Toward a Right to Development? : Reflecting on the Endorois Decision

Last month, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (“ACHPR”) handed down a decision on the Endorois peoples’ situation in Kenya. The decision not only marks the end of a nearly 40 year struggle by the Endorois people against the Kenyan government but it also heralds the increasing importance of the third generation human right to development.

Background

The Endorois people are a sub-tribe from central Kenya that were evicted from their lands near Lake Bogoria in the 1970s. The government relocated them to an area that limited their access to a clean water source, central sites of worship and other daily requirements for their pastoral way of life. The Kenyan government failed to provide compensation for this eviction but still proceeded to develop a Game Reserve on the Endorois former lands.

After exhausting all domestic avenues for remedy, the Endorois – with the help of Minority Rights Group International – brought their case before the ACHPR. The ACHPR is a quasi-judicial regional body that renders non-binding decisions aimed at protecting human and collective rights in Africa as envisaged by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (“African Charter”). Although non-binding, I believe that the decisions from the ACHPR can be viewed as a snapshot of general zeitgeist. Indeed, until the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights starts delivering decisions regularly, the Commission’s decisions will remain an important and indicative…

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South Africa’s ‘Zimbabwe Problem’ – International Law vs. Soccer

Driving around the Cape Peninsula in South Africa, tourists are bound to run into street side hawkers trying to unload cheaply made pieces of “African” art – at least some of which are apparently made in China. Entering into a conversation with these traders, one quickly finds they are often not South African, but from Zimbabwe. The Republic of South Africa is awash with these economic migrants, many of whom have entered the nation illegally. The rash of xenophobic attacks here in 2008 makes it obvious that the local population does not appreciate the presence of so many illegal aliens in South Africa. After all, this is a nation with a lot of race issue to begin with, and unemployment rates hovering around fifty percent.

Ideally, South Africa’s partnership in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) means that such migrants may have a right to be here – at least on a limited basis. Article 5 of the SADC Treaty calls for the “the progressive elimination of obstacles to the free movement of capital and labour, goods and services, and of the people of the Region generally….” Article 2 of the SADC Draft Protocol on Facilitation of the Movement of Persons aims to allow citizens free movement within the group of member states. With that in mind, the interpretation of South African immigration and refugee law can also lend itself to the theory that an…

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A Primer to Economic Regional Integration in Africa

“Africa could rightly be described as the major theatre of contemporary cases of shared sovereignty.”[1]

It is the hope of many African leaders that greater cohesion in African trade will lead to more firm patterns of national development. Formalizing the international trade sector within Africa could lead to greater national tax revenues, a freer exchange of ideas, labour and technology across borders, the stabilization of regional agricultural and natural resource markets, and greater cooperation over shared infrastructure projects such as the creation of highways, waterways development, and even the deployment of green technology such as wind energy projects.[2]

While more flamboyant African leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi stress the need for pan-African unity (Gaddafi even calling for a United States of Africa), smaller regional unification bodies are already active. Most Westerners might be surprised that much of West Africa, the nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), already has a unified currency between fifteen nations. Since its creation by treaty in 1993, ECOWAS trade commissioners from a diverse array of fields attempt to integrate trans-national policies on social affairs, water resources, energy, and security matters. Just as NATO intervenes in foreign conflicts, when civil unrest unfolds in member states, such as recently in Guinea, ECOWAS applies strong diplomatic and military pressure to uphold the rule of law.

The East African Community (EAC) was first launched in 1967, but was then…

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