One of the outstanding features of the South African Constitution is the well-articulated concept of administrative justice. It is to be expected that a modern constitutional state with an enormous social reconstruction programme like that of post-apartheid South Africa must have a sophisticated mechanism for the maintenance of administrative justice. The immediate past experience of apartheid under which the administrative process was devoted to the victimization of a large section of the population has also meant that every constitutional means possible in the arduous task of social reconstruction must be deployed towards the declared objective of the evolution of a humane and just administrative process. It was therefore not surprising that the post-apartheid constitutions considered the availability of administrative justice for citizens as one of their foremost civil liberties. Under the common law, the concept of administrative justice is generally associated with the notion of natural justice. Recent developments, however, have tended to narrow the concept down to the idea of fairness. The most remarkable proof of this development is the emergence of the doctrine of legitimate expectations, under which the courts have been able to come to the aid of persons who would have in previous situations been unable to obtain redress in matters where the application of administrative discretion is of paramount importance.

A brief glance at Africa would suggest that the methods adopted to deal with conflict prevention have achieved little success. It is clear that there are complex causes of conflict and that one cannot view conflict in a narrow sense, but must take account of political, economic and social factors to truly understand its causes and process. There is evidence that human rights violations predate conflicts: thus arbitrary arrests and detentions, oppression of political opposition groups and individuals, difficulties in socio-economic conditions, and additional border controls often increase during such times. Monitoring the situation of human rights over a period of time can therefore provide indicators of impending disputes. Conversely, human rights violations are also caused by conflicts. Yet, human rights and conflicts are often dealt with separately and this is evidenced in the practice of the UN as well as the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

The participation of local communities in the management of Cameroon's huge forest resources appears to be one of the most imponderable and enigmatic issues confronting contemporary policy-makers. This is because forest resource access and tenure policies in Cameroon have, since the colonial period, generally been hegemonic in character. This situation was further accentuated with the advent of national governments. On the eve of independence and even beyond, African governments were so concerned with political rights that they did not give much thought to any other rightscertainly not to what has become known as the right of local communities to participate in natural resource management. It was quite easy for Africans to conceive of rights solely in terms of the political rights of individuals. There was thus an alleged incompatibility between riparian community rights to participate in forest management and respect for individual rights.

South Africa is often characterized as a highly religious country since many South Africans consider their religious beliefs to be central to their lives. Although religion is widely believed to be a “non-issue”, these strong religious identifications might, however, play a role in the apparent ethnic resurgence. Consequently, the religious diversity of South Africa should be appropriately accommodated in the post-apartheid regime so as to prevent religion-based conflict.

Articles 6(e) and 15(1–4) of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty (1993) provide for the establishment of a Court of Justice of the Community. These provisions should, however, be read along with those of the Protocol on the Community Court of Justice initialled in 1991. Attempts have been made to analyse various aspects of the institutions of the Community, including the Court of Justice. While Bankole Thompson examined the legal problems of the economic integration in West Africa, Kofi Oteng Kufuor attempted to look at the Court of Justice from the angle of compliance with its judgments by member states. Denakin, for his part, appraised generally the prospects of the Court.

Plant variety protection has come to the fore in the wake of the adoption of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). TRIPS generally imposes the patentability of inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology and specifically mandates the introduction of a form of legal protection on plant varieties. Article 27.3(b) thus states that member states “shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof.”

In July 2000, several months after the United Nations produced an independent report citing the failures of the organization in relation to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (the Carlsson Report), the Organization of African Unity's (OAU) Summit in Lomé, Togo, was presented with a several-hundred page report from its International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events (IPEP). While the Carlsson Report focused exclusively on the responsibility of the UN, the IPEP had a wide mandate to examine the situation which led to the genocide and the failures of the Genocide Convention, and to make recommendations for redress and action to prevent it happening again. Similarly, although the UN document does acknowledge that the OAU failed to prevent the genocide, attributing this to a lack of resources and political will, the IPEP Report is more forceful in its condemnation of the influence and responsibility of several European states and the USA. The Panel considered the part played by these states as essential to an understanding of the genocide, despite the fact that its intention was not to determine the guilt of various actors. This note provides a descriptive summary of the contents of the Report.