, within the context of its predecessor - the OAU. Its third part extracts and analyses the specific human rights content of the AU Constitutionve Act and other relevant provisions, both independently and collectively; while its fourth part progresses to examine the conribution of the AU to human rights so far, by gauging and scrutinizing the human rights content of its summits. The fifth and final part scrutinizes the implications of the linkage of human rights to development and hence, its re-conceptualisation or otherwise, in Africa. Chapter three seeks to examine the extant implications of the AU human rights agenda on the existing human rights protection framework. First, it provides a brief overview of the existing regional human rights protection system, while its second part elucidates the human rights enforcement mechanisms that have been developed under the African Charter system. Its third part seeks to examine the problem of enforcement of, and non-compliance with human rights in Africa, with a view to understanding the problem, and forging a way forward. Its fourth part looks at the relationship between the AU and the existing human rights institutions within the context of the AU Constituve Act, while its concluding part addresses the latent risk of proliferation and redundancy that might attend the proposed creation of more human rights-oriented institutions under the AU/NEPAD; proposing rationalization of the same and the fusion of compatible mandates, with the view of avoiding unnecessary and expensive duplications. Chapter four seeks to present the probable picture of the fusion of the emerging and existing frameworks. Its first part sets out to describe, as well as explicate the justifications for the proposed human rights enforcement framework under the AU, citing models. Its second part seeks to explore the potentialities of trade as veritable tool of sanction within the proposed structure, while its concluding part seeks to do the same in relation to the device of peer pressure. The fifth and final chapter of the study seeks to draw some conclusions and further give recommendations on how the proposed hybrid framework can be achieved, while emphasizing the importance of such synergy as a feasible solution of the problem of human rights enforcement in Africa." -- Chapter 1. / Prepared under the supervision of Prof. J. Oloka-Onyango, Faculty of Law, Makerere University / Mini Dissertation (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

This study set out to examine the opportunities and constraints for Zimbabwean civil society participation in African Union policy initiatives. The work came up after a realisation that there are serious challenges that inhibit participation of Zimbabwean civil society organisations (CSOs) in the policy-making initiatives of the continental body. The problem arises from the structure of the African Union (AU) in that it is an inter-state organ and, as such, any engagement with the African citizens has to be done through the various governments of members‘ states. This means that for Zimbabwean CSOs‘ voices to be heard in the AU policy-making, they have to go through their Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Zimbabwean situation is a very unique and problematic one in that the government and CSOs are sworn enemies. The animosity arises from the allegations by the government that the CSOs are part of a well-orchestrated plot led by the United States of America and Britain to effect illegal regime change in Zimbabwe. It is the argument of the ZANU PF government that the West is sponsoring the opposition as a response to the land redistribution exercise. Given this background, it has been difficult for CSOs to make their representations to the government. This work therefore sought to determine alternative avenues for engagement by CSOs. The research was done through interviews of 20 CSOs involved in issues of democracy and good governance. It also utilised a lot of secondary information from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the AU. The research came to the conclusion that CSOs need to improve their working relations with the government and also try to utilise other avenues for engagement like the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). The work further concluded that the ―cat and mouse‖ relationship between the government and civil society in Zimbabwe has created a situation where the latter has been demonised, if not totally criminalised to the extent of limiting its access into mainstream AU affairs. This, in brief, has presented a situation 5 where the feasibility of a democratic experience in Zimbabwe becomes increasingly remote and misty. Zimbabwe‗s contribution to African political and economic life has been disabled by the Zimbabwean government‘s next to single-handed approach to African and international affairs. The absence of the Zimbabwean civil society‗s voice in the African economic and political life reduces Zimbabwe‘s place in African affairs to a narrow and shallow location. The democratic doctrine of multiplicity of voices and diversity of opinions, which are important ingredients of democracy as it is globally perceived, are negated by the Zimbabwean government‘s enduring interest to collapse the civil society to dormant national shareholders whose role is theoretical at the expense of being real and meaningful. At a prima facie level, the Zimbabwean civil society is an isolated and hindered entity through legislation and economic and political conditions that the Zimbabwean government has caused. On the other hand, on a point of strategy and creative positive thought, this creates a window of opportunities and some interesting challenges to the actors and players in the Zimbabwean civil society to generate methods and approaches relating to the greater African economic and political reality without the co-operation, or the consent, of the Zimbabwean government. This presents a case study to the test of Africa and the globe that governance is not only a preserve of the governments, but is an all-inclusive process that must also involve non-state actors, lest it becomes a partisan and narrow meaningless affair. That, in the African context, can be summarised in a West African saying that ―no matter how big your hand is, it can not cover the sky‖. In this context, no matter how big the AU can be, it cannot adequately serve the interests of the whole of Africa without involving other key players like the civil society movement.

"Peace and security in Africa is defined as the condition for elaborating the humanity of Africans and the promise of the place of Africa in economic reconstruction in the next centruy. Apart from being a recognised right in the African human rights system, it is also present amongst the objectives and principles of the AU political agenda enshrined within the Constitutive Act, with its attainment seen as the gateway to Africa's economic development. Furthermore, this undeniable synergy between the maintenance of peace and security and the attainment of development, also determines the realisation of other human and peoples' rights. Therefore, peace and security is of utmost importance in the current affairs of the continent and, a right being attached to peace and security, adds extra weight to its attainment as it places a duty on other entities for its realisation. Notwithstanding this importance, the concept of the right to peace and security is still quite elusive and underdeveloped, a reality which is incomprehensible taking into consideration the infamous characteristic of the African continent for its political unrest and civil wars. With 14 current internal conflicts, Africa hosts more than one third of the ongoing conflicts in the world. The countries not engaged in civil wars are faced with civil and political unrests, refugee influxes, terrorism threats and attacks, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other contagious diseases, high crime rates, and natural disasters to name a few. It is against this background that a study into the conceptualisation of the right to peace and security is warranted and, as well , the available mechanisms for its protection within the AU." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2003. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

"In Africa, the struggle for human rights shares a great deal of common ground with the struggle against corruption. In fighting to improve the lot of a majority of the world's population, one must recognise that the fight for social and economic rights is often intimately linked to the fight against the monopolisation of resources by 'networks of patronage'. Corruption perpetuates discrimination, prevents the full realisation of economic, social and cultural rights, and leads to the infringement of several civil and political rights. In a move that acknowledged the fact that corruption is a pervasive problem in Africa, the African Union (AU) adopted the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (AU Convention or Convention) in July 2003. This Convention is yet to enter into force. Likewise, in Nigeria and South Africa, the governments are on renewed campaigns against corruption using anti-corruption legislative and institutional frameworks. These anti-corruption legislation mainly address corruption by criminaliszing it. This is mainly because the phenomenon of corruption is being approached from an economic or pollitical viewpoint. No doubt criminal anti-corruption legislation and institutions are necessary, but this dissertation seeks to evaluate them in terms of their relative or possible successes and challlenges, especially in cases of widespread societal corruption. The premise of this disseration is that from a preliminary assessment, it would seem that the law is losing ground in the battle against corruption. It thus posits that the effectiveness of the law in the fight against corruption will continue to diminish if it fails to addres the social and economic factors that cause the initial problematic behaviour. Presently, the law concentrates on merely proscribing and punishing corruption. It is not being used to address the social and economic conditions that perpetuate corruption, hence, its ineffectiveness especially in cases where the incidence of corruption is so high as to be classified as systemic. In these situations, mere legislative and institutional responses may not suffice as anti-corruption measures. The underlying catalysts for such a hihg degree of corruption - the social and economic injustices resulting in a cyclical reproduction of corruption - are usually not addressed by these responses. In addition, these responses tend to underrate the need to empower those who are at the receiving end of corruption. They thereby concentrate solely on the empowerment of institutional machineries in the fight against corruption. This is the premise upon which this dissertation is built: the need to transcend the tratidional responses to corruption in a manner which hopes that by empowering people using a human rights approach, the underlying causes of systemic corruption may be reduced. Then, perhaps, the society would have discovered a veritable anti-corruption tool. ... This dissertation consists of five chapters. Chapter one provides the general introduction into the study. Chapter two then analyses the phenomenon of corruption and its impact on human rights in Africa. This analysis focuses on case studies and situations in Africa. Chapter three follows with an appraisal of the AU Convention and anti-corruption initiatives in Nigeria and South Africa. This appraisal begins with highlights of the normative framework of the Convention and goes on to assess the impact of such frameworks in the two countries under focus where they are already largely being implemented. Chapter four thereafter introduces a two-pronged human rights approach to combating corruption. This approach consists of a reinforcement of the guarantee of human rights, as well as the proposal for a freedom from corruption as human right. Chapter five consists of conclusion and recommendations." -- Introduction. / Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Angelo Matusse at the Faculdade de Direito, Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, Maputo, Mocambique / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2005. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

"By promoting and defending human rights and freedoms, by promoting the participation of African civil society in the implementation of the policies and programmes of the African Union (AU), and by forging greater partnership between social and professional groups and governments, the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) will play a critical role in the promotion and protection of human rights in Africa. However, it is far from clear how this important organ is related to human rights organs of the AU which includes the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (the African Commission), the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights (the African Court) and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (Committee of Experts). How can effective relationships between ECOSOCC on the one hand, and these human rights organs on the other, be achieved for the realisation of the human rights mandate of ECOSOCC? ... The essay comprises five chapters. Chapter one is [an] introduction and begins by posing the research question and the justification for the research. Chapter two gives the introduction of ECOSOCC, its background, structure and mandates and looks into the satutes of ECOSOCC, its draft rules of procedure and its strategic plan for the years 2005-2007. Chapter three makes a comparative analysis with other regional human rights sytems, namely the Council of Europe and the Organisation of American States as a point of inspiration for the African system. Under chapter four, the research discusses and analyses the possible relationships and coordinative mechanisms ECOSOCC can create with the human rights organs of the African Union in order to fulfil its human rights mandate. Chapter five makes a conclusion and concrete recommendations." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2006. / Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Alejandro Lorite Escorihuela at the Faculty of Law, American University in Cairo, Egypt / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

"The OAU was a state-centric system. It is only in the last years of its existence and in the transition from the OAU to the AU that discussions on modalities for facilitating civil society participation in its activiites commenced. The AU Act emphasises the need to build partnerships between governments and all sectors of civil society. Enhancing civil society participation is one of the AU's objectives and principles. To achieve this objective, the AU Act created the Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC) as an AU organ. ... Following this introductory chapter, the second chapter will analyse ECOSOCC's legal framework and structure in relation to its facilitation of civil society participation in the AU. ECOSOCC's legal framework's conceptualisation of civil society and the concerns it raises will be discussed. Linked to the conceptualisation of civil society is the role ECOSOCC will play within the AU institutional structure, therefore this will also be discussed. In addition, ECOSOCC's legal framework will be analysed to identify whether it is in line with associative or deliberative democarcy. An examination of how ECOSOCC can utilise its linkages with the other AU organs to channel civil society's views will also be carried out. The discussion of the ESC and UN ECOSOC and the lessons to be learnt from them will be done in the third chapter. The fourth chapter will set out the study's conclusions and recommendations." -- Introduction / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2006. / Prepared under the supervision of Mr. Mohamed Habib at the Faculty of Law, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Thesis advisor: Jennifer Erickson / What explains why international and regional organizations in some cases choose to cooperate during peacekeeping operations, while in other cases find themselves competing for resources and control? This thesis seeks to explain variation in coordination, competition, and cooperation between international and regional organizations in the area of peacekeeping. In the post-Cold War era, a number of factors—including the proliferation of increasingly capable organizational actors, expansion of mandated tasks, and increasing complexity of conflict—have led to the development of an international peacekeeping “regime complex.” This complex is characterized by multiple international institutions that exhibit overlapping membership, are actively involved in matters of peace and security, and are connected by normative and operative interaction, both official and ad hoc. In some cases, this complex functions smoothly, while in others, it does not. By examining materialist, dependency, and identity factors at work in the peacekeeping regime complex, this thesis explores institutional interaction and the drivers of both rivalry and collaboration in the context of four cases: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Mali, and Somalia. I hypothesize that organizations will cooperate when they hold complementary understandings of their roles within the peacekeeping regime complex, but will compete when these identities clash and overlap. Understanding these dynamics will not only lead to recommendations for more effective and efficient peacekeeping operations, but also contribute more generally to the growing theoretical field of regime complexity in international relations. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Scholar of the College. / Discipline: International Studies.

<p>The African Union (AU) is the continent-wide project for economic and political integration in Africa. It takes inspiration from the European Union (EU), where two major problems could be discerned. Firstly, the European and the African context differ from each other, economically,socially and politically. Secondly, the EU itself has been criticized for legitimacy problems,including ineffective decision-making processes, not satisfying tasks for the European Parliament (EP), and low voter turnout in the elections to the EP. Thus, it is interesting to ask whether it ispossible to create a legitimate African Union with the objectives to unite and strengthen the African continent through political and economic actions, when it takes inspiration from a quasisupranational organization which operates in a different political setting, and whose legitimacy hasbeen highly questioned.</p><p>The purpose of this paper was to examine and discuss whether the AU faces legitimacy problems,and if it does, what kind of legitimacy-problems? To specify the purpose, three questions were posed:</p><p>What is the status of the process of making the Pan-African Parliament (PAP) a legislativeand popularly authorized organ?</p><p>What are the AU's ambitions and means for building a common African identity?</p><p>How is the AU financed, and what can be said about the economy's effect on the AU'scapacity to perform effectively?</p><p>The conclusions show that the AU seems to be facing legitimacy problems. Firstly, a legislative organ is important in this kind of organization, and in order to be a legitimate legislative organ it is important to have the representatives elected by the people. The project of transforming the PAPinto a legislative organ has started, but to let the people elect their representatives to the PAP has notyet been provided for. Secondly, it seems like the AU have problems concerning funding. The basic means for funding the AU is through member-state contributions, and the AU suffers from outstanding payments, delayed payments, and some also argues that the member-state contributions are too small. This is a major obstacle for the union's development, since a weak economy willhinder the AU institutions' performance. The AU also stands before a huge task of creating a sharedAfrican identity – that is, creating the African demos. The ambitions for carrying out this project are expressed in different AU-documents, and the PAP have a great role in this project. Although, tostudy how this project is going was not a part of this paper's purpose and is left for further research.</p>

The formation of the African Union (AU) holds great promise for Africa with regard to development. It also brings a new dimension to human rights in Africa, with the creation of the African Court. However, the OAUs legacy of human rights supervision and the development of democracy lacks in many areas. Europe, however, has manifested itself into an entity capable of trans-border cooperation and has been able to sustain this over a long period of time. What the OAU has accomplished in this regard is not compatible with the current status of international law theory and practise. There is a need then for change in these areas, and what better opportunity is there, than for a new dispensation in regional governance to apply to relevant policies and programmes to effect this change? This dissertation will endeavour to present a study of how the European legacy in Africa worked to the latter's detriment over the past five or six decades since decolonisation. Yet, there are lessons that may be learnt from Europe's unification that can be successfully implemented in Africa. Further, by analysing the weaknesses of Africa's current system of human rights supervision, and rectifying or reforming them, much may be accomplished in the advancement of the system. Therefore reformation of the system will be discussed at length. However, the success of the system will be evidenced by the commitment of its component members. Thus far the status quo in Africa reflects unwillingness on the part of the state to surrender its sovereignty. This was one of the reasons for the impotence of the OAU. Will the AU be able to overcome this condition? The onus remains on the state to shore up their commitments to the treaties which they have ratified, and to deliver on the promises they have made, because there are solutions, and whether or not they are implemented ultimately depends on the AU. / Thesis (LL.M.)-University of Natal, 2003.