La Cour africaine des droits de l’homme : quelles restrictions à l’accès à la justice ?

This study discusses the evolution of the notion of access to justice for individuals to regional Human Rights courts. It focuses on the African regional Human Rights’system and the restrictions limiting individuals’ direct access to the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Court), and the importance of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights as an indirect route of access to the court. The African system for protection of human rights is constructed upon the African Charter adopted in 1986 and is composed of the Commission which was established in 1987 and the African Court established in 2004. The individual complainants have the right to access the African Commission directly. However, they do not have direct access to the African Court except if the country, against whom the complaint is addressed, has ratified the Protocol of Ouagadougou and deposited an optional declaration to allow access of individuals to the Court. That’s why the African Commission, which has the right of referral of cases to the Court, represents an indirect way for individual complainants to reach the African Court. In order to examine this topic, the study shows the major historical milestones in the construction of the African regional system for protection of human rights, leading to the adoption of the Charter of Banjul (establishing the Commission) and the Protocol of Ouagadougou (establishing the Court), and the difficulties related to the access of individuals to the African Commission and the African Court. In addition, a comparative study is conducted between the three regional courts for human rights: the European, the Inter-American and the African human rights’ courts in order to compare the competencies of the three courts in terms of their jurisdiction with regards to material, personal and temporal components, in addition to the ability of ordering interim measures and advisory opinions. The practice of individuals’ access to justice is further explored in the three regional systems in order to show the restrictions imposed on the African system in comparison to the other two systems, and finally the light is shed on future projects of the African human rights Court which is to be integrated with the Court of Justice, and a third section of criminal crimes is supposed to be added to the Court. The study concludes that the role of the African Commission is important as an indirect path for individuals’ access to the Court. In addition, the African Court has very large range of jurisdiction, in comparison to other two regional courts, but it is necessary to modify the Protocol of Ouagadougou to make the access of individuals an obligatory right imposed on all countries. Keywords: African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, access to justice, right of individual complaints.

Keyphrases: African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Access to justice, Right of individual complaints