The African continent remains one of the regions most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change, due to its unique geography, low levels of economic development, high levels of poverty, colonial legacies, weak governance systems and social inequalities. The impacts of climate change are already being felt across the continent, and their intensity and frequency are projected to increase. The African Union and its institutions, including human rights bodies, must play a leading role in ensuring that member states adopt appropriate regional and national climate change legislation to guide climate action. Using a doctrinal legal method, this article examines the potential content of a human rights-based approach to climate change adaptation in Africa. It advances an original, structured normative framework, grounded in the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, that identifies specific rights holders, duty bearers, and corresponding state obligations. While arguing for the immediate application of a human rights-based approach, the article calls on the AU to develop a climate-specific protocol anchored in human rights standards, given the novelty of the climate crisis and the legal innovations required to address adaptation and resilience effectively on the continent.
This article interrogates the South African Constitutional Court’s landmark judgment invalidating provisions of the Births and Deaths Act that entrenched gendered surname practices. Historically rooted in Roman-Dutch law, English common law and colonial administration, these provisions reflected an ideological disposition that women could change surnames upon marriage, divorce or widowhood, while men could not. The result was the privileging of the husband’s surname as the natural marker of family identity. The Court was called upon to determine whether such laws infringed equality and dignity through a constitutional challenge by two couples. In confirming the High Court’s declaration of invalidity, the Constitutional Court held that the provisions unfairly discriminated on the basis of gender, perpetuated patriarchal hierarchies and undermined self-identity. Importantly, the Court acknowledged that while patriarchy privileged men’s surnames, it simultaneously constrained men’s autonomy by denying them equivalent choices. The judgment is situated within South Africa’s broader substantive equality jurisprudence. It emphasises dignity as the constitutional thread linking naming, self-expression and familial belonging. By engaging comparative and international law, the Court also aligned South Africa with a global movement against patriarchal naming conventions. Ultimately, the case demonstrates that names are not trivial: They carry the weight of history, culture and power. This article, thus, through analysis and conclusion, presents Jordaan as a transformative step in dismantling patriarchy, affirming equality and reclaiming identity in democratic South Africa.
South Africa boasts one of the most progressive, elaborate and consultative climate governance frameworks in the Global South. However, children, who are among the groups most acutely affected by climate change, remain largely invisible to the country’s climate law, policy and decision-making architecture. This article examines South Africa’s normative framework to determine whether it adequately protects and promotes children’s rights in the context of climate action. The article argues that, despite robust constitutional guarantees and binding international and regional obligations, such as those under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the existing framework does not systematically integrate children’s rights into the country’s climate response. The article draws on these normative standards and the guiding principles of non-discrimination, the best interests of the child, child participation, access to information, impact assessment and the right to life, survival and development to assess South Africa’s domestic law and policy. The article concludes that significant normative and practical gaps persist and proposes targeted reforms to embed children’s rights at the centre of climate governance, thereby advancing equitable, effective and intergenerationally just climate action in South Africa.
Religious believers across West Africa face serious threats to their religious freedom from both governments and non-state actors. Christians, Muslims and minority faith adherents encounter state prosecution for blasphemy, restrictions on religious practice and religious-based violence. When domestic human rights protection fails, most West Africans traditionally have two international options: the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which enforces the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the UN Human Rights Committee, which enforces the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. However, citizens of 12 West African states have a third option: the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice (ECCJ). Originally established to promote economic cooperation among West African states, ECOWAS has expanded its mission, and the ECCJ has emerged as a significant human rights enforcement body. This article examines whether the ECCJ provides a viable – or even superior – forum for religious freedom claims in West Africa. It details the challenges facing believers in the region, outlines the ECCJ’s unique procedural advantages over other international enforcement mechanisms, and examines how the Court has already addressed critical issues, including blasphemy prosecutions and violence by non-state actors. The article also evaluates obstacles facing ECCJ litigants, particularly compliance challenges with court decisions. The article concludes that, despite significant weaknesses, the ECCJ represents a promising avenue for addressing the most pressing religious freedom violations in West Africa today.
The broad contours of Africa's inter-state system were configured in the murderous overthrow of the continent's governance systems in the aftermath of the Berlin (West) Africa Conference in 1885. A strain of violent authoritarianism that did not care for bases in popular legitimacy established thereafter around the continent was resilient even into the age of post-colony. Following independence, African states retreated behind a carapace of domestic jurisdiction and it was understood that how government acquired its mandate to rule was not the concern of other states. Constitutional instability ensued, mostly characterised by an epidemic of coups and conflict. By the last decade of the twentieth century, this understanding had begun to erode, and at the turn of the millennium, the continent had instituted a new normative order establishing democratic elections as the basis of the mandate to rule, and prohibiting coups and unconstitutional changes in government (UCG). However, the meaning of the UCG was largely left to be determined and, in turn, the content and application of the norm prohibiting it came to be defined by an appearance of inconsistency. Over time, a norm designed to defeat authoritarianism appeared instead to have become appropriated or instrumentalised for the exact opposite, triggering a self-inflicted crisis. This article examines the scope and meaning of the norm against UCGs in Africa in light of its evolution and history. It shows that far from being a shield for interminable rulers, the norm embodies three propositions in support respectively of democratic elections, against interminable rule, and for the protection of legitimate mandates. It argues that popular uprisings are insurrectionary reactions to the failure of Africa's continental and regional institutions to respect this package, and calls for African states and institutions to return the norm to its original design.
