I Book Review: Human Rights Law in Africa
| Published date | 01 September 2005 |
| Date | 01 September 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/016934410502300314 |
| Subject Matter | Part D: DocumentationI Book Review |
Christof Heyns (ed.),
Human Rights Law in Africa
, Martinus Nijhoff, The
Hague, 2004, two volumes, 1736 p., ISBN 90-04-13881-1*
General Evaluation
These two rather massive volumes make for an excellent resource of immeasurable
value for anybody who wants to work on human rights issues in the African region.
The introduction underscores not only that there is a vast body of law dealing with
human rights in Africa in existence today, but that the main problem lies in deficient
implementation of these standards. Consequently, it identifies as most immediate
challenge ‘making the existing structures work and ensuring compliance with the
norms already accepted by African societies’ (p. xv). Arguably access to the relevant
material is essential for any improvement in that respect and providing this access is
exactly what this book sets out to do. Secondary (ambitious but laudable) goals
include contributing to the development of a stronger indigenous African human
rights jurisprudence, securing for the African continent its rightful role in the global
debates on human rights issues and stimulating reform of the African human rights
system. Be that as it may, and as will be argued more fully infra, the primary goal
seems to be achieved.
While it is impossible to be exhaustive on ‘human rights law in Africa’ in the
scope of 1700 pages, even when only considering possible relevant documents that
could be included, this compilation is arguably very complete in focus. Indeed, it
provides not only a systematic country focus (Vol. II, entitled Domestic human rights
law in Africa) but also covers the broader framework (Vol. I, entitled International
human rights law in Africa). The latter combines a discussion of the global UN
framework of relevance for human rights in Africa with a regional and sub-regional
focus, describing how various intergovernmental organisations relate to and
incorporate human rights in their activities. Volume I furthermore offers English
texts of NGO (and other) documents on human rights in Africa, and concludes with
an overview of selected African human rights issues.
However, as the Introduction also acknowledges (p. xvi), one should not
overextend one’s expectations as some of the explanatory texts are rather
rudimentary, and only prove the broad lines, while the country files do not contain
the texts of all imaginable human rights documents of all the 54 countries covered.
Nevertheless, these two volumes undoubtedly constitute a comprehensive compila-
tion of documents which are not that easily accessible to the public at large (definitely
not in English). These documents are furthermore enriched by helpful introductions
on, profiles and/or broad sketches of organisations, certain bodies or documents.
The fact that each volume contains excellent tables of contents (an abbreviated
version for a quick overview and a full one for more detail) further facilitates its use as
reference work providing the essential first framework for research on human rights
in Africa. The absence of an index is arguably offset by the very detailed ‘full table of
contents’. The reason why the authors of the introductory and explanatory texts are
not included in this table of contents can possibly be explained by consistency
considerations. Furthermore, the absence of bibliography is understandable, since
the bulk of the book consists of documents while for the country files of Volume II this
is compensated by the reference to the website of the Human Rights Centre of
Pretoria University for a bibliography on human rights in each of the countries taken
Book Reviews
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, Vol. 23/3 (2005) 525
* Kristin Henrard, Associate Professor, University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
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