On Monday morning, an IRC colleague and I drove to the Sengekoro PHU in Nimikoro Chiefdom.  It’s approximately a forty-five minute drive from our base in Koidu Town, down the highway with its broken concrete, past the mounds of sand and gravel of the diamond mines and then down a gutted dirt road that winds through thick, green bush.  The Sengekoro PHU is a humble four room building, and its staff currently serve 1,152 people in eight surrounding villages.  In previous years it served 4,064 people in 18 villages, but a new PHU has opened up nearby and the catchment area has been divided between them. 

In Sengekoro I meet Mabinty Samawaty, the Mother and Child Health (MCH) Aide.  Mabinty is assisted by Sahr H. Simbo, the volunteer vaccinator who administers vaccines to children under five and their mothers.  Mabinty also oversees 15 Community Based Distributors (CBDs), also volunteers, who monitor children under five in their communities for pneumonia, malaria (“fever” or “warm bodi”) and diarrhea (“ron belle”), three of the main causes of death in children under five.  When sick children are identified, the CBDs provide first line treatment and monitor the child’s progress.  If the child’s condition worsens, the CBD makes sure the mother takes the child to the PHU for further treatment.     

According to the MCH in-charge and new mothers I talk to in surrounding communities, the use of CBDs has improved child health in the Sengekoro PHU’s catchment area, as well as in the catchment areas of the 19 other PHUs with similar programs.  Previously, many mothers found it difficult to carry their children to the PHUs for treatment; most communities lack vehicle transport so mothers may have to walk for an hour or more down rough roads to access a health facility.  The CBDs provide free care in the communities themselves.  IRC has worked with these communities to select, train and support the CBDs, and last year the National Ministry of Health and Sanitation chose the program to scale up throughout the country.         

 

I was in the IRC office in Koidu Town, Kono Wednesday morning when I heard members of management talking about unrest among youths in the center of the town.  At a staff meeting that morning, the field coordinator announced that gangs of young people were blockading one of the main arteries of the town in protest against the government's refusal to allow them access to a sand tailing that many thought contained diamonds.  The youths claim that the government promised them access to this tailing during the last election. 

Around lunch time the situation had not improved and there were rumors that some youths had stolen a gun from one of the police officers trying to control the situation.  My coworkers began to head home just in case the situation worsened, and my housemates and I called a friend of ours out in the field close to the mining areas to tell her to head back to town and to our house.  When she arrived she reported that police were lining the highway and the main town roads and were heavily armed.

We spent the afternoon and evening in the housing compound, and this morning we were told that the youths had been dispersed by army reinforcements from the town of Makeni.  We were back at the office today and everything seems quiet.  More information on the events can be found here.

This unrest certainly is not new in Kono, nor is this the worst case in recent memory.  Similar protests took place in Kono in December, also over mining issues.  Property was burnt and destroyed and several residents were killed. 

One of my friends in Sierra Leone has commented that if the country destabilizes again the process will begin in Kono.  The area was hit hard by the war, and most young people lack education and employment opportunities.  As food prices increase and the local government elections in July draw near, tension among these young people is increasing.  When I travel in much of Sierra Leone, I notice the poverty and unemployment, but I also notice the hope among people who are working to rebuild their lives.  I tend to see Sierra Leone as a peaceful country with a promising future.  When I am in Kono, though, I begin to wonder if I am wrong.

Sheila Keetharuth is the Chairperson of the Coalition for an Effective African Court, a loose coalition of national and international NGOs, national human rights bodies and individuals that was founded in 2003 to promote the establishment of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights.  The Coalition was one of the key organizers of the Roundtable on Regional Human Rights Systems in Arusha, Tanzania.  I sat down with Ms. Keetharuth to discuss the conference and the Coalition’s next steps.

Q:  What, in your mind, have been some of the successes of the Roundtable?

A:  The key successes have been the level of dialogue and the calibre of participants who have been engaged with the issues at this conference.  The sessions also allowed us to identify issues that we need to explore further, such as the relationship between the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the regional economic community courts [such as the ECOWAS Court of Justice and the SADC Tribunal].  We also have much to learn from the Inter-American system and the substance of what has been done there.  In all, it was a major success to have participants from the Inter-American system, justices of the African Court, representatives of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and civil society members from across the continent at the conference and engaging with the issues facing the Court.

Q:  What are the Coalition’s next steps as the Court finalizes its rules of procedure and prepares to begin accepting matters?

A:  The Coalition was organized to push for the establishment of the Court first of all by lobbying states to ratify the Protocol [to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights that created the Court.]*  That objective has been achieved.  The Coalition is now establishing a base in Arusha, where the Court is based, to serve as a clearinghouse to assist civil society in accessing the Court.  Communication and travel is difficult across the African continent, so the Coalition will serve as an interface between civil society members and the Court by accessing and relaying documents, information, etc.  When the Court begins accepting matters, the Coalition will also offer a small office space for its members to access in Arusha.  In the long term we want to pursue capacity building activities for members, organize advocacy campaigns and assist those approaching the Court to access pro bono support.

Q:  Is the Coalition still engaged in lobbying states to ratify the Protocol, which establishes the Court’s jurisdiction over the ratifying state parties?

A:  We are continuing to push for ratification.  However, the AU is considering a draft of a new protocol that will merge the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights with the proposed African Court of Justice.  When the new protocol comes into effect the Court will become the African Court of Justice and Human Rights.  Once there is a new protocol, the Coalition will have to formulate a new advocacy message and again lobby states to ratify it.

Q:  What value can be derived from partnerships between practitioners and civil society members accessing the African and Inter-American human rights systems?

A:  There are many similarities between the African and American contexts, both in terms of the continents’ physical and cultural diversity and their histories of political repression and human rights abuses.  There is much we can learn from each other.  For example, earlier at this conference one justice of the African Court stated that the role of the Court would end once a decision was delivered and implementation would be left to the AU Council of Ministers, a political body.  In the Inter-American system, however, files are kept open and the Court conducts follow-up to determine whether the decision has been implemented and reparations made.  This may be something we want to advocate for in the African system.

Q:  What are some of the challenges facing the Coalition at this point in the Court’s development?

A:  The discussion on the merged Court is presenting many challenges.  We do not yet know what the merged Court will look like so it is difficult to formulate a clear and specific advocacy message.  We always have to watch the changing political context.  For now, though, we need to focus on advocating for the Court to begin functioning soon.     

*Note: 15 states were required to ratify the Protocol for it to enter into force.  The protocol was adopted by the AU in 1998 and entered into force in 2004.

 

During the week I sat down with two conference participants to discuss their differing views of the appropriate relationship between courts and commissions in regional human rights systems.  In the African system, cases can be submitted directly to the Court by state parties to the Protocol creating the Court, African intergovernmental bodies, the Commission and individuals and NGOs when the state involved has formerly approved such actions.  In the Inter-American system, cases go first to the Commission, which refers cases to the Court.

The participants are Ibrahim Kane, Focal Point for the African Union (AU) Coalition for an Effective African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and Carlos Ayala, President of the Andean Commission of Jurists and a former commissioner of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights.

Q: Both the Inter-American and African human rights systems are made up of a commission and a court. What do you see as being the proper relationship between the two?

Mr. Kane: The African system has a quasi-judicial body (the African Commission) and a judicial body (the African Court).  Currently, the quasi-judicial body is not very effective: only 14 percent of its decisions have been implemented.  Because of this track record it is important for the continent to have a judicial body that is stronger on enforcement.

The Commission is currently mandated to both promote and protect human rights. It promotes human rights through country visits and fact finding missions, for example.  It protects human rights by hearing and ruling on cases.  The Court, on the other hand, just has a protective mandate.  In my opinion, we need a system that both promotes and protects.  However, when the Court is fully functional, the Commission should assume solely a promotional function and delegate the protective function to the Court.  In practice that would mean that only the Court would hear cases.  The Court’s protective mandate will be enhanced by the merger of the Court with the proposed African Court of Justice.  Under this proposal, the Commission would supplement the work of the Court by undertaking investigations on key human rights issues that could then shed light on cases before the Court.

Mr. Ayala:  From the Inter-American perspective, the Commission has played an important role in protecting human rights.  The Commission does have a vital promotional mandate under which it conducts in-country visits to learn about human rights situations.   It then issues reports that relate its findings and offers recommendations and conclusions.  Because of the combination of facts and recommendations, the reports play both a protective and promotional role with regard to human rights.  Rapporteurs also conduct investigations and are important in bringing human rights issues to the attention of the Commission and the public.

The Commission has also played an important role in hearing cases.  Every year it has over 1,000 cases in process.  In these cases it reviews admissibility and issues a final report on the matter.  When it finds a violation of human rights it refers the matter to the Court.  As the jurisprudence of the Inter-American system has expanded, the number of cases coming before it has increased.  The Court does not have the capacity to review all of the cases itself so the Commission plays a vital screening function.  In addition to reviewing admissibility the Commission will also withhold cases deemed weak or concerning areas in which the Court is not ready to issue progressive jurisprudence.  If the Court were to receive cases directly it would need a significantly enhanced budget of about $100 million USD and a staff of at least 80 lawyers.  [Note: According to the Project on International Courts and Tribunals, in 1998, the Inter-American Court’s budget was 4 percent of its European counterpart’s budget.]

I am in favor of individuals’ access to the Court.  But in Latin America there are so many cases stemming from the number of massive and gross human rights violations on the continent.  There are too many cases for the Court to currently handle given it capacity.  The European Court of Human Rights has faced such a problem as the number of countries under its jurisdiction increased in the 1990s and early 2000s as did the number of cases.

Mr. Kane: It is true that the European system is struggling with the number of matters it receives.  The European Court has a backlog of 60,000 cases.  It is trying to change the rules to limit access, such as only accepting cases that would add to the Court’s jurisprudence, but it is facing resistance from some European countries.

For more blogs on the conference and the African Court in general visit the Global Network for Justice Initiatives.