The African Union Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls

The role of regional international human rights instruments in the protection and promotion of human rights is remarkable in the sense that the treaties have significantly and immensely contributed to important changes in the laws of many countries. This chapter looks into three regional human rights instruments, namely the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950; the Inter American Convention on Human Rights, 1969 and the African Charter on Human and People's Rights, 1981 and examines (a) the circumstances leading to the establishment of the regional human rights enforcement mechanisms; (b) the nature and scope of rights & guarantees and (c) safeguarding procedures under these instruments. It examines whether the enforcement mechanisms are, consistent with State sovereignty, and whether they are gradually enhancing the promotion of fundamental human rights and freedoms. Keywords: African Charter on Human and People's Rights; enforcement mechanisms; European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms; Inter American Convention on Human Rights; promotion of human rights; protection of human rights; regional human rights instruments; state sovereignty

This article is the theoretical introduction to a special issue which marks a first attempt at a regime-level comparative analysis of the three main regional human rights courts and commissions (the European, Inter-American Court, and the African Courts and Commissions). It does so with the aim of identifying and explaining the convergences and divergences of human rights institutionalization in different regions. The symposium fits within the wider research agenda of “comparative international law” and aims to contribute, particularly, to the comparative study of international human rights law and its institutions. The symposium offers a distinct contribution to comparative international human rights law in three different ways. First, it goes beyond the binary form that is prevalent in comparative human rights law scholarship that most often juxtaposes (selected elements of) the European and Inter-American human rights regimes, and less frequently the African-Inter-American, or African-European human rights regimes. It broadens the inquiry into a triangular analysis, while not foreclosing further future broadening, notably with regard to other emerging regional or subregional human rights regimes. Second, the symposium goes beyond existing scholarship on regional comparison that has been largely descriptive in character, often focusing on identifying either formal textual similarities and differences or similarities or differences with respect to the interpretation of a particular right. The authors in this symposium all take a holistic approach to regional human rights regimes and offer comparisons over time that go both beyond formalist or single-issue analysis, using both legal and extralegal sources. They further seek to not only identify but also explain the divergences and convergences among regional regimes. Third, different from existing scholarship” to “Third, in contrast to existing scholarship on international human rights, we collectively theorize regional human rights regimes as part of a more general global evolution of law and institutions. That is, the symposium is interested in not only the usual markers of comparative law, those of textual and case law analysis, but also how the three key regional human rights courts and commissions are inscribed in a broader development of regional and international law since the aftermath of the World War II.

The issue of human rights protection has become one of the leading topics of scientific discussions. In jurisprudence, guarantees of inalienable rights and tools for their protection have been widely covered. At the same time, there is a need for a more in-depth analysis of certain problematic issues, one of which may be the problem of international legal protection of certain groups of persons. This study is based on the main acts of international law in the field of human rights. At the same time, attention should be paid to the lack of scientific analysis of systems of international legal protection of the rights of special groups of persons at the regional and global level.The purpose of this publication was to carry out a comprehensive analysis of the system of international legal protection of human rights of certain groups of people at the global (UN system) and regional level.Today’s crisis phenomena focus the attention of scientists on the need for further improvement of both the regional and global system of human rights protection. The role of international organizations and civil society in solving global problems of maintaining international peace and security, environmental protection, human rights and democracy in the implementation of the sustainable development program has significantly increased. In the light of the new requirements, the legal base and codification of the norms of international law have significantly expanded. All these factors determined a more detailed coverage of the content of the branches of international law, the interaction of their norms with the norms of domestic law, implementation in the practice of states and international organizations.International legal documents in the field of protection of certain groups at the UN and regional level will be constantly reviewed and improved. The advantage of regional norms and systems for the protection of human rights is that they are created taking into account geographical, historical, political, cultural and social characteristics.

It is commendable that undoubted resource constraints 1 have not impeded continual positive developments in the African regional human rights system. Generally, these developments have been in the spheres of standard-setting (i.e. normative development), case law (i.e. jurisprudential development) and enforcement mechanisms (i.e. institutional development). It has been observed in respect of these three spheres that ‘Africa's regional human rights architecture grew in 2002’. 2 Since then, there have been further positive normative, jurisprudential and institutional developments within the African human rights system. This article will critically analyse some of the developments in each of these three spheres for 2003. In the sphere of normative developments, three relevant standard-setting instruments are herein highlighted for their importance. The first is a treaty which was at the final stage of adoption in 2002: the African Union (AU) Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption (CPCC). 3 The Convention was approved by the ministerial conference convened to examine it in 2002, but its final adoption by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government (AHSG) of the AU was put forward to 2003. The final adoption of the CPCC was achieved at the second Ordinary Session of the AHSG in Maputo on 11 July 2003. Given that corruption is one of the major endemic obstacles hindering the realisation of human rights in Africa, especially economic, social and cultural rights, the final adoption of this anti-corruption convention is a very welcome development. The chairperson of the ministerial conference in 2002 described the CPCC as being ‘at the cutting edge of combating corruption’ in Africa. 4 However, much still depends on how quickly the CPCC will enter into force and its effective implementation thereafter. It shall enter into force ‘thirty (30) days after the date of the deposit of the fifteenth instrument of ratification or accession’. 5 So far, it has been ratified by only six Member States. 6

The deliberation on a Southeast Asian human rights regime dates back to the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. From then, the emergence of an idea on regional institutional human rights development arose to address the absence of human rights mechanisms in the region. This chapter offers a critical analysis on the human rights institutional development in ASEAN. The initial focus of the chapter is on illustrating the step by step progress toward the establishment of an ASEAN human rights institution. This progress will lead to the understanding of how the demand for a human rights institution has been made by ASEAN. The arguments here are supported by the analysis of the Joint Communiqués of the ASEAN Ministerial Meetings (AMM) from 1993 to 2010 and the Workshop statements of the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism (Working Group) which documents ASEAN elite’s official speeches and opinions. The analysis on this point demonstrates ASEAN’s attempt to build regional agents in terms of human rights. The principal-agent theory is applied to offer understanding on the logical relationship between member states (principal) and regional human rights institutions (agent). Institutional theory is applied with respect to the second point of this analysis, which is to scrutinize the creation of a human rights institution known as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR). The functions of the AICHR are illustrated through an investigation of its mandates, work plans and statements of meetings since the year of establishment to clarify why regional human rights institutions have been vital and particularly how the AICHR has expanded its role and power over time to increasingly improve human rights in ASEAN.KeywordsHuman rightsRegional institutional developmentASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR)Principal-agent theory

It is sometimes argued that human rights have been imposed on the rest of the world by Western countries. To rebut this argument, the first part of this article considers the history of human rights discourse in Africa and its role in the struggle against colonialism. Since independence many regional human rights instruments have been adopted, often as a response to developments in the global arena. The second part of the article examines this regionalization of universal human rights norms and also takes note of unique features of the African normative human rights framework and areas where Africa has taken the lead in developing an international framework. The article explores to what extent the African Union (‘AU’) and its predecessor the Organization of African Unity (‘OAU’) have responded to African challenges in devising the African regional human rights system and how the often vague provisions of the main regional human rights treaty, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (‘ACHPR’ or ‘the Charter’), have been interpreted by the major regional human right body, the African Commission.The final part of this article considers challenges and innovations in regional monitoring of compliance with international human rights norms. The proliferation of various monitoring bodies is considered in the context of the lack of adequate response to human rights at the national level in African countries and the lack of political commitment at the regional level. Note is also taken of the fledgling developments at the sub-regional level.

The right to enjoying the highest attainable standard of health is incorporated in many international and regional human rights instruments. This right contains both freedoms and entitlements, including the freedom to control one's own health and body and the right to an accessible system of health care, goods and services. Both aspects of the right to health – freedoms and entitlements – have important cultural dimensions. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has for instance stated that the right to health implies that health facilities, goods and services must be culturally appropriate, in other words respectful of the culture of individuals and communities. At the same time, it should be noted that culture and health may have a problematic relationship. Cultural patterns, attitudes or stereotypes may severely limit the health freedoms of people or may prevent certain people from accessing health care. Furthermore, there are some cultural or traditional practices that are condoned but that are very harmful to people's health. It seems that international human rights law demands respect for the cultural dimensions of the right to health, while at the same time requiring protection of the right to health against negative aspects of cultures. How does this work out in practice? What does the concept of "culturally appropriate" health goods and services mean at the national level? Who decides on what is or is not culturally appropriate? How have international supervisory bodies elaborated on the freedoms and entitlements of the right to health and the obligations for States Parties to the treaties in relation to the cultural dimensions of the right to health? This article analyses several treaty provisions and the interpretation of these provisions by the treaty monitoring bodies. Apart from several UN treaties, several regional treaties in Africa are dealt with, notably the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. The article concludes that various cultural dimensions of the right to health are recognised and elaborated upon in recommendations by treaty monitoring bodies both at UN and African level. These bodies have endorsed the idea that health facilities, goods and services must be respectful of the culture of individuals, peoples and communities. At the same time, the right to health should be protected against the negative impact that cultural values, patterns or practices may have, such as on access to health goods and services and on the health of people as such. The latter issue has received most attention at the UN as well as at African level, and there appears to be a clear consensus on several practices that are considered harmful. It is also realised, however, that the identification of a certain practice as harmful by an international body, even if agreed to by the State Party, is not sufficient to eradicate it. Cultural communities are crucial in promoting social and behavioural changes that may be needed to eradicate harmful practices. It is therefore important to involve the cultural communities concerned in the drafting, implementation and evaluation of health laws and policies. This could be more emphasised by the monitoring bodies. The involvement of the cultural community is also crucial to respecting and promoting the more positive cultural dimensions of the right to health. By consulting the cultural communities and individuals concerned, States can implement the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health in a culturally sensitive, appropriate and responsible way.

Regional human rights mechanism are now in place covering nearly all five continents with the notable exception of Australia. Regional and international human rights protection are not meant to thwart each other. On the contrary, the regional protection of human rights is intended to back up and strengthen the international one by translating human rights into local languages and supporting them with additional protective mechanisms like commissions and courts that enforce regional human rights documents. In this volume, five experts from various continents will introduce regional human rights protection systems in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America and Australia providing an overview of the regional protections vis-à-vis the international one and then contextualising it in specific country context.

This chapter discusses regional systems of human rights protection. The complementary nature of these systems to the efforts of the UN is discussed. However, there is also competition. This chapter maps the regional human rights treaties and declarations in different parts of the world and compares their scope with the International Bill of Rights, composed of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The regional human rights institutions are also discussed. The interpretive tools adopted by regional human rights bodies are considered. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the future prospects for interaction between regional and UN human rights institutions, in particular, in light of the recent developments that have been undertaken by the League of Arab States and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Regional human rights courts like the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR), and the African Court of Human and People's Rights (ACtHPR) have become popular sites of mobilization for victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home. Besides being platforms for individual remedy, human rights courts increasingly shape social norms and state policy within countries, making them attractive avenues for rights advocates to develop new norms or to push domestic authorities to reform legislation. The judges of these courts can decide, for example, whether same-sex couples have a right to be married, if prisoners have the right to vote or receive HIV/AIDS treatment, or when a state can deport illegal immigrants to a country where they will likely be tortured. As these courts pass their judgments, they often find themselves in conflict with states that are violating human rights of marginalized groups on a large scale and are unwilling to implement international rulings. Although international human rights courts have become increasingly popular venues among victims and activists who seek justice when justice fails at home, we are only beginning to understand how activists play roles in shaping the development of regional human rights courts' case law—the body of judgments that shapes how judges will make their decisions in the future. We now have plenty of international relations and international legal research on the interactions between states and international courts: how judges in these courts wrestle between deferring to the interests of member state governments whose actions are on trial and sticking closely to the conventions' fundamental yet evolving principles (Alter et al., 2019; Helfer & Voeten, 2014). As some states begin to resist international courts' authority, scholars have begun to examine the dynamics of this backlash (Hillebrecht, 2022; Madsen et al., 2018; Sandholtz et al., 2018). Recent studies have also demonstrated that human rights advocates—whether NGOs or individual lawyers—have a significant impact on shaping the jurisprudence of international courts and the impact judgments have in concrete locations (Kahraman, 2018; Sundstrom, 2014; van der Vet, 2012; Kurban, 2020; Conant, 2018; Harms, 2021; Cichowski, 2016; Hodson, 2011; Haddad, 2018). Meanwhile, these advocates themselves have been subject to repression and stigmatization by governments as part of the backlash phenomenon. Without an adequate understanding of the factors shaping activists' engagement with international courts, we risk undervaluing their strategic impact on the expansion of case law, the human rights protection of marginalized groups who cannot find remedies at home, and the domestic implementation of these judgments in an age of state backlash. In this section, we summarize the three papers contained in this symposium and their original contributions to these themes. Over the last decade, dozens of countries have erected legal barriers or started vilifying campaigns to stymie the work of NGOs (Buyse, 2018; Chaudhry, 2022). One tactic in this toolkit is the enactment of burdensome regulation on NGOs that receive funds from foreign donors as they allegedly promote foreign agendas (Christensen & Weinstein, 2013; Dupuy et al., 2021). States that frequently abuse human rights are especially prone to target NGOs that engage in strategic litigation (Hillebrecht, 2019). Most NGOs depend on foreign funding, and NGOs that litigate international cases fall disproportionately in this category, but do funders affect the selection of cases? In “Foreign Agents or Agents of Justice? Private Foundations, NGO Backlash, and International Human Rights Litigation,” Heidi Haddad and Lisa Sundstrom examine the extent to which Western donors, particularly private foundations, have encouraged NGOs in Europe to litigate at the ECtHR as a human rights advocacy strategy. They examine overall patterns of donor funding and NGO litigation records, and look in more detail at the case of Russian NGOs' foreign funding and litigation records. The analysis is extremely timely, as the Russian government's criminalization of independent civil society actors, especially in the human rights field, and their accusation that foreign funding turns NGOs into “foreign agents” have been crucial elements of the Russian regime's autocratization. This claim has also provided fuel for Russia's disenchantment with the ECtHR in recent years, contributing to the assessment of many observers that Russia's full-scale attack on Ukraine was the last straw in an inevitable collision course leading to its exit from the Council of Europe. Haddad and Sundstrom debunk the idea that foreign donors are pushing NGOs toward strategies of human rights litigation. Instead, they argue, there is more evidence that NGOs themselves promoted the mechanism of international litigation as a strategy that donors later adopted. This article is a poignant reminder of the advocacy tools that Russian human rights activists and citizens have lost as a result of their government's departure from the Council of Europe, including ECtHR jurisdiction. Yet it also provides insight into the likely roles of foreign donors in other country cases where NGOs are using international court litigation as a human rights advocacy strategy, which is often a target of the ire of national governments, as explored in the next article in the symposium. When states attack human rights NGOs within their borders and/or international human rights courts themselves, how does this affect the willingness of those NGOs to take cases to international courts, and the ways in which they do so? De Silva and Plagis ask this question in their article about state backlash against NGOs in the case of Tanzania and the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights. A fascinating empirical question they pose is: does state backlash against NGOs increase NGO litigation at international courts (to contest state repression at those courts and use international mechanisms when domestic ones are not available), roughly in line with Keck and Sikkink's famous “boomerang pattern” (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), or decrease it due to heightened fear and restricted NGO capabilities that state repression creates? Employing a process-tracing analysis of NGOs' involvement in three cases before the African Court at different stages of the Tanzanian government's backlash against the Court, De Silva and Plagis find that “two-level backlash” by states can result in both phenomena, either promoting or deterring NGO legal mobilization at international human rights courts, depending on certain conditions. The three selected cases concerning the death penalty, the rights of persons with albinism, and the rights of pregnant schoolgirls and mothers, which took place at different time periods, demonstrate a number of patterns of state backlash interacting with NGO strategies. The authors find that domestic-level state backlash deterred domestic NGOs from partnering with international NGOs in litigation, but that such backlash, when it repressed domestic political and legal mobilization opportunities, actually encouraged both Tanzanian and international NGOs to turn to the African Court more frequently to seek remedies. International-level backlash in turn only deterred NGOs from international litigation when such backlash consisted of state efforts to restrict NGOs' ability to engage in litigation, and not when the international backlash was in the form of routine noncompliance with African Court rulings. Importantly, the authors find that NGO responses to state backlash were significantly shaped by their degree of legal consciousness and expertise with the rules, proceedings, and workings of the African Court. Those NGOs with less knowledge and experience were more likely to back away from engaging with the Court under the pressure of state backlash. De Silva and Plagis conclude that “NGOs' persistent human rights advocacy in the face of state backlash is a double-edged sword,” in the sense that they may not be deterred by state backlash initially, but there is a danger that their continued determination to engage in international litigation could prompt governments to engage in even more severe forms of backlash, with critical impacts on international courts and already vulnerable human rights defenders. Rights advocates have a growing menu of institutions and courts available to them. How do activists choose at which institution to lodge their cases in a world where legal remedies have diversified, or as some have argued, fragmented (Koskenniemi & Leino, 2002)? In “What Makes an International Institution Work for Labor Activists? Shaping International Law through Strategic Litigation,” Filiz Kahraman goes beyond the tendency of legal mobilization studies to only examine how activists interact with a single court or institution. Instead, Kahraman opens up how rights advocates imagine which institution is most receptive to their claims. Drawing on a comparative interview study of British and Turkish trade union activists and their legal mobilization campaigns at international courts and quasi-judicial institutions like the International Labor Organization (ILO), Kahraman examines how activists first probe and then strategically identify which court or international institution is most susceptible to their primary goals of influencing structural reforms and setting new norms. Through this probing process—or dynamic signaling game between courts and litigants—activists push a court's jurisprudence and case law into new issue areas. For instance, at the ECtHR, Turkish trade unionists challenged domestic courts' ruling that public sector workers did not have the right to establish unions, even though the ECtHR had no established case law on labor rights in 1990s. They won the case, with the ECtHR finding that Turkey violated the right of public sector workers to unionize. These cases not only had an impact within Turkey, but over the next decades, similar cases brought by British unionists would spin off the early precedent set by the Turkish legal mobilization efforts. Kahraman argues that they ultimately pushed the ECtHR to recognize the basic trade union rights as fundamental human rights. Kahraman sheds light on the often hidden strategies behind international litigation. Activists litigate not just for the immediate impact on the current case they work on, but how they envision that all the cases they work on may shape norms and domestic structural reforms further in the future. Whether an institution is perceptive of claims lies in the eye of the beholder. Kahraman finds that besides targeting institutions with high compliance rates, they also take cases to institutions with low rates of compliance, especially “if these institutions have extensive judicial authority to create new international norms.” So, it is not the de jure protection set by an international courts, but rather how activists perceive the juridical responsiveness and judicial authority of courts—or, how judges adopt either an activist approach or restraint in response to incoming cases and how willing states are to implement cases of a court, respectively—that determines why activists select certain courts or quasi-judicial institutions (like the ILO). Kahraman gives us new tools to interpret how activists perceive authority and receptiveness and respond to opportunities. Rather than static external legal remedies, courts and quasi-judicial institutions are opportunity structures that are malleable to the strategic vision of the activist or litigant. The articles in this symposium together reveal a number of key overlapping insights. At the broadest level, they demonstrate that activists' behaviors and strategies influence international courts' jurisprudence, politics within states, and the human rights outcomes of everyday citizens—and these influences have often been hidden in our existing canon of research on international courts. In addition, all of these articles show that, while activists may face challenges in their efforts, often including significant backlash from their home state governments, they also continue to retain significant agency through their creative efforts to develop legal strategies and circumvent state repression. Activists perennially innovate: sparking the ideas that inspire donors who fund them; calculating how to continue their litigation work when government actors threaten them; and taking risks in litigation to push courts to expand how they define human rights. However, along with these uplifting conclusions, there are worrying patterns that demand future research. States are increasingly pushing back against the powers of international courts to bind them to costly measures, and as this symposium has shown, national governments often point to activists as contributors to this “problem” of invasive international human rights standards. A growing body of research has tracked how human rights defenders of all kinds globally are under threat from actors like governments and corporations who disagree with their contentious actions. We need more studies that gather comprehensive data and systematically track these threats, specifically with regard to activists who engage in international human rights litigation. We suspect that such activists are likely disproportionately targeted due to the international visibility of their complaints. We also desperately need research into possible innovative responses to these threats to activists—responses from activists, funders, governments of countries that support human rights, and international courts themselves. Freek van der Vet is a University Researcher at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki and the principal investigator of the Toxic Crimes Project. Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom is Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. She is the director of the ActinCourts network at UBC and conducts research on legal mobilization by Russian activists.

ABSTRACTThis article argues that reports from election observation missions can constitute evidence and shows that they are occasionally being used as evidence when regional human rights bodies are resolving human rights cases that deal with elections. The practice has so far been confined to regional human rights jurisprudence. Between 1998 and April 2016, election observation mission reports have been used in a total of 16 cases brought before regional human rights courts and commissions. The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have each used mission reports once, while the main bulk of practice has emerged in the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). I will argue that so far, the jurisprudence indicates three different usages of election mission reports: (1) as facts in the circumstances of the case; (2) as corroborative or indirect evidence; and (3) as direct evidence that is conclusive for the resolution of the case. Furthermore, there is an emerging dialogue between the ECtHR and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe–Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR), particularly with regards to the election observation missions that concern Article 3 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights. This indicates that there may be a new function for mission reports in human rights law, particularly in Europe.

The article discusses the features of building a regional Islamic human rights system in the context of the universal trend towards the regionalization of human rights systems of our time. It is stated that the presence and effective functioning of regional human rights systems significantly enhance the accessibility of human rights protection, as well as the promotion of the convergence of national legal and judicial systems. In this regard, attempts to build a regional Islamic human rights system, the historical trajectories of which are examined in detail in the publication, are considered not to be a kind of “formal reply” to the global community, but a reflection of a true desire to construct a unique supranational human rights protection system in the face of conflicting specifics of national law, deeply riddled with religious doctrine.

This chapter delves into the issue of possible interactions concerning freedom of expression standards between the global and the regional levels. The continuing development and interpretation of human rights norms on these two levels poses questions of coherence. The chapter conducts a case study in order to assess whether there is a (quasi-)judicial dialogue between both levels. Specifically, the norm of freedom of expression contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as interpreted by the UN Human Rights Committee, is compared with the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. This specific comparison has been chosen because the Strasbourg system is usually considered to be the most developed and detailed in the sense of norm-interpretation and therefore provides the greatest chance of conducting a viable comparison with the UN level. The chapter also includes a short comparison with the American and African regional human rights systems in this respect. Does the one explicitly refer to the interpretations of the other and vice versa or is any guidance only taken up implicitly? Can either of the two be seen as trend-setters or rather as followers and is there coherence between the two levels of norm-interpretation? These are some of the questions that are addressed in the present chapter.

Regional inter-governmental human rights organizations have been in operation for sometime in Europe, the Americas and Africa. These regional human rights mechanisms have proven to be useful and effective in comparison to the global human rights mechanisms available at the United Nations. The purpose of this study, first published in 2004, is to investigate the possibility of establishing a regional inter-governmental human rights mechanism in East Asia, with a focus on the contributions of nongovernmental organizations' (NGOs) to such a development.

This article explores the relatively underutilised state resocialisation obligation contained in global and African regional human rights law. This obligation is critical because it requires states to address and modify the underlying socio-cultural norms and practices that form the root causes of gender inequality. Using the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women as its point of departure, this article compares article 5(a) of CEDAW with the resocialisation provisions contained in the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. The purpose is to demonstrate the utility of resocialisation as an obligation, as well as the (in)adequate understanding of and engagement by states and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights with this obligation. This analysis demonstrates the crucial role that resocialisation as an obligation plays in the realisation of the substantive rights of women. It draws on the African Charter and the African Women's Protocol to highlight several resocialisation provisions that give rise to state obligations, embedding resocialisation as a precursor to substantive gender equality within the African regional human rights law framework. A feminist lens is employed to consider the key resocialisation provisions contained in CEDAW, the African Charter and the African Women's Protocol, with the overall aim of delineating the obligations on states to modify the underlying socio-cultural determinants to gender inequality, violence and discrimination, as provided for by the various resocialisation provisions discussed. What is expected of states in terms of this obligation is then contrasted with existing practice to demonstrate the necessity of enhancing capacity to engage with resocialisation as an obligation. The underlying assumption of this article is that unless states implement resocialisation to address the root causes of gender inequality, the transformative potential of global and African regional human rights will not be realised.