Africa’s engagement with the universal periodic review: Commitment or capitulation?

Introduction In 2002, Africa’s continental intergovernmental organisation made the transition from the original Organization of African Unity (OAU) to the African Union (AU), promising greater promotion and protection of human rights. This prompted one observer to compare the human rights promises of the AU and its member states to a leopard changing its spots. The solemn declaration in the Constitutive Act of the AU that says it undertakes ‘to promote and protect human and peoples’ rights’ could, he argued, ‘actually provide a cover for Africa’s celebrated dictators to continue to perpetuate human rights abuses’. The fear was that the dawn of the AU as an avowedly pro-human rights regional organisation would deliver only human rights ritualism, providing a camouflage for violations of the very rights that the organisation claims to protect and promote. As if to bear witness to this prospect, the new Chinese-built headquarters of the AU was erected on the site of the former Addis Ababa central prison, popularly known as Alem Bekagn or ‘Farewell to the World’, where thousands of people suffered and died at the hands of their own government in Ethiopia. As the Introduction to this volume notes, ritualism is a concept that designates ‘acceptance of institutionalised means for securing regulatory goals while losing all focus on achieving the goals or outcomes themselves’. Human rights ritualism in Africa is starkly demonstrated by widespread lack of commitment to the regional human rights monitoring mechanism. If African states are genuinely committed to regional human rights norms (which are mostly written in the language of international standards), the least one might hope for is for these states to monitor the degree of domestic compliance (or otherwise) with the AU’s premier human rights instrument, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (‘African Charter’) and report to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (‘African Commission’), its principal human and peoples’ rights monitoring organ. Instead, the ‘non-confrontational and constructive dialogue’ established as the basis of the state reporting procedure of the African Commission has failed; many of the ratifying states have not submitted a single report to date; only one state has submitted a timely report; and most reports lack introspective value, or a willingness to focus on the domestic rights situation and adopt measures to remedy shortcomings that have been identified.