Monitoring compliance of African women’s human rights commitments by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights

Since the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), the African human rights system has undergone significant developments with regards to women’s rights. Despite the progress made in gender equality and addressing gender injustice through the ratification and domestication of women's human rights standards in national constitutions, laws, policies and institutions, women and girls in Africa continue to face human rights violations in all spheres of life. This article examines the jurisprudence of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court) and analyses the extent to which the Court ensures state compliance with and accountability for women’s rights in Africa. It argues that although the Maputo Protocol specifically clothes the African Court with the mandate to interpret its application and implementation, the inherent and structural design of the African Court, however, greatly limits the cases that can be filed before the Court to the detriment of women’s rights. This is because women’s rights, though justiciable before the African Court, in theory, are not so in practice as the form of the Court and the reliance of classical formal doctrines such as locus standi, objectivity, reasonable standards and the exhaustion of local remedies result in the exclusion of women’s rights cases before the Court.