West Africa’s regional court – ECOWAS Court of Justice – is partnering with the Pan African Lawyers’ Union (PALU), to advance strategies for the implementation of decisions of regional courts.
In his keynote remarks at a two-day capacity-building seminar organised by the PALU, Mr Apraku Nketiah who is Head of Legal Services and Research at the ECOWAS Court of Justice said, “All regional human rights mechanisms have expressed concern over ensuring that their views, decisions, and judgments are made effective and that remedies are afforded to the victims of human rights violations.”
Mr Nketiah added that prompt and comprehensive enforcement of judgments of the Court is an indication of the adherence to the rule of law and effective justice delivery in the region.
The seminar is to build the capacities of relevant stakeholders to better understand existing challenges in implementing decisions of regional courts, foster stronger collaborative networks, and outline practical strategies for advocating, monitoring, and evaluating the implementation of human rights decisions on the continent.
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Ms PraiseGod Millen Joseph, Programme Officer at PALU, said: “What we want to achieve at the end of this two-day seminar and the publication is to ensure that litigants and key stakeholders are equipped with the knowledge of the regional court, its jurisdiction and procedures of accessing the court and understanding of how they can advocate the implementation of decisions reached by the court.
“Through this, we can strategise and discuss what initiatives as key stakeholders, we can implement in our respective organisations and collaborate as partners towards enforcement of decisions of regional courts.”
On PALU’s collaboration with the ECOWAS Court of Justice, she said they have been working together through capacity building and conferences where “we aim to build key stakeholders knowledge about the court and collaborate on how litigants can access the ECOWAS Court smoothly.”
Also speaking, Mr Gilford Kimathi from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, said his organisation supported the programme to encourage access to justice.
“We hope to have the litigants have increased awareness and therefore strengthen their capacity to engage with the ECOWA court.
“One of the challenges that we have is the limited awareness of this body by many advocates, we also have many other challenges like the low level of the implementation of decisions emanating from these bodies.
“We expect that through the seminar as well as the publication, litigants will be more capacitated to litigate at the ECOWAS court,” he said.
The seminar which took place from 7 – 8 December 2023 brought together key stakeholders, particularly from the ECOWAS Court of Justice, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and civil society organisations including human rights NGOs and bar associations.
The theme for this year’s seminar is “Advancing Human Rights Through Effective Implementation of Decisions of Regional Courts – Amplifying Voices of Key Stakeholders”.
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