The role of the African Commission in enhancing compliance with its decisions on communications

The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, an organ of the African Union, is tasked with promoting and protecting human rights across the African continent. A central aspect of its protective mandate is handling individual communications that allege human rights violations by states. While the African Commission has decided on the merits well over 100 individual communications, the implementation of its decisions faces significant challenges that hinder the full realisation of human rights. The primary objective of implementing recommendations arising from individual communications is not to ensure respect for human rights, but to guarantee that victims of human rights violations have access to remedies. This article provides a bird's eye view of the effectiveness of measures put in place by the African Commission and evaluates the role of the African Commission in ensuring the implementation by states of its decisions. The article relies on existing scholarship and the regional seminars on the implementation of decisions, held in 2017 in Dakar, Senegal, and in 2018 in Zanzibar, Tanzania, to identify strategies and recommendations aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of the African Commission in implementing its decisions on individual communications by states. The article argues that the measures outlined in the 2020 Rules of Procedures of the African Commission have not been consistently applied, leading to non-implementation of its decisions by states. As a result, the article offers a series of recommendations aimed at enabling the African Commission to more effectively leverage its procedures and enhance compliance with its decisions and recommendations by states. As an introduction to the 'Special Focus' on the implementation of the Commission's decisions, this article draws on other contributions contained in the 'Special Focus'.