This article explores the use of law in development at two levels in Nigeria. Development as a state duty has been provided for under the constitution, thereby creating socio-economic rights for citizens, albeit rights which are unenforceable. Seven development policies drawn up at different times have all also invoked law in one way or another to facilitate the achievement of their respective objectives. Both cases reflect the international trend in their respective discourses. The first approach mirrors the international human rights regime, while the second mimics international development discourse. While the instrumental use of law is desirable, this article argues that it is inadequate. More needs to be done to supplement it. First, courts need to adopt a radical interpretation of the constitutional provisions to make socio-economic rights enforceable. Secondly, people need to be active citizens through participation in the development process.

The Economic Community of Western African States (ECOWAS) was instituted by the Lagos Treaty which was signed by fifteen original member states on 28 May, 1975. A few months later, Cape Verde acceded to the Treaty, thus increasing the number of member states to sixteen. In its composition, ECOWAS could be regarded as a microcosm of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) because, like the OAU, it comprises different sovereign African countries with varying colonial, political, social and cultural backgrounds. However, compared with the existing African Economic Unions, ECOWAS is, to date, unique; because, unlike them, it is a multilingual organisation. It is precisely on this multilingual nature of the organisation that this paper intends to focus.

Traditional African laws have up till now been little studied, because they are unwritten, adversely affected by the colonial experience, and seen through western categories. Before looking at African land law, one must sketch the main characteristics of African customary law generally—that it was oral; popular; intimately linked with the invisible world; based on the legal and social complementarity of individual and group; that it implied the interdependence of persons and things, and the reciprocity of rights and duties. Colonial contact emphasized the individual aspect at the expense of the community, thus provoking a reaction against individualism from many of the independent African states.

Customary land law in Africa operated against a supernatural background, and linked land and family. The first essential feature was that of lineage or family title to land; restriction of land rights within the lineage—“exo-intransmissibilité”, inalienability outside the family—corresponds to exogamy in the realm of marriage. The benefit of land confined within the lineage was periodically redistributed among its members through the law of succession, which was more precise in some societies than in others. The second main feature of customary land law was the role of the “land chief”, distinguishable from the political chief, who represented the first occupant of the land, and mediated between the occupiers and the spirit world through his control of land use. Colonial administrations largely neglected this functionary.

The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights1 (hereinafter the “African Charter” or “Charter”) was adopted by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Assembly of Heads of State and Government in 1981. It entered into force on 21 October, 1986, after a majority of OAU member states had ratified the Charter. At present, 52 of the 53 member states have become parties: the only non-ratifying state is Eritrea.

If applied in isolation from the fundamental rights of women seeking abortion services, the right to conscientious objection can render any given rights to abortion illusory, including the rights to health, life, equality and dignity that are attendant to abortion. A transformative understanding of human rights requires that the right to conscientious objection to abortion be construed in a manner that is subject to the correlative duties which are imposed on the conscientious objector, as well as the state, in order to accommodate women's reproductive health rights. In recent years, the Colombian Constitutional Court has been giving a judicial lead on the development of a right to conscientious objection that accommodates women's fundamental rights. This article reflects on one of the court's decisions and draws lessons for the African region.

In late 2009 two Malawians, a man and a transgender woman, united in an engagement ceremony. Police charged both under Malawi's anti-sodomy provisions. The case captured the nation's attention and drew scrutiny from foreign governments and human rights organizations. Several western nations threatened to withdraw aid unless the prosecution was discontinued. Nevertheless, the defendants were convicted and sentenced. Following a visit from the UN secretary general, Malawi's president pardoned the couple, but emphasized that the “two gay boys” had offended Malawi and its people. This article examines this case (R v Soko and Kachepa) and its impact on Malawi's LGBT rights movement. Using Thomas Stoddard's “rule-shifting, culture-shifting” paradigm, it considers the efficacy of international and domestic advocacy efforts and concludes that aid conditionality is, in many ways, counter productive. Conversely, multi-dimensional domestic advocacy is a promising strategy to change the relevant law and public attitudes associated with the Malawian LGBT community.

This article examines the legal and policy responses of the Nigerian government and other agencies to human trafficking, which is one of the central social and economic challenges facing the country today. After exploring the nature and dimensions of the practice, it argues that Nigeria's unenviable position as a country of origin, transit and destination in human trafficking, as well as the impact of the practice on the lives of the victims and adverse implications for the country's corporate image, make it imperative that effective measures are adopted to combat it. In this respect, while accepting that legal measures are important in achieving the objective, the article highlights some deficiencies in current efforts and suggests a multidimensional approach, with greater emphasis on the “push” and “pull” factors of human trafficking prevalent in the country, such as high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality and marginalization.

Namibia finally achieved independence on 21 March, 1990, after a long struggle and many false hopes and setbacks. In a nutshell: the territory was colonized by Germany. It was seized by South African forces during the First World War, and then made the subject of a League of Nations Mandate, administered by South Africa, after the war. Following the Second World War, South Africa tried to incorporate the territory, a move resisted by the United Nations. In 1966 the International Court of Justice denied standing to Ethiopia and Liberia to allege breaches of the mandate. However, shortly thereafter the UN voted to terminate the mandate. At about the same time the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) launched its armed struggle. South Africa's response to these developments was to implement plans for the closer integration of the territory into the South African state, and into the system of apartheid. As a result, a system of native authorities, based on ethnicity, was introduced.

In 1975 the “Turnhalle” talks were started which, although rejected by most of the black groups, led to the establishment of a constituent Assembly. During the same period, a “Contract Group” of Western Nations began to negotiate with South Africa over a settlement for Namibia. The ultimate proposals were accepted by the UN, SWAPO and South Africa, and the plans were recognized by UN Resolution 435. But immediately thereafter problems began to arise, and talks about implementation stopped and started for a number of years.

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.

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.

This article seeks to examine the paradox of Boko Haram terrorism and Nigeria's counter-terrorism efforts, personified by the Joint Task Force (JTF). While posing the challenge of human rights abuses by the JTF in its counter-Boko Haram operations, the article contends that, whereas the terrorists' activities violate the rights of victims, the JTF's actions have also resulted in significant human rights abuses against innocent civilians. It argues that, despite Nigeria's obligations under the plenitude of international human rights treaties, non-domestication of these treaties by Nigeria has rendered them insignificant. The article therefore recommends alternative approaches to this challenge. Nigeria should domesticate the catalogue of international human rights instruments to which it has acceded, enact rules of engagement for law enforcement operations by security forces, develop a counter-terrorism strategy that is subject to robust engagement with all stakeholders, and strengthen its existing human rights accountability mechanisms, such as the law courts, legislature and National Human Rights Commission.

The Supreme Court of Ghana, in The Ghana Bar Association v. The Attorney General, has unanimously decided that, even under the 1992 Constitution, High Court and the Court of Appeal have no jurisdiction in chieftaincy matters. Even if this decision itself is correct, it is nevertheless premised on highly questionable legal propositions and dicta which strike at the foundations of several otherwise settled principles and canons of construction.

The Land Use Act, 1978, is a product of the inherent contradictions of the colonial and neo-colonial dependent, pseudo-capitalist economic structures established in Nigeria since colonial times. By the 1970s these contradictions became so seŕious that they threatened to become a clog on the growth of the capitalist economy. If such contradictions were allowed to reach a nodal point, conditions for the self-negation of the existing socio-economic and legal order would have ensued. The legislature, it would seem, narrowly identified the problem with private ownership of lands from its own class perspective, that is without a scientific conception of the problems in terms of ownership in the theory of social relations. A scientific conception of the problems would have revealed the essence of the difficulties as relating, not merely to the procedural aspects of private ownership of the lands, such as certainty of title, registration of title, etc., but concerning the institution of private ownership as an economic and legal category around which the exploitation of man by man is organised in class-divided societies.

Such a scientific perception of the problems would have demanded a lasting solution that not only abolished private ownership rights in land but also abolished private ownership of other means of production. The socialisation of all means of production would have amounted to a holistic approach to the solution of the problems in the interest of the nation as a whole.

Richtersveld Community and Others v. Alexkor Ltd and Another is the first case to consider whether aboriginal title is part of South African law. Aboriginal title is asui generis proprietary interest in land recognized in common law jurisdictions such as Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. It recognizes the prior occupation of those territories by aboriginal peoples before the arrival of settlers or colonization. Richtersveld was brought before the Land Claims Court which under the 1994 Restitution of Land Rights Act considers claims to restitution of rights in land to individuals or communities dispossessed of such rights after 19 June 1913, as a result of past racially discriminatory laws or practices. The Court's jurisdiction is confined to redressing the discriminatory effect of land policies of the apartheid era, “considering the fact that more than 3.5 million people and their descendants have been victims of racially based dispossession and forced removal during the apartheid era”. It cannot consider the broader issue of the effect of colonial acquisition of territorial sovereignty on pre-existing customary land tenure systems, or rights in land.

Urban and rural local authorities constitute the lowest tier of Zimbabwe's multilevel system of government. These local governments have a constitutional “right to govern” that must be exercised within the constitutional, legislative and policy framework. Under the old constitutional order, the national government could supervise urban local authorities, for example by issuing policy directives to ensure that these authorities governed in a manner that enabled them to deliver on national and local goals. This article examines this supervisory instrument, the powers it gives the national government, its use in practice and its relevance under the new constitutional order. The main argument is that supervisory instruments, such as the power to issue policy directives to local governments, are necessary in any multilevel system of government. However, such supervisory powers must be balanced with the need for local autonomy, to allow local governments to deliver on their service delivery obligations and development mandate.

Caught between pressure from dominant global economic actors (such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB), and certain states) to implement painful socio-economic reform measures, and pressure from significant numbers of their own peoples to reject these IMF/WB-style prescriptions, formally democratic “third world” governments often yield to the demands of the former to push through such reforms, sometimes at great social cost. This article utilizes a contemporary Nigerian case study to illustrate this point and to show how the curtailment of labour rights and the weakening of labour movements have formed an important part of the economic strategy of many such governments. This anti-labour rights/movements strategy is an attempt by governments to deal with the human rights contradictions that are often generated when third world countries attempt dual political and economic transitions. The article argues that the deployment of an anti-labour strategy is grounded in a new kind of “full belly thesis” that prioritizes a particular IMF/WB-friendly vision of economic development over certain kinds of political (especially labour) rights. The powerful global economic actors, who would otherwise advocate the observance of all human rights, have nevertheless found this thesis more acceptable than its earlier iteration, which was grounded in a far less IMF/WB-friendly economic vision.

Nigeria's recent efforts to pass local content legislation with stringent targets and stiff penalties have drawn widespread attention, spurred ongoing debate and prompted numerous international workshops and seminars. Lack of local content has been blamed for high unemployment and lack of capacity, and even been linked to militancy in the Niger Delta region. After much debate and delay, the bill has become law. This article reviews the bill's history and tracks the hype surrounding Nigeria's moves towards a legislative mandate. It discusses the provisions of the bill, observing that it is poorly drafted, vague and therefore difficult to comply with. The bill could also violate international agreements, such as bilateral investment treaties and GATT, and is unnecessary in the face of contractual alternatives that could be successfully utilized to enhance local content. Contract models contain ample provisions for enabling local content and have been successfully employed by other resource-rich nations.

The legality of judicial corporal punishment is an issue which has caused considerable disagreement amongst jurists, legislators and criminal justice personnel, for its use has serious moral, constitutional and penological implications. In Zimbabwe, two decisions handed down by the Supreme Court together with a later constitutional amendment Act have highlighted the divergence of views on this matter. It is thus the intention of this article to examine critically the issue from a constitutional and penological perspective.

In 1987 in S v. Ncube a full bench of the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe unanimously held that the sentence of whipping for adults contravened section 15(1) of the Declaration of Rights which is contained in the Constitution of Zimbabwe in that it constituted a punishment which in its very nature was both inhuman and degrading. In his seminal judgment, Gubbay, J. A., had regard to four factors, namely: (i) the current trend of thinking amongst distinguished jurists and leading academics; (ii) the abolition of whipping in many countries of the world as being repugnant to the consciences of civilized men; (iii) the progressive move of the courts in countries in which whipping is not susceptible to constitutional attack to restrict its imposition to instances where a serious, cruel, brutal and humiliating crime has been perpetrated; (iv) the decreasing recourse to the penalty of whipping in Zimbabwe, especially over the previous ten years and the declining number of laws on the statute book in which it remained a permissible penalty.

The African continent represents a region which faces economic problems of the utmost severity at a time when the global economy itself is ravaged by inflation, unemployment and the effects of a world recession. Africa contains 21 of the world's 45 least-developed nations. Its total Gross National Product accounts for only 2·7 per cent. of the world's Product and Africa has the lowest average per capita income in the world. Many African countries lack basic medical and health care facilities while food shortages and severe unemployment affect a very high proportion of African peoples. Internal African development strategies of the past have been subjected to critical investigation in an attempt to assess the sources of the continent's development problems. Despite its vast natural resources and the praiseworthy efforts of many African governments, the continent as a whole (excluding South Africa) is unable to show any significant economic expansion or growth.

The 1980 Lagos Plan of Action represents the most recent initiative undertaken by the Organisation of African Unity (O.A.U.) in conjunction with the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (E.C.A.) to develop a successful regional strategy for African development. It aims at economic growth in each individual African state in different sectors including food and agriculture, industry and in environmental and energy matters. It adopts specific as well as general targets with time limits, for each aspect of economic planning.