2
Anyangwe/Extrajudicial killings of women in Africa
CONTENT:
1
2
Introduction: concept of ‘extrajudicial killing’ ....................................................... 2
Legal accountability of the State in the context of extrajudicial killings.......... 3
Standards and rules .................................................................................................. 3
Killings by state actors.............................................................................................. 4
Killings by non-state actors ...................................................................................... 5
Statistics....................................................................................................................8
3
Factors contributing to vulnerability ...................................................................... 10
3.1
Socialisation............................................................................................................. 11
3.2
Cultural practices.................................................................................................... 13
3.3
Inadequate legal, social, political, and economic protection................................. 15
4
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 21
1
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
INTRODUCTION: CONCEPT OF
‘EXTRAJUDICIAL KILLING’
There appears to be no internationally accepted definition of what
constitutes ‘extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings (or
executions)’. However, in international human rights law,
‘extrajudicial’ killings convey the associative meaning of ‘summary’ or
‘arbitrary’ killings. Those individual terms tend to be used
conjunctively or as synonyms. The separate dictionary meaning of each
says little about the wide spectrum of killings and the real nature of the
issues in human rights law which the standard phrase ‘extrajudicial,
summary or arbitrary’ seeks to capture. Each of those terms signifies
not so much the method or nature of the killing but rather the character
of its unlawfulness. The phrase as now understood in international
human rights law and practice is less about the semantics of the
individual terms comprised in it. It is more about capturing ‘a range of
contexts in which killings have taken place in circumstances which
contravene international law and … require a response’.1
The nature of extrajudicial killing is broad and all-encompassing.
‘Extrajudicial killing’ includes ‘any killing that violates international
human rights or humanitarian law’ such as ‘unlawful killing by the
police, deaths in military or civilian custody, killings of civilians in
armed conflict in violation of humanitarian law, and patterns of killings
by private individuals which are not adequately investigated and
prosecuted by the authorities’.2 Any killing in these circumstances is
arbitrary even in a state that retains the death penalty. The reason is
that such killings offend the narrowly-circumscribed scope of
application of the death penalty in relation to offences, persons and
procedure. There is thus a nexus between the question of extrajudicial
killings and the protection of the right to life.3
1
‘Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or
Arbitrary Executions’ (2004), Doc. E/CN.4/2005/7, para 6.
2
‘Report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or
Arbitrary Executions: Mission to the USA’ (2009), Doc. A/HRC/11/2/Add.5, para 3.
3
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; article 6 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR); article 4 of the African Charter on
Human and Peoples’ Rights; article 5 of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of
the Child; article 4 of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights
on the Rights of Women in Africa.