Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday expressed hope that Africa would overcome its current governance and human rights challenges.
Osinbajo said this when he spoke at the opening of the 2022 Judicial Year of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Arusha, Tanzania, where he was the special guest of honour.
Osinbajo frowned at the spate of human rights abuses, blaming it on the lack of a proper enforcement mechanism either at the domestic or continental level.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, disclosed Osinbajo’s stand in a statement he signed on Monday titled ‘How to guarantee the Africa we want, by Osinbajo at African Court’s first-ever formal yearly opening in Arusha.’
The Vice President who spoke on the theme ‘The African Court and The Africa we want’ said for Africa to achieve the desired level of attainment, issues such as poverty, socio-economic rights, environmental and sustainable development alongside concerns about democracy and unconstitutional changes of governments, must be dealt with.
He said, “The Africa we want is one that addresses, amongst others, humanity’s most pressing concerns of eradication of poverty, hunger and disease; the sustenance of democracy and the rule of law; sustainable development, especially dealing with challenges of climate change and application of finite resources for economic growth and diversification; human security and peace.”
He, however, decried “the lack of a proper enforcement mechanism, either at the domestic or continental level, notwithstanding the Ouagadougou Protocol’s mandate on the AU Executive Council,” describing it as one of the challenges Africa must work hard to resolve.
The Vice President also identified other challenges as “the reluctance of some States to respect the Court’s orders of interim measures, not to mention funding problems in the face of competing financial needs within the AU system.
“There might be a need for further interaction between the court and member States and civil society on how to work through these issues. The general reluctance of States to concede sovereignty is not peculiar to the African States. But we can be more creative about complementarity, for example,” he added.
He also commended the African Court of Human and People’s Rights for the Afrocentric development of human rights jurisprudence, noting that the African Court was already playing its role.
