Honourable Judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights
- Dr Robert Eno, Registrar of the Court
- Officers of the Court
- Distinguished Media Participants
I welcome you all to this edition of the Court’s media training, which is the fifth of its kind. While initiating the media training in 2015, the African Court had then already acknowledged that the world is increasingly getting digitalized, that such digitalization inevitably reinforces globalization, and that media plays a critical role in implementing globalization through digitalization. Trade experts recognize that the media and its professionals are making brands more globalized and consumers more similar. Sociologists suggest that the media is making the countries of the world more and more similar. In today’s global world, a story of injustice that is broadcasted in the remote areas of an Asian country holds the potential of impacting the behavior of interested stakeholders in any other part of Africa, Europe or the Americas. In the pursuit of such a fundamental mission as human rights justice, an Institution like the African Court is bound to place media at the centre of its operations.
The first reason for developing a human rights sensitive media is that the Court discharges a mission of public service, and I name it the administration of justice In fact, any public service institution requires media visibility not only for the evident purpose of building awareness among the citizenry but foremost to meet the needs of accountability. It is important that the Court delivers justice to the litigants before it but it is even of a more critical importance that the greater public is informed about whether and how the Court is doing so.
The second reason for strengthening initiatives such as the Court’s media training is that the Court and the media are natural partners. Both institutions share the mandate of acting as watch dogs to public governance albeit through different means and processes. While the African Court undertakes governance oversight through judicial supervision of human rights protection, the media play the same role by shedding light on governance practices and ensuring that they keep the public abreast of how their representatives perform and whether they are discharging their functions in abidance with various laws and policies.
The media training also aims at refining human rights communication through specialization. For the media to effectively play their role of human rights governance watch dogs, they ought to be trained to deal with the specialized and peculiar area of human rights, its litigation, adjudication, implementation and impact. Human rights stories significantly differ from just any media topic. Furthermore, they target various stakeholders including citizens, litigants, civil society organizations, lawyers, judges, and also governments. In this respect, it is paramount to lay emphasis on the role that States play through regional human rights protection mechanisms such as the African Court. The role of media therefore becomes of a great importance as the Court celebrates the 15th anniversary of its operation and marks the beginning of a renewed approach to engagement with States as it takes the lead in its reforms in an era of States disengagement. I invite you to consequently remain aware of the wide perception that the Court is not sufficiently known among and within Member States of the African Union.
Dear participants, due to these considerations, communication about the Court should be framed to meet the needs of its various stakeholders and empower them for each to duly perform its mission in the chain of actions; whether for litigants to bring cases, for counsel to defend litigants, for academics or other knowledgeable institutions to act as amici curiae, for States to implement decisions or for regional organs to supervise the enforcement of the Court’s proceedings. While it is not new, this perspective of mediatization of human rights justice is made novel by the African Court. An important lesson learnt in the area of strategic or public interest human rights litigation is that the media are critical before, during and after any successful justice process depending on how the stories are cast, presented, told and communicated.
Dear participants, I invite you to bear these issues in mind while interacting with officers of the Court and in exchanging of ideas with your counterparts from all regions of the continent over the next three days. I am confident that this training will bring about more innovative ideas on making human rights more attractive to the relevant stakeholders in the African context. I would also like to congratulate the Registry of the
Court for the efforts invested in preparing this event, and wish you a successful training.
Thank you for your kind attention. Justice Imani D. Aboud
