OPENING SPEECH OF HON. LADY JUSTICE IMANI D. ABOUD, PRESIDENT OF THE AFRICAN COURT ON THE OCCASION OF THE 69TH ORDINARY SESSION OF THE COURT.
12nd June 2023
- Honorable Vice-President of the Court,
- Honorable Judges of the Court,
- Registrar and Deputy Registrar,
- Staff of the Registry,
- Dear Colleagues.
I would like to welcome you all to the seat of our Court for the 69th Ordinary Session of the Court. We adopted as our theme for the current Judicial year, ‘’Integrating the jurisprudence of regional and international human rights mechanisms into national systems. This theme will guide us throughout the year, and in our interactions with other stakeholders.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
I make this reminder as we look forward to the various activities eramrked for the Court throughout the year, beginning with our retreat starting in two days.
During the intersession we all undertook several activities under the banner of the above theme. For me, the last intersession was very engaging, with meetings with key stakeholders aimed at strengthening our relationships.
On 27 March, the Court received Hon. President for the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. I also had the privilege to participate virtually on the Public Session of the 75th Ordinary Session of the Banjul Commission, in which I delivered an Opening Statement.
On 29 March, I had a courtesy meeting with His Excellency, Chairperson of the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, where we discussed on how to strengthen cooperation between the two organs of the AU to jointly promote and protect human rights in the African continent. During the audience, I raised several issues relating to the work of the Court, including:
- Operationalization of the Legal Aid Fund
- Compliance with Court decisions
- Withdrawal of article 34(6) by States
- Emoluments of Judges
- New Structure of the Registry, and
I took the opportunity to invite the Chairperson to attend one of the sessions of the Court.
His Excellency Chairperson of the African Union Commission insisted that we need to join efforts to advocate Member States to ratify and use the institutions that are established for Africans, he also promised to attend one of the sessions of the Court soon.
On 25 to 26 May 2023, I led a delegation composed of some of you colleagues and a number of staff, to the 3rd International Human Rights Forum, which took place in San Jose, Costa Rica. The Human Rights Forum provided a unique opportunity for the judges and experts to exchange ideas, share experiences, and identify common challenges and best practices. It also played a major role in enhancing cooperation between the Regional Courts.
In that forum, we managed to have successful dialogue on Judicial Independence and the Rule of Law, together with Environment, Climate Change and Human Rights.
In May 2023 Hon Vice President represented the Court the sixth AUC NANHRI (Network of African National Human Rights Institutions) Policy dialogue on the state of NHRIs in Africa held in Addis Ababa. Also, Hon Justice Adjei represented the Court in two events which are : the 2nd Africa Media Convention held in Lusaka and the 9th Forum of the African Union Commission for International Law (AUCIL) held in Addis Ababa.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
On 2 June 2023, the Court received a visit from10 Chief Justices, through the African Institute of International Law. During this visit, I had the privilege to present on the role of the Court in justice in Africa and the question of accountability, what is expected from the Chief Justices, and Updates on the criminal jurisdiction.
On the same day of 2 June 2023, the Court was invited to witness the occasion of handing over of the Court’s plot at Lakilaki area within Arusha municipality to the Constructors. I was accompanied by the VP and other staff members of the Court. The Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tanzania handed over the site to contractors. We have been told that the construction will take 18 months from 16 June 2023.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
Last week I led a Court delegation to Kigali- Rwanda to attend PRC Retreat on the reforms of the AU organs. In summary, the experts are proposing three scenarios: the first is to maintain the three human rights institutions separately but bolster their staffing while relying on the African Union Commission for support staff; the second is to keep the institutions separately but share the support staff (HR, IT, Procurement etc); while the third is to merge the three African human rights institutions and therefore have one structure. We the three human rights bodies have proposed to have a courtesy meeting with the experts of that reform process preferably during this session.
Hon Judges I wish to inform you that the African Commission on human and peoples’ Rights have transferred 3 cases to the African Court, this a big achievement of our complementarity. This will be discussed further during this session.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
I would like to bring to your attention that during this session there will be an election of the Bureau. I wish us all a fruitful election, and wish all the best to the new bureau.
Allow me, to take this opportunity on behalf of the outgoing Bureau, and on my own personal behalf to convey my sincere thanks to my fellow judges, for trusting us with the responsibility of leadership, and for allowing us to serve you for the last two years.
The biggest success of this bureau was the loyalty and dedication shown by the Hon. Judges, and indeed all of you, during our tenure in which all of us were challenged to work towards the African Court we want! Everyone took up this enormous challenge in such a grand and professional way that it has made African Court stronger and more successful at what it does. For that we are enormously thankful.
We also want to thank the staff for the incredible support to the Bureau and the Court as a whole. The success of the Bureau can be largely credited to the support received from the staff.
The current Bureau has worked very hard with the management of the Registry to improve the efficiency of the Registry. A lot of progress has been realized; however, much remains to be done. I know how hard we have worked to get to where we are now. We were all on a journey, some days were better than others. I know sometimes you felt like you work hard, and not appreciated. Be assured that your journey, achievements, and value were noticed.
We saw you working long hours. Sometimes staying past 7 pm to complete your task, be it drafting judgments, or translating documents, preparing staff affairs, cleaning, waiting for your bosses, etc. We saw you pulling together as a team. We saw you giving up precious time with your family to give that time to our Court. None of this goes unnoticed as I said earlier. Together, we have succeeded in ways that 17 years ago, we could never have imagined. Our work doesn’t just enrich our own lives, but it enriches our community and our customers – the purpose for which we were established. And that’s where we derive our satisfaction.
I would like to congratulate you and acknowledge the tremendous success we have achieved! The results we have achieved are impressive. I am so grateful to have colleagues like you in the Court, who are willing to go above and beyond to achieve such great success for our Court.
As we prepare to elect a new Bureau, I trust that you will give the same and even more support to the new Bureau.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
The Court is scheduled to deliver 9 decisions in a public sitting on decisions adopted at the 68th Ordinary Session. I am hoping that we will be able to render more decisions during the next session.
During this session, we will host, from 22 to 24 June 2023, Judges from the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, as part of the continuous dialogue between the two Courts.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
There are also non-judicial (administrative) matters earmarked for this session, including;
- Health talk,
- Consideration of the Draft Concept Note and Draft Programme for the 6th African Union Judicial Dialogue and briefing on logistical arrangements,
- A presentation on cybersecurity risks
- Meetings of Committees, including; the Committee on Administrative, Budgetary and Financial matters, Committee on Library, Training and Legal Aid, and the Committee on the Website, Publications and the Language Unit.
- A briefing on the construction of the permanent premises of the Court.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
For the first time in the life of the African Court, we will be presenting awards to recognize outstanding performance of staff for the year 2022. Awards will be presented in the following categories: Staff of the Year, Long term service Staff, and best team of the Year. The winners for these categories were selected by the Award Committee based on the Awards Rules and Regulations, and all Staff Members participated by nominating the nominees for the Awards.
I therefore take this opportunity to congratulate the Registry and the Court as a whole for this brilliant initiative which will boost staff moral and encourage staff to work even harder. I also wish to congratulate the members of the Award Committee chaired by Ms Anipha, for the efforts they have put in place to realise this initiative. I would also like to thank all Staff members for participating in the process, and to remind them that they should be objective in nominating candidates and/or team for these Awards, because it is only by doing so that we can improve on the initiative. I would say that for this initiative to be credible and remain relevant, the Judges, the Awards Committee and staff must ensure there is transparency in the process.
Honorable Judges and dear colleagues,
With these remarks, it is now my singular honor and pleasure to declare the 69th ordinary session of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights officially open and I wish us all fruitful deliberations.
Thank you.