Reseña

In July 2019, during its 52nd Ordinary Session, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African
Court) published the first volume of its Law Report,1 grouping decisions adopted since its establishment in 2006.
The Court has made it a point to ensure the law report is published annually, and has since published a second
volume in November 2019, which includes decisions delivered in the years 2017 and 2018. The third volume
of the report is in preparation and will include decisions delivered during the year 2019. The African Court Law
Report brings the Court to the public through its case law and also enables the Court to receive feedback from
the public.
It was thus enlightening when the three main regional Courts (African, Inter-American and European), in the
Kampala Declaration adopted during the First International Human Rights Forum hosted by the African Court
in October 2019, called for a joint publication of the leading judgments of the three Courts. It is my hope that
through this publication, the three regional courts will not only strengthen their already good relationship, but will
further reinforce, through their jurisprudence, the notion of universality and interdependency of human rights, as
well as learn from the specificity of each region.
This tripartite joint publication will be an annual digest featuring the judgments, with short commentaries, of
landmark decisions of the three courts. It is a complement rather than a substitute to the annual editions of the
African Court Law Reports.
This inaugural edition of the publication features landmark decisions of the African Court delivered during the year
2019, and from these decisions can be discerned the centrality of the Court in human rights dispute resolutions
on the continent. The judgments deal with a wide range of human rights issues shaping the socio-economic and
political landscape of the continent, including issues of access to the Court, its jurisdiction and the admissibility of
cases before it; fair trial rights, especially the right to be tried by an impartial tribunal; freedom of movement; right
to liberty; right to life and compatibility of mandatory death penalty; legal personality and the right to nationality;
the right to participate in government, and related citizenship rights; the right to reparation, including the concept
of loss of future opportunities.