Litigants Group Membership Form

The Litigants Group exists to strengthen the protective mandate of ACHPR by working towards the existence of a functional and effective communications procedure.

To achieve this, we believe that it is critical to attain greater transparency on how the Commission works, greater access to information on the mechanism’s operations, timely finalisation of cases, consistent development of jurisprudence and implementation of the decisions and provisional measures of the Commission.

Over the past 10 years of engaging with the ACHPR’s protective mandate, litigants have identified and documented challenges that hinder the Commission from functioning effectively. These challenges include difficulties in communicating and engaging with the Commission, delays in the communication procedure, lack of information and the seeming inconsistency of the Commission’s jurisprudence. In addition, there is a low level of understanding of the Commission’s Rules of Procedure by many litigants and a general low level of public awareness of the Commission’s protective mandate. This has implications for the overall low number of cases that the Commission has dealt with to date, particularly in light of the scale of the human rights violations committed in Africa, and as compared to other regional mechanisms.

We believe that to ensure a functional and effective ACHPR communications mandate, the Litigants Group has a role to play in advocating for the adoption and implementation of progressive rules of procedure, and resolution of policy, structural, technical and interpretational barriers which impede on the proper functioning of the ACHPR. Further, there is a need to establish, strengthen and clarify ways of engaging the Commission’s secretariat and to clarify the scope and mandate of the ACHPR’s Working Group on Communications (WGC). In addition, the Litigants Group seeks to promote cross-fertilisation between accountability mechanisms to ensure consistency and standard setting in the development of jurisprudence and quality control of the decisions.