[Chelsea Purvis is the Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow at Minority Rights Group International (MRG). Opinions expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of MRG.]
The African region has long been perceived as a recipient, not a creator, of international human rights law. But over the past decade, African institutions have enshrined emerging human rights norms in treaties and issued ground-breaking jurisprudence. Africa should be recognized as a generator of innovative human rights law. Human rights institutions outside the continent, however, have largely failed to engage with African-made human rights law.
An example of innovative African law-making is the
Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol), which came into force in 2005. The Maputo Protocol builds on existing women’s rights law: Like the 1979
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Maputo Protocol obligates States parties to combat discrimination against women in all areas of life. And like the
Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women, the Maputo Protocol prohibits physical, sexual, and psychological violence against women. But the Protocol goes further than these earlier treaties. For the first time in any international instrument, it prohibits verbal and economic violence against women.
The Maputo Protocol contains notable protections for women’s reproductive rights, including an affirmative right to abortion in certain circumstances. It also takes a conceptual leap forward in its treatment of culture and tradition. Many sources of women’s rights law treat African cultures as uniformly negative for women. The Maputo Protocol,
as Johanna Bond has argued, adopts the more nuanced approach advanced by scholars from the global South. It recognizes the positive role culture can play in women’s lives but enshrines a woman’s right to shape her culture. The Protocol also recognizes that certain culturally-authorized practices or beliefs are necessarily harmful to women—it prohibits, for example, female genital mutilation and exploitation in pornography.
Another ground-breaking source of African human rights law is a 2010 decision by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
