(2017) 1 African Human Rights Yearbook 151 KEY WORDS: African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, implementation, monitoring, decisions, judgments CONTENT: 1 2 3 4 5 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 151 What role should these bodies play? .....................................................................153 Treaty provisions and Rules of Procedure/Rules of Court ..............................155 Mechanisms ................................................................................................................. 157 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 161 INTRODUCTION When the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Charter) was adopted 30 years ago, scholarly debate on the new African human rights system focused on its provisions and on the question whether, what on paper appeared to be a toothless African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Commission), would have any effect on promoting and protecting the broad range of rights contained in the African Charter. Over the years, the African Commission developed standards on the various provisions of the African Charter through the adoption of resolutions or general comments, and through the various activities of its special procedures. It has received well over 400 communications, nearly all from individuals, organisations or groups alleging violations of the rights in the African Charter.1 In 2006 it was joined by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court), which has since then received numerous cases and adopted a handful of judgments in which it found human rights violations.2 It is only relatively recently, however, perhaps in line with shifts at the international level and among human rights funders, that attention has been paid to what happens post-decision or judgment,3 and to the question whether many of these documents and standards elaborated by the African Commission and decisions and judgments adopted by the African Commission and African Court actually result in any meaningful change on the ground. This article draws upon preliminary findings from a collaborative research project examining the 1 See http://www.achpr.org/communications/; and the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA)’s Case Law Analyser: http://caselaw.ihrda.org (accessed 10 October 2017). 2 See eg Konaté v Burkina Faso, Application 4/13 (Judgment of 5 December 2014); Zongo v Burkina Faso, Application 13/11 (Judgment of 21 June 2013); Jonas v Tanzania, Application 11/2015 (Judgment of 28 September 2017); Onyachi and Others v Tanzania, Application 3/2015 (Judgment of 28 September 2017); African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights v Kenya, Application 6/2012 (Judgment of 26 May 2017); Actions pour la protection des droits de l’homme (APDH) v Côte d’Ivoire, Application 1/2014 (Judgment of 18 November 2016). 3 See Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) From judgment to justice: implementing international and regional human rights decisions (2010) 12; OSJI From rights to remedies: structures and strategies for implementing international human rights decisions (2013) 26; C Heyns & F Viljoen The impact of the United Nations human rights treaties on the domestic level (2002) 1.