Human Rights

The chapters present a broad lens for understanding how historical conditions have mediated and moderated the business of uniting the peoples of Africa. Issues such as ideological cleavages, trade union politics, interference of external actors in domestic politics, perceptions of civil society and cultural actors on African unification, and transnational institution building in post-colonial Africa are some of points analysed in this book.

This edited collection of 24 Africa experts with diverse academic and practice focused backgrounds is divided into 5 parts and 24 chapters. The focus of the book is to establish African Union (AU) law as a focal point for the development of African countries. It provides a rich vein of scholarly literature which might not always be apparent to international researchers and practitioners. The ambition is to use regional integration law as a springboard for legal and socio-economic growth by avoiding national law failures that have undermined the development of the African continent.

This substantial volume sets out to establish the case for recognition of a new field of law. The editors propose a concept of African Union (AU) law – by analogy with the established body of European Union (EU) law – and argue for the need for such a concept in order to create “a platform to examine legal developments in Africa from an Afrocentric perspective”.

Contributions to the book are expected to contain conceptual analyses and country studies on taxation, human rights, and sustainable development. The goal is to present comparative, historical and contemporary accounts that will enable cross-exchange of ideas, practices and innovative solutions for taxation and human rights and improving its effectiveness in the Global South.

The foregoing analysis is analogous to the Nigerian situation where transnational litigation has been utilised by a plethora of stakeholders including local communities, civil society organisations (CSOs) and victims of environmental injustice arising from the activities of oil MNCs in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. CSOs in Nigeria have adopted litigation as a deliberate strategy in influencing the activities of government and MNCs in the oil and gas sector.

October 22, 2021

Africa & International Trade Law

Friday to Saturday, 29-30 October 2021

 Virtual Conference 

To register, click here

Paper I of the African Sovereign Debt Justice Network Paper Series

The transnational pursuit of redress for corporate human rights violations in Africa has been partly premised on Western courts providing such redress. Their perceived failures to do so are thus susceptible to being understood as judicial and legal inaction, as may be observed in early responses to the UK Court of Appeal decision last year in Kalma v African Minerals Ltd (Kalma). That decision unanimously upheld the judgment of Mr Justice Turner of the High Court, which dismissed a civil action brought by 142 Sierra Leonean claimants for human rights violations in the vicinity of the UK-domiciled defendant’s iron ore mine in Sierra Leone.

This symposium aims to encourage a more systematic and critical scholarly engagement with the delocalization of justice in BHR cases involving harms suffered in African states, and the Global South more broadly. It is our contention that until now, with some notable exceptions, scholarly debates in the BHR sphere have insufficiently focused on the justification for, effectiveness of, and alternatives to this uprooting strategy. Yet, this delocalization lies at the heart of many legal processes and regulatory mechanisms aimed at delivering justice (or corporate accountability) in the Global North for harms that occurred in the Global South. Interrogating this delocalization, and imagining alternative strategies that would enable local populations to gain greater agency through local political and legal processes, should be at the core of scholarship and activism in the BHR field.

This event is a part of Columbia Academy on Law in Global Affairs (CALGA), a series of online open-access events, in which Columbia Law School faculty present their research and debate current issues with colleagues from around the globe.