For strategic constituencies, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court facilitates the pursuit ofinternational criminal justice's instrumental goals. Such impacts on a post-conflict country include restoring peace and security. Significantly, the International Criminal Court is constrained to pursue international criminal justice while respecting complementarity. A rational approach, therefore, measures the degree to which the ICC must not merely satisfy deontological retributive goals posited by the Assembly of State Parties, but also appease domestic publics. In March 2023, arising from Russia invading Ukraine, the ICC issued arrest warrants against President Vladimir Putin and in 2024 against another two Russians. State parties to the Rome Statute are obligated to extradite them to face atrocity charges. Consequently, to avoid detention, Putin avoided attending a South African BRICS summit, since no safe haven would be available there. Comparing South African and Kenyan extradition laws, this article evaluates the international obligation to extradite or prosecute atrocity fugitives. It evaluates political influences on the international mutual legal assistance obligation reminiscent of the Malabo Protocol's immunity provision. Unless fugitives voluntarily surrender for trial, the ICC triggers arrest warrants in requested countries. Yet previously, despite warrants against then Sudanese President Al-Bashir, some states, including Kenya and South Africa, hosted him. By refusing to extradite him, both declined cooperation. Nonetheless, his further travel was inhibited by looming apprehension prompted by civil society-initiated court injunctions. Refusals to surrender fugitive suspects indicates ambivalence towards the justice cascade. Ineffective regional instruments on surrendering fugitives include the 1994 ECOWAS, 2002 SADC and 2009 IGAD extradition treaties. A new alternative is the 2023 UN Hague Convention on International Cooperation in the Investigation and Prosecution of International Crimes. Ratifications which would facilitate combating atrocity crimes.

The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child has received several communications alleging violations of the right to education under the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. This has led to significant development on the jurisprudence on education and on education-related rights. Like every right under the African Children's Charter, the right to education is subject to the four pillars of interpretation: non-discrimination; best interests; child participation; and survival and development. The aim of this article is to explore how the African Children's Committee has interpreted the right to education within the four pillars of interpretation and how that has shaped the growing jurisprudence on education under the African Children's Charter. The article also draws on examples on educational rights and interpretive provisions from the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights.

There are no rights without responsibilities in the African context. The reverse is equally true: Responsibility is supported by rights. The African Union declaration of Africa's diaspora as the sixth (demographic) region of the African continent triggers a critical discussion of the human rights obligations of the regional body to its diaspora. The African diaspora's invited tactical intervention in the progression of the AU of necessity triggers the expansion of the human rights promotion and protection mandate of the AU to people of African heritage worldwide. Specific human rights guarantees to the diaspora facilitate its envisioned full participation in building the continent. The African diaspora can only make a substantial contribution if its rights are respected, protected and fulfilled in Africa and elsewhere. The 2012 African Diaspora Programme of Action rightly represents the evolving mandate and the nature of the commitment of the AU to embrace it. This mandate comprises the need to address the concerns of African immigrant communities, including recognition of the identity of a person of African descent on the African continent; confronting anti-black racism globally and promoting equality of all races; eradicating political and socio-economic marginalisation of diaspora communities; and advancing Africa's agenda for reparations. These strategies have their nucleus in Africa-led and Africa-advanced approaches; the momentum commences from Africa to the world, with an evident reciprocal effect.

Significant numbers of refugee women and girls are increasingly migrating from one country to another in the Eastern African region, in this case, to Uganda. A series of factors prompt women and girls to migrate, among which are fleeing political and economic unrest; escaping sexual and gender-based violence in their families and communities; the search for better socio-economicopportunities, including better-paying employment; the hope of improving their quality of life; and access to education. On a positive note, by escaping their communities, women and girls are freed from restrictive and sometimes harmful gender norms, thus gaining the opportunity to enhance their autonomy, self-esteem and, ultimately, their social standing. Furthermore, by gaining access to employment and education, they are able to contribute to their families back home, thereby improving their decision-making power and authority in their families and communities. Conversely, refugee women and girls face a series of obstacles and difficulties, such as difficulties in accessing housing and basic infrastructure; negative changes in gender roles; challenges with accessing timely and quality health care, including sexual and reproductive health; failure to access employment/access to decent work and social protection; exclusion from political participation; violence; security threats; and a lack of access to justice. Using a documentary review approach, the article interrogates the implementation of refugee laws and policies in relation to women and girls. The geographical scope is on refugees from Eastern African countries such as South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Burundi and Rwanda, into Kampala slums in Uganda.

Given the nature of African governments' use of communication surveillance and the importance of human rights protection in such practices, there is a need for adequate human rights safeguards in communication surveillance. While the use of communication surveillance is not new in African countries, its increased indiscriminate use in the region has raised privacy concerns, including governments' illegitimate surveillance of political opposition, the harassment of journalists and human rights defenders, and unrestricted state access to communications held or transmitted by the private sector in Africa.

The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000 (PEPUDA) is a cornerstone of South Africa's anti-discrimination framework, aiming to uphold equality and prevent unfair treatment. However, its capacity to protect transgender individuals is hindered by several lacunae. This article critically examines whether PEPUDA adequately safeguards the rights of transgender persons, exploring the limitations of its current framework in addressing the lived realities and systemic challenges faced by this marginalised community. Drawing on principles of transformative constitutionalism, the article argues for a substantive interpretation of equality that goes beyond formal protections to dismantle entrenched structural inequities. It advocates for legislative reforms aligning PEPUDA with the Constitution's vision ofsubstantive equality and international human rights standards. By proposing a nuanced legal and interpretive approach, the article seeks to bridge the gap between legislative intent and practical inclusivity, ensuring that transgender individuals can fully enjoy their rights and dignity in a democratic South Africa.

In 2013 Zimbabwe adopted a gender quota system for the National Assembly. However, the quota system is set at 30 per cent, contrary to international law obligations domesticated under section 17 of the 2013 Zimbabwean Constitution, which requires women to constitute at least half of all elected and nominated positions of power. While the Constitution further allows women to compete for first-past-the-post (FPTP) parliamentary seats, there are neither constitutional measures to ensure that women win FPTP seats, nor mechanisms to transition women from quota seats to FPTP seats. While the gender quota and FPTP constituency seats have increased the number of women in Parliament, they have decreased the number of women nominated and elected for FPTP seats. The quota parliamentarians are not voted by the electorate, lack a link to constituencies, and are not entitled to constituency funds. Each political party applies discretion in the nomination of women for quota seats, exposing them to exploitation and corruption. This negatively affects the quality of quota parliamentarians and, in turn, their transition to constituency seats. The article suggests that Zimbabwe extend the proportional representation electoral system and Zebra system applicable in the election of senators to the election of members of parliament. This will facilitate the alignment of Zimbabwe's political representation gender equality commitments with its constitutional and international law obligations.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights is increasingly taking on the role of a regional electoral adjudication body in resolving election-related human rights violations. While this role is essential because of the contested nature of elections in Africa and the inability of many national election resolution mechanisms to sanction election irregularities, the African Commission must master the intricacies of election dispute resolution in member states for its recommendations to be based on sound legal principles. Its decision in the Ngandu case provides an opportunity to assess the nature of some of the challenges faced by the Commission when adjudicating election-related disputes and how to overcome these. In this decision, the African Commission found that the Democratic Republic of the Congo had violated the complainant's right to defence, to political participation and to work following the annulment of his election as a member of the National Assembly by the country's interim Constitutional Court (the Supreme Court of justice). The analysis of the case suggests that, despite the African Commission's ability to re-affirm the relevance of the right to political participation for the consolidation of democracy in Africa and protecting the right to a fair trial and to work, it must address three types of challenges in its role as election-adjudication body using the procedural mechanisms provided for in both the African Charter and the Rules of Procedure. These challenges are the knowledge of electoral justice systems operating in the DRC and Africa at large; the impossibility of restitution as a form of reparation; and the state's participation in proceedings and the implementation of recommendations.

Article 38(1) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana provides that 'the state shall provide educational facilities at all levels and in all the regions of Ghana, and shall to the greatest extent feasible, make those facilities available to all citizens'. 'Feasible' in plain language means 'if possible'. This means that if it not possible, educational facilities would not be made available to all. Article 38(3) also provides that the state shall 'subject to the availability of resources' provide equal and balanced access to secondary education and other pre-tertiary education. The wording of article 38(3) suggests that, in the event of a lack of resources, there would be no equal and balanced access to basic education. Articles 38(1) and 38(3) serve as a constitutional constraint to the Free Compulsory Basic Education in Ghana because, if the provision of educational facilities is subject to 'feasibility' and if its equal and balanced access is subject to resource availability, then free compulsory universal basic education as envisaged under international human rights instruments will be difficult to realise. Through a doctrinal approach to research based on legal literature, this article analyses the issue of whether or not the justiciability of the right to education has been adequately addressed by the legal jurisprudence in Ghana. We conclude that the Constitution, legislation, policy and jurisprudence of the courts acknowledge that the right to education is a right that can be enforced in courts. In this sense, there are many avenues through which one can argue for justiciability of the right in Ghana, including through article 33(5) of the Constitution.

The election of human rights-abusing states to the human rights bodies of the United Nations has long been a source of dissatisfaction. There have been repeated calls that such states should not be members of the UN Human Rights Council. This article compares the HRC records of Rwanda, an authoritarian state, with that of South Africa, a liberal democracy. The focus falls on 12 country-specific situations and nine civil and political rights issues that appeared before the HRC from 2017 to 2019. It is demonstrated that Rwanda has been a much stronger defender of international human rights than South Africa. This finding contradicts various empirical and theoretical studies that posit a positive relationship between domestic democracy and respect for human rights, on the one hand, and international support for human rights, on the other. This finding further suggests that demands that the HRC should only have members with respectable domestic human rights records should be tempered.