Kabumba/Application of African Union (human rights) law in Uganda
90
CONTENT:
1
2
Introduction ..................................................................................................................90
A note on methodology and terminology .............................................................. 92
Case identification and data set..............................................................................92
The finer distinctions implicated by the term ‘reference’ ...................................... 93
3
The treatment of AU law in the Ugandan courts ................................................. 93
3.1
The African Union .................................................................................................. 93
3.2
The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.............................................94
3.3
The Protocol to the African Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa.............. 100
3.4
The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance ..........................101
3.5
The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child............................... 102
3.6
The jurisprudence of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights . 102
3.7
Other soft law instruments in the AU system ...................................................... 105
4
Comparative perspectives........................................................................................ 106
4.1
The European Union ........................................................................................... 106
4.2
The East African Community ................................................................................ 115
4.3
Other Regional Economic Communities in Africa............................................... 122
5
6
1
2.1
2.2
Emerging trends regarding the influence of AU law in the Ugandan
legal system ................................................................................................................. 126
Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 130
INTRODUCTION
This article considers the extent to which Ugandan courts have referred
to African Union (AU) law in general, and AU human rights law in
particular. As an initial conceptual point, by ‘AU law’ we refer to the
whole range of normative instruments generated under the auspices of
the AU, that is to say, AU treaties,1 as well as the various decisions of
bodies charged with the interpretation of those instruments. Included
in this conception are also soft law instruments, especially those
directly or indirectly generated by states.2
There is a growing body of scholarship that examines the legal
orders created under the African Union and the continent’s Regional
Economic Communities (RECs).3 There is also some work which
1
2
3
These include the Constitutive Act of the African Union; the African Charter on
Human and Peoples’ Rights; the African Children’s Charter; the Convention on
the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism; the African Convention on the
Conservation of Nature; the Convention on Preventing and Combating
Corruption; the African Youth Charter; and the African Charter on Democracy,
Elections and Governance.
Judge Abdulqawi Yusuf has, elsewhere, referred to the concept of a ‘public law of
Africa’, developed by Pan-African organisations – AA Yusuf (2014) PanAfricanism and international law at 18 (‘Through their constitutive instruments
and their law-making activities, these Pan-African organisations have developed
over the years a public law of Africa, which consists of rules, principles and
practices applicable to intra-African relations, but capable also of influencing the
development of similar rules in other regions of the world or at the universal
level’). This public law of Africa might refer to something wider than AU law, since
it would conceivably include those norms generated by all Pan-African and PanAfricanist organisations.
See, for instance O Amao (2018) African Union law: the emergence of a sui
generis legal order; AA Yusuf and F Ouguergouz (2012) The African Union, legal
and institutional framework: a manual on the pan-African organization;
B Kabumba ‘Soft law and legitimacy in the African Union: the case of the Pretoria
Principles on ending Mass Atrocities Pursuant to article 4(h) of the AU
Constitutive Act’ in OO Shyllon (ed) (2018) The Model Law on Access to