Abstract:
In the space of four years, between 2016 and 2020, four of
the ten states that had recognised the jurisdiction of the African Court
on Human and Peoples’ Rights to receive cases directly from individuals
and NGOs withdrew their declarations made under article 34(6) of the
Court Protocol. While this form of contestation is not unprecedented in
the history of states’ behaviour towards international courts, this article
argues that the disengagement from the African Court’s jurisdiction
involves peculiarities that specifically relate to the Court’s system design
and its practice. The main contention in the article is that the declarationbased adherence to the African Court’s jurisdiction is in crisis due to a costbenefit imbalance. The article argues that although all four withdrawals
resulted from decisions of the Court on important and contentious
domestic socio-political issues, systemic features such as the lack of
appeal, an overly restrictive review mechanism and the weak functioning of institutional shields contributed significantly to the withdrawal. The
article also investigates administration of justice and judicial law making
by the Court as factors that contributed to states’ distrust, before
proposing options to curb the crisis and regain state adherence.
Keywords: African Court; article 34(6) declaration; individual access;
indirect access; withdrawal; legitimacy; discontent management; system
design; judicial law making; systemic reforms.
