2. Engaging with the African Commission from home

While the African Commission can be a very useful tool for human rights advocacy in Africa, it also has its limits and drawbacks. Indeed, it is a heavily under-resourced and also, occasionally, politically constrained institution. You may have to persevere over time in reaching out and building up relationships with Commissioners and other staff members of the African Commission to get them to take the action you seek.

The limited resources of the African Commission mean that it:

• Can only respond to a limited number of cases, and, often, these are only the most grave situations;
• Can only travel a limited number of times per year to countries;
• Can struggle to follow up or assess the implementation of their recommendations;
• Will take time to inform human rights defenders that they have taken action on a case.

When planning to engage with the African Commission, you will need to keep in mind the following:

Timing of your action

The African Commission can sometimes take time to act on a particular case or issue once you’ve drawn its attention to it, so it is important to explain, when approaching the African Commission, the level of urgency and/or gravity of your case. On the other hand, some of their activities are planned several years in advance, so you will need to engage far in advance to have an impact.

Remember:

• If you send information on a case dating back several months, you will need to explain why a statement now is timely and can have an impact.
• Commissioners usually have other jobs in addition to their role as part of the African Commission, so they cannot usually decide to travel at short notice - you need to invite them as far in advance as possible to ensure that they can fit you into their schedules.
• Commissioners often decide on the themes of their reports several months in advance, which means you need to influence their decisions even earlier.

Resources

All human rights defenders and NGOs have limited resources, so you need to use yours as efficiently and effectively as possible. That means picking and choosing when and how to engage, in order to maximise your resources, including by building strong partnerships with NGOs across Africa who will be able to support you and your advocacy. Also, it could be interesting to follow up with ACHPR staff (at [email protected]) to find out if action has been taken on a particular case.

Role of the media

You can engage with the media from home to bring attention to upcoming advocacy with the African Commission. For example, you can share the text of a Communication’s decision or a press release, or even provide summaries of recommendations from thematic reports. Though difficult to achieve, news coverage can help bring attention to an issue, so if this is something you seek, it is important to be able to show to journalists why the action is news-worthy.

Continue to find out more about why it might be useful to engage with the African Commission, as well as our tips on how to do it most effectively.