(2017) 1 African Human Rights Yearbook 57 other aspects of substantive equality such as the dismantling of gender inequalities and power disparities inherent within the family.71 To date, there is a dearth on jurisprudence on women’s human rights within the African human rights system which makes it nearly impossible to assess the extent to which substantive equality has been interpreted in relation to women. Both the Commission and the Court have hardly dealt with communications on women’s human rights. However, the bodies have been occasioned with the opportunity to deal with the right to equality. Predominantly the jurisprudence of the African Commission has favoured the formal approach to equality. Several communications have consistently referred to equality as requiring sameness in treatment. In Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights v Zimbabwe, the Commission stated that equality at its most fundamental level ‘is a principle under which each individual is subject to the same laws, with no individual or groups having special legal privileges.’ In the communication the Commission does not go any further than this in defining equality. Similarly, in Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights and Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (on behalf of Andrew Barclay Meldrum) v Zimbabwe, the Commission reiterates the above definition of equality and further explains that equality in Article 3(1) means that ‘the right to equality before the law does not refer to the content of legislation, but rather exclusively to its enforcement.’72 In Purohit and Moore v the Gambia, the Commission stressed on the importance of article 3 as guaranteeing fair and just treatment of individuals within the legal system of a country. In Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and Interights v Egypt, a case in which the complainants were all women and alleged an infringement of their equality right, the Commission similarly based it’s decision on violation of equality by largely using the formal equality lens. Once again the Commission relied on its interpretation of equality espoused in the Zimababwe Lawyers for Human Rights decision which calls for sameness in the application of the law. While the Commission acknowledged that the state has an affirmative duty to prohibit discrimination,73 the decision does not go further to elaborate what the positive duty entails an exercise which perhaps might have resulted in the development of the Commission’s substantive equality. In Equality Now and Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA) v Federal Republic of Ethiopia, the Commission persisted on a formal approach and pronounced that the guarantee in article 3 is 71 Concluding Observations and Recommendations on the Initial Periodic Report of the Republic of Liberia on the Implementation of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights considered at its 55th Ordinary Session, held from 28 April to 12 May 2014, in Luanda, Angola, and adopted at its 17th Extra-Ordinary Session, held from 19 to 28 February 2015, in Banjul, The Gambia. 72 Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights & Institute for Human Rights and Development (on behalf of Andrew Meldrum) v Zimbabwe, Communication 294/2004, 26th Annual Activity Report. 73 Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and Interights v Egypt (2006) AHRLR 94 (ACHPR 2006 para 175