Introductory Note

Abstract

As far as admissibility is concerned, the African Court in 2019 started reversing its generous approach to applicants in determining a “reasonable period” in submitting cases to it after exhaustion of local remedies. The Court clarified that a UN Human Rights Committee finding on a matter that is substantially similar to an application before the Court renders the application inadmissible. The year saw increased politicisation of the Court, with a number of applications for provisional measures pertaining to elections and by or on behalf of political leaders reaching the Court, in particular from Côte d’Ivoire and Benin. The Court delivered a number of landmark merits decisions. It found that the mandatory nature of the imposition of the death penalty violated the African Charter guarantee against arbitrary derivation of the right to life, and that the method of implementing violated the right to dignity and the prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. Almost all decisions on the merits and reparations during 2019 were against Tanzania. The increasing financial and institutional played a role in Tanzania on 21 November 2019 withdrawing its declaration accepting direct individual access to the Court. However, the amount of reparations required by Tanzania is much less that the USD 110 million reparations the Court ordered Benin to pay in a single case. Another striking feature of the Court’s jurisprudence in 2019 is a number of pointed dissenting and separate opinions.