Woman-to-woman marriage is a form of customary marriage between two women, predominantly found in Africa. These customary marriages have been and to some extent still are conducted by various communities across Africa, including in Kenya. Communities such as the Kamba, Kisii, Nandi, Kikuyu and Kuria practise woman-to-woman marriages for a variety of reasons. The legal status of woman-to-woman marriages in Kenya is uncertain due to the provisions of article 45(2) of Kenya's Constitution of 2010 and section 3(1) of the Marriage Act of 2014, which stipulate that adults only have the right to marry persons of the opposite sex. However, a holistic and purposive reading of the constitution, taking into consideration its recognition of culture and the protection of children as important values in Kenyan society, and considering the historical context within which the provisions concerning same-sex marriages were included, leads to the conclusion that these provisions were not intended to proscribe the cultural practice of woman-to-woman marriage in Kenya. The constitutional validity of woman-to-woman marriage opens the door to a more expansive and fluid understanding of “family” in Kenya.

This article discusses the legal regimes for enforcing foreign arbitral awards within the East African Community (EAC). It focuses specifically on the enforcement of awards from partner states as well as from the East African Court of Justice (EACJ), which, although a supranational court, has jurisdiction to accept parties’ designation to act as an arbitral tribunal. The EAC has not yet developed a supranational community law based regime for enforcing foreign arbitral awards. The current dominant regime for enforcing such awards is the New York Convention. The article examines how the convention has been applied in the partner states and discusses aspects of the existing jurisprudence that demand reconsideration. It examines the suitability of applying the convention regime to awards from the EACJ, and the case for harmonizing the legal regimes for enforcing foreign arbitral awards within the EAC.

This article critically analyses the reparations and asset forfeiture framework at the Extraordinary African Chambers and its application in the case against Hissène Habré. It identifies obstacles to implementing the reparations awarded and calls for states and international organizations to support their realization for the sake of Habré’s victims, without whose efforts the tribunal might not exist. It argues that international(ized) criminal tribunals should more readily utilize fines and forfeiture as penalties to alleviate the pressure on trust funds to implement reparations awards, particularly in cases where convicted persons possess substantial assets. Lastly, in light of the requirement that assets susceptible to forfeiture orders be derived directly or indirectly from the crime(s) of which a person is found guilty, the article questions the failure of the prosecutor to charge Habré with the war crime of pillage, despite its availability in the tribunal's statute and the finding that the suffering of many of Habré’s victims entitled to individual compensation resulted from pillage.

This article considers the current sentencing purposes in Namibia. It discusses the legislator's failure to articulate these purposes, leaving this to the judiciary, and identifies the dangers that arise from this legislative lacuna. It establishes that current sentencing purposes are fundamentally premised upon a retributivist philosophy, transplanted into Namibia during the colonial period. The article thus advocates for sentencing reform, aimed at restoring a paradigm based on African values. It does so by analysing African indigenous justice systems, using Ubuntu as an Afrocentric value. The article establishes how Ubuntu is contemporarily mirrored by restorative notions of justice that prioritize victims, offenders and the community, thereby asserting sentencing purposes that promote reconciliation, reparation and offender re-integration. In juxtaposing this with other sentencing purposes, the article critiques comparable jurisdictions that have recently incorporated restorative justice and proposes a set of draft sentencing purposes in the appendix.

The retention and use of the death penalty, especially the mandatory death penalty, continues to be an issue of controversy and concern in Africa and elsewhere. Accordingly, African states are slowly but increasingly moving away from the death penalty, with many of them abolishing it either de facto or de jure, or limiting its use, with some finding its mandatory application to be unlawful. This article considers the recent Supreme Court of Kenya decision that declared the mandatory nature of the death penalty as provided for under the country's Penal Code to be unconstitutional. However, it argues that, while declaring the mandatory death penalty to be unconstitutional is commendable and a promising step on the path towards the abolition of the death penalty, the death penalty remains available as a punishment, with serious human rights implications if procedural safeguards are not followed.

On various continents, intergovernmental organizations resort to legal engineering in order to promote democratic governance in their member states. Those legal efforts operate in a fluctuating political and societal environment, which they seek to transform but which, in turn, shapes the authority, the effectiveness and even the very nature of the legal instruments. As this Special Issue shows, this process of mutual influencing between law and context as interdependent variables also applies to the African Union's (AU) landmark instrument for democratic governance promotion. Roughly one decade after the adoption of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG), fascinating developments, challenges and questions have emerged, some of which were arguably not anticipated by its drafters. For example, who envisaged that the ACDEG might become a justiciable instrument before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights? In the wake of popular uprisings in response to gross undemocratic practices, what normative guidance does the ACDEG offer in response to such developments?

This article investigates and illustrates the role and importance of a rights-based approach to foreign agro-investment for the government of Cameroon when it is required to govern foreign agro-investment activities. In doing so, the article offers an analytical framework based on human rights norms, principles and standards emerging from relevant international and regional human rights instruments. It aims to provide clarity on how local communities’ rights could be respected, protected and fulfilled when and where foreign agro-investment occurs. Consequently, because a rights-based approach requires states to respect their minimum human rights obligations, its use in the foreign agro-investment context is crucially important to help compel the government of Cameroon to ensure the respect, protection and fulfilment of local communities’ rights.

Now that it has been in operation for 20 years, it is necessary to reflect on the impact the South African Domestic Violence Act has had on women's lives. This article analyses this key legislation and the police's duty to ensure its proper implementation. It focuses on the reports of the Independent Complaints Directorate and Civilian Secretariat of Police, the bodies responsible for measuring police compliance with the act. The reports identify serious transgressions, highlighting the police's perception that domestic violence is a private affair with which it should not interfere. This perception plays a particularly subtle and destructive role in legitimizing, supporting and permitting violence against women. In focusing on key court decisions in which the state (police) was held financially accountable for the failure to protect women against violence, the author highlights the importance of challenging the social and legal understanding of women's experiences with violence in promoting a system that takes account of those experiences.

This article traces a genealogy of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) and examines the charter's overall implementation. While there has always been a struggle between competing views of how to ensure more or less continental accountability for norms related to democratic governance in Africa, enforcement by the African Union (AU) has definitively become more robust since the ACDEG's adoption. The article argues that this development is observable in three trends: continental legalization, technocratization and judicialization of politics. It evaluates the growth of normative commitments in the field of democracy, elections and governance and their increasing consolidation into binding legal treaties; explores the increasing reliance on AU technical assistance in the implementation and interpretation of these instruments; and assesses the expanding role of continental and regional judicial bodies in enforcing commitments to democracy. Building upon a better understanding of these trends, the article identifies key contextual factors that will shape the ACDEG's future implementation.

Since 2008 the Ethiopian government has allocated vast tracts of land, particularly in the Gambella and Benishangul-Gumuz regions, to agricultural commercial actors with little or no participation from indigenous communities. The marginalization of indigenous peoples in this process primarily emerges from the government's very wide legislative discretionary power regarding decision-making in the exploitation of land. The government has invoked constitutional clauses relating to land ownership and its power to deploy land resources for the “common benefit” of the people, to assert the consistency of this discretionary power with the Ethiopian Constitution. This article posits that the legislative and practical measures taken by the government that marginalize these indigenous peoples in decisions affecting the utilization of land resources are incompatible with their constitutional right to self-determination. Further, it posits that the government's use of the constitution to justify its wide discretionary power in the decision-making process relating to land exploitation is based on a misreading of the constitution.

The practice of cassation over cassation and its consequent rule of precedent have resulted in a legal quagmire. The impact is evident in the pecuniary disposition of a bigamous marriage with far-reaching legal ramifications for a valid marriage in Ethiopia. In fact, the pecuniary consequences of a bigamous marriage have remained a perplexing challenge in Ethiopia due to, inter alia, the debatable precedential practice of the Federal Supreme Court. Given the constitutionally guaranteed regional autonomy of the regional states to regulate family matters in Ethiopia, the practice has constitutional implications for the application of the Oromia Family Code. This article argues that the federal doctrine of precedent and its enabling legislation not only lack a concrete constitutional basis, but also encroach upon the constitutional autonomy of regional states and the constitutional rights of legitimate spouses. Exploring the constitutional dimensions of the practice and its legal ramifications, the article suggests possible options to change the practice at a regional level.

The African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance requires state parties to establish and strengthen democratic institutions, the rule of law, human rights and independent electoral systems. However, the extent to which these provisions can be invoked by individuals and non-governmental organizations before a court of law is uncertain. It is also unclear whether such provisions guarantee “stand-alone” individual rights and as such whether the charter could be considered to be a human rights instrument. This article seeks to analyse whether the charter is a human rights instrument, as well as examining its justiciability in light of the decision of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights in APDH v Côte d'Ivoire. The analysis highlights the court's decision affirming that the charter is a human rights instrument and that individuals and non-governmental organizations can file cases in a court of law seeking its enforcement.

Harmonizing corporate governance systems can potentially level the playing field for businesses, as it would increase financial and economic interconnections, including market integration, between countries. Although harmonization at the regional level such as the EU seems challenging because systems are so diverse, the reverse is the case at the national level. A critical issue in the harmonization effort is whether to adopt the “comply or explain” approach or the mandatory compliance approach. Although mandatory compliance is necessary in certain circumstances, particularly in cases of corporate pseudo-reporting that occasions corporate failures, the predominant approach involves “comply or explain”. Given competing interests in the business community, the inclination for flexibility and the regulatory authority's disposition for an oversight function, this article argues that a hybrid approach should be followed, which will internalize the merits of both the “comply or explain” and mandatory compliance approaches while eschewing their disadvantages.

Private prosecutions have been part of the Nigerian legal system for a long time. In 2015, the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) came into force. The ACJA provides for, inter alia, circumstances in which a person may institute a private prosecution. In this article, relying on jurisprudence emanating from Nigerian courts before the ACJA came into force, the author suggests ways in which Nigerian courts could approach the right to institute a private prosecution under the act. To achieve this objective, the author discusses: the right to institute a private prosecution; locus standi to institute a private prosecution; and measures to prevent abuse of the right to institute a private prosecution.

With a view to showing that courts do not have the power to validate native law and custom, this article highlights the different roles assigned to the assent of the people governed by native law and custom, and to the court called upon to determine its judicial enforceability. It argues that customary law is validated by the assent of the people and not by courts, and that the tests contained in different statutes by which courts are permitted to intervene in the regime of customary law are tests of enforceability and not tests of validity. As a result, it argues that the term “validity test” is misleading when used in relation to the power of courts to determine the enforceability of native law and custom, and should therefore be discarded.

This article demonstrates how the application of the ordinary rules of property law in the determination of the property rights of spouses in Nigeria has been unfair to a financially weaker spouse (usually the wife). It calls for reconsideration of the present matrimonial property rights arrangement between a husband and a wife in Nigeria. It argues in favour of the statutory introduction of the concept of “matrimonial property” in Nigeria to apply both during marriage and at divorce. To give some background, reference is made to the South African matrimonial property system of community of property and the accrual system. The article proposes that a special category of property, known as “matrimonial property” and which emphasizes the equal proprietary rights of spouses, is recognized.

The Proposed Draft Text on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments forms an integral part of the ambitious Judgments Project of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. In particular, this instrument endeavours to foster predictability and certainty in international commercial relations by enabling litigants to be accurately informed in advance of the circumstances in which the decision of the court of one contracting state will be recognized or enforced in the territory of another. The endorsement of the Draft Judgments Convention could accordingly prove advantageous to countries like South Africa, whose private international law on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments seems archaic and confined to a narrow set of precepts. This article identifies the loopholes in the country's policy and practice on the subject, and demonstrates the manner in which the Draft Judgments Convention could plausibly address these lacunae.

The common law doctrine of uberrimae fidei is pivotal to all contracts of insurance. It imposes a duty on the parties to act towards each other with utmost good faith by disclosing all material facts and not misrepresenting any fact, either before the contract is formed or while the contract subsists. This article examines the doctrine and its statutory reforms in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. It argues that, before the statutory interventions, the iniquitous doctrine was a potent weapon, most often used by insurers to defeat just and legitimate claims by an insured. Although the legislation has brought some measure of relief to the insured in these jurisdictions, the article concludes that there are still some grey areas in the Nigerian law that need to be addressed to further the cause of justice between the contracting parties.

According to various provisions of the Protocol Establishing the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the court has jurisdiction over the interpretation and / or application of human rights instruments ratified by the states concerned. This article considers whether, in terms of those provisions, the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) is a relevant human rights instrument over which the court can exercise its jurisdiction. It aims to consider the contours of the main question posed and clarify the relevant aspects in light not only of the court's jurisprudence but also of the overall legal framework of the African Union. In this regard, before drawing appropriate conclusions, it addresses three main questions. What is a human rights instrument? Which elements in the ACDEG clearly relate to human rights? And, what is the court's approach on the issue?