Stand-Alone Posts

We are pleased to announce that the 9th PEPA/SIEL conference will take place on 17-19 May 2020 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, in Jerusalem.

These cases are usually brought by public-spirited individuals, human rights lawyers, NGO’s and civil society groups; all of whom have been variously accused of inviting the court to put its jurisdictional treaty limits. Karua’s case, therefore, also invites the court to resolve and settle the debate on its express versus implied jurisdiction and powers in matters regarding human rights, democracy and rule of law.

Intra Africa trade remains at its lowest ebb and perhaps this sad state of affairs can only be remedied by the actualization of the envisaged Africa Economic Community (AEC). To this extent RIAs, such as those under study in this paper, offer viable building blocks and learning curves for negotiating in the much larger multilateral trade system.

For the objective of AfCFTA not to be defeated through the menace of trade-based laundering of illicit funds, African member states must be proactive to ensure that all necessary measures and regulations are put in place in combating TBML that may ensue therefrom before AfCFTA comes into full implementation.

What emerges from this case law is a unitary system of sources of law, with the EACJ having the power to police their hierarchical compatibility and invalidate a lower-ranking norm if it contradicts a higher-ranking one. Such an arrangement is typical for federal states; the EACJ positions itself as a guardian of hierarchical compatibility of norms within the federal system, and consequently as a constitutional court within such a system.

The Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law (Hamburg) and the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law will host a one-day workshop on decolonial comparative law on 6 October 2020 at the University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg).

For a region like Africa and other less affluent regions, much dependence is placed on the possibility of borrowing copyrighted works from friends and families for access by persons who cannot afford purchasing their own copies. If the first sale doctrine and its accompanying benefits for access to works “vanish”, dissemination of digital works by way of lending becomes restricted.

A coordinated African voice on FDI would likely enhance the continent’s global competitiveness, prevent destructive competition among countries, help strengthen Africa’s position in investment agreements, and ultimately result in increased FDI flows to the continent.

In order to address a scenario where a AfCFTA member might resort to the WTO and still want the dispute to be resolved under the AfCFTA’s dispute resolution protocol, then this article proposes that the latter Protocol should be amended to the effect that, matters raised in the WTO context and in AfCFTA’s context should be considered not to be the same.

Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) are one of several impediments to achieving sustainable development in developing countries across the world. While there is no globally accepted definition of IFFs, there is global acceptance that IFFs undermine the efforts of developing countries to generate domestic revenues to finance their national development agendas. According to the United Nations (UN), developing countries face an estimated annual funding gap of $2.5 trillion to deliver on Agenda 2030. In Africa, the continent loses approximately $100 billion annually through IFFs that are generated in and moved from the continent to tax havens.